If you love to travel and have to work for a living, your options might seem limited. The obvious choices are: travel during your vacation time — 10 or so days a year, if you’re lucky — or get a job that allows you to travel while you’re working. The latter option is particularly attractive for non-millionaires who don’t want to limit their adventures to just a few weeks a year. But if you don’t have the skills and aptitude to work for an airline or become a traveling salesman, you might figure that you’re out of luck.
Not so. A recent roundup from FlexJobs reminds us that there are all kinds of travel jobs that don’t involve working for the actual travel industry or learning how to charm people in sales. For example:
Not all event planning jobs have a travel component, but some do. (FlexJobs includes links to a few in their list.) If you have experience in the industry and want to take your organizational skills to new places on the globe, this might be a way to do it.
Translation work ranges from occasional freelance gigs to permanent on-staff assignments, and can be done anywhere from the comfort of your home office to various locations around the world. Some translation jobs even have travel baked in. If can’t land a gig with permanent travel potential, you also might be able to make a go of it as a full-time freelancer, and travel between gigs.
Not all travel jobs for writers are hotel reviewing gigs (although those exist, as well, and often come with the benefit of free stays in swanky places). FlexJobs lists a few, less-typical gigs that might surprise you, like a technical writer position that includes some travel and a ghostwriting gig that involves travel to Turkey.
Writers also have an advantage in that their jobs are fairly portable: if they have a laptop and access to the internet, they can work. Similar to translators, writers can opt for a freelance schedule that allows them to make a living and make a life abroad.
To see more jobs, and current listings in each category, go to FlexJobs.
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