The most unusual travel business ideas - Fresh business ideas

Employment

So, I propose to start with the simplest and most accessible option for everyone.

Freelancing

Freelancing is an intermediate option between working for hire and working for yourself, combining both the pros and cons of both methods.

Pros:

There is no connection to place of residence. This is perhaps the most important advantage for traveling - to work you only need a laptop and the Internet, you can work from almost anywhere in the world.
Free schedule. Most often, freelancing is project work, where the customer pays not for hours, but for the completed order, so you are free to complete it at any time, the main thing is to meet the deadlines.
Having a choice. You are free to choose which orders to take and which not, which customers to work with and which to refuse.
More opportunities for self-development and growth. Your advancement up the “career” ladder depends only on yourself. There is no boss who can improve your mood, or maybe not, there is only you. If you work well, take on more complex orders, you will develop successfully.

Minuses:

Less stability. There may be too much work or there may not be any work at all, and this cannot always be predicted in advance.
High competition and difficulty in finding a customer. At first, while there is no good portfolio and reputation, you will need to “dig the ground” in search of good orders.
It's difficult to organize yourself. For many of those who have left the office for freelancing, at first they are “mind blown” by the fact that they don’t have to live according to a schedule and it turns out that organizing yourself is much more difficult than sitting at the office from 9 to 18

There is an amazing paradox in freelancing - with a huge number of employees in any specialty, there are very few normal freelancers. The competition is huge, but it is incredibly difficult for an employer to find a good person.

We recently talked with one businessman who said that he was ready to pay 1.5 times more to someone who would work efficiently and do everything on time. But there are very few of them - performers take an order, then disappear, do not do what they were asked to do, do not want to listen to the wishes of the customer, and so on, so simply by becoming a responsible performer you already significantly increase your chances of success.

Another advantage of freelancing is the fact that here you can start from scratch, in almost any field and, with due diligence, grow quite quickly. Of course, at first you will need to take on cheap projects, but skill only grows with practice

By the way, we ourselves are far from freelance professions; for the last few years we have worked in IT sales. We wanted to go traveling for a long time and were very envious of designers/programmers who could work without being tied to an office, and we had no idea how to earn money outside the usual format.

When traveling, we often meet people who try to work as a freelancer, but at the same time earn pennies. They create a profile, place an ad and wait for an avalanche of orders to fall on them, but for some reason this does not happen.

In general, income from freelancing is potentially unlimited, but in reality, of course, it is strongly tied to 2 factors:

Your skills as a specialist
Your skills as a person who knows how to present yourself to an employer

Almost a year ago, we met guys who took a course at the Remote Employee Training Center, where they help, firstly, to understand the variety of online specialties, and secondly, and no less important, they teach how to work competently with customers and present yourself, earn a reputation, and therefore more money.

Many of them still live in Bali, most of them came from small cities, where the average salary is 15,000 rubles and there are not many prospects

After that meeting, we talked about them on the blog, and over this year we received about a dozen grateful letters from people who learned about this project from our article, completed training and are now earning money on the Internet that allows them to travel. Enrollment for training opens once a month, the cost increases every day and now there is still the opportunity to register and fix a low price for yourself.

Well, if you don’t know where to start in freelancing, we recommend that you first download the book “7 Professions for Making Money Fast on the Internet”

Remote work

I think that many of you have read Timothy Ferriss, but few have tried to use the simplest method he talks about, namely:

Make an agreement at your current job that you will perform your duties remotely.

First of all, this, of course, also applies to initially freelance specialties - designer, programmer, etc., but we have friends who remotely perform completely different work - from designers to customs clearance specialists. Of course, you won’t be able to work remotely as a doctor or hairdresser, but with today’s communication capabilities, many tasks can be solved remotely.

At first glance, it may seem that no leader would agree to such conditions, but real examples from our friends show that this is quite possible.

I can share my experience . When I worked at my last office job, I was involved in sales management and, in addition to regular managers, I had two remote managers under me. They did their job well, and I turned a blind eye even to their terrible carelessness, which periodically infuriated me, so if they had also performed well the formalities necessary for me as a leader, they would have no value, no matter that they were not sitting in the office.

In my opinion, in order for a manager to agree to your remote work, you need to fulfill only one condition - to become an ESSENTIAL employee for him. And believe me, this is much easier to do than it seems.

Of course, in an ideally configured structure there are no irreplaceable people, but there are so few such companies that this is not significant.

I myself was recruiting personnel for my team and during my work I conducted dozens, if not hundreds of interviews and guess what? Finding an adequate employee is EXTREMELY difficult. Everyone thinks they are brilliant, but no one wants to work hard. So just put yourself in the boss's shoes and give him a little more than he expects from you.

Pros:

You can live where you like, there is a good climate, there is a sea, etc.
Shifted schedule - the working day in Russia starts 4-5 hours later, so in the morning you can have time to do a bunch of things, or sleep longer)

Minuses:

It’s still the same job, and if it was unloved, then from a distance you won’t love it anymore

Placement in a company on site

This option doesn't eliminate the need to live according to a schedule someone sets for you, but it is one of the easiest ways to move to another country. Of course, finding a job is not that easy and, most likely, it will not be a high-level position, although there are exceptions.

Pros:

Stability
Salary in foreign currency (very relevant now)
Legality (this is not always true, however)

Minuses:

All the same as during normal work in Russia

Popular areas for employment:

Hotel business (sales, customer service, advertising and PR managers)
Tourism (sales managers, tour guides)
Real estate
Catering business
Skills training (languages, yoga, dance)

At this point, two directions can be distinguished.

Employment in a Russian (or international) company:

The most famous example is the company Aviasales, whose office is located in Phuket.
Another company is the advertising agency Mevix, with an office in Samui, we know about it firsthand, a friend of ours worked there for some time.
Other acquaintances moved the entire office to Bali and also worked there as a team for several years.
Another friend of ours (from Syria) worked at Microsoft in his country, and then transferred to an office in Malaysia and now lives there.
A girl I know in Bali works part-time as a florist in a company that organizes weddings, designs arches and bouquets

Recently, in Vietnam, we met a girl who worked for some time in a casting agency in Mumbai, recruiting girls for filming in advertising and as backup dancers.
When we were there, we acted as extras, but they paid pennies for it, so it was just for fun. And if you, for example, dance well, you can earn completely different money. But be especially careful with this, there are plenty of scammers in this area

Employment in a local company

Here the scope for creativity is limited by knowledge of languages. If you know some local language (Indonesian/Thai) and English, then your chances of finding a job are much greater. If you are only Russian, then you should go to where there are many of our tourists (Pattaya, Phuket, Nha Trang).

Directions for employment:

In principle, this can be absolutely any field of activity.

For example, one of our friends got a job as a programmer in the office of a payment company (like our qiwi) in Jakarta. At the same time, his English is far from perfect, and at that time he barely knew Indonesian at all. Now he is the only foreigner in the company, he earns a good salary and is in good standing with his colleagues and management.
Yoga studio, dance classes - in such places there are often many teachers from Australia, Europe, Canada, so if you have the appropriate skills, then this is a pretty good opportunity to demonstrate them.
Another acquaintance got a job as a DJ in a restaurant in Boracay - it was, admittedly, more of a part-time job, but nevertheless it also brought in some money.
A couple of our friends travel around Asia, and when the money runs out, they settle somewhere in a tourist place and get a job in a travel agency, she as a sales manager, he as a guide

In general, if you are interested in the topic of local employment and want to study this area in more detail, watch the webinar by Olesya Novikova, she worked in Asia for several years and she has detailed material on this topic, which includes:

Review of vacancies;
job search technology;
RFP negotiation strategy;
pitfalls, etc.

Language training. This is generally a very popular direction. Again, we know guys who teach English to the Chinese, in the Philippines we met a Latvian who taught English to Filipinos and Thais, another friend teaches Russian to the Japanese, another works in Hong Kong at a university

Animator. For this vacancy, you don’t even need any skills at all, the main thing is that you like communicating with people.
Instructor. An instructor certificate in any sport also opens up a lot of opportunities. So, for example, we have a friend who teaches kiting, he works at a kite school in Boracay

There are a couple of diving instructors I know - one works in Lembongan (a small island near Bali), the other comes to Phuket every winter. We also have friends who work at a surf school in Bali, and in Nepal we met some guys who teach paragliding – in Europe in the summer and in the Himalayas in winter.

Work on a liner/yacht . This is another direction that can also be very interesting. You can read more about vacancies and salaries, for example, here or here.

Programs for students. For those still studying at university, there are plenty of opportunities to combine travel with work. The most famous Work and Travel program is a great way to live in another country, earn money, improve your language, and in general, a very cool challenge. At one time, we missed this opportunity and regretted it very much. In general, there are other programs for students, look on the Internet.

Fruit picking. There are regions where this type of activity is very popular. For example, picking strawberries in Finland, but this is more of a seasonal trip, for several weeks. But farm work in Australia, taking into account their salaries ($12-20), is a very good opportunity for part-time work. We have more than once met Europeans returning from working in Australia via Southeast Asia.

There are many different vacancies there - work on farms, in gardens, as tractor drivers, shepherds, etc. The work is hard and there are many nuances, but with due diligence and luck you can find very good options and earn an impressive amount in a few months.

In general, Australia is also open to more qualified employees, although mostly in intermediate specialized professions (electrician, cook, etc.). A list of in-demand specialties is available on the consulate’s website, and if you have the appropriate profession, you will have access to a simplified procedure for obtaining a residence permit.

Volunteering

Typically, volunteering is a form of charity, working in an orphanage, hospital, in disadvantaged areas and developing countries. There are various agencies that organize volunteer trips; you can read more, for example, here.

But sometimes this simply means “work for room and board”, when the employer provides room and board in exchange for your time - there can also be a lot of vacancies here: work in a guesthouse, school, on a farm, etc.

Hostel opening

This is a very promising business that is popular in almost any locality. After all, people can come to a foreign city not only for recreation, but also for business trips.

More and more people prefer to rent a bed in a hostel rather than pay considerable sums for a hotel room. Even compared to the cheapest hotel, a hostel looks like a much more economical option. However, you should not assume that a low level of comfort is assumed. On the contrary, modern hostels are equipped with everything you need: Wi-Fi, kitchen, board games, living room with TV and play station, bathroom with washing machine.

An apartment is best suited for opening a hostel. Of course, the more rooms it has, the more rooms you can rent out.

The main expense item is repairs, purchase of furniture and necessary equipment for life. It is assumed that you already have available housing. Otherwise, you will have to wait a long time until you recoup the investment associated with buying an apartment.

Read the article “How to open a hostel: step-by-step instructions”

Self-employment/business

Organization of tours

In addition to getting a job as a guide, you can organize tours on your own - this is one of the clear ways to combine travel with income.

We have a lot of friends/acquaintances who earn money in this way, both on an ongoing basis and occasionally:

For example, https://amazingtrip.org/ - Shamil started independently leading non-standard tours around Bali, and now he has many interesting routes around the world and guides who conduct these tours
Samlowry conducts original tours of Thailand, which allow you not only to see the country as a tourist, but also to take part in a real adventure.
There are also many friends who periodically earn extra money in this way - even without a website or any advertising, they simply recruit a small group of 5-6 people through social networks and take them to interesting places in a particular country.
There are also friends who lead tours around Bali. For example, you can register on the website tripster.ru, rent a car and drive tourists around the island, showing them your favorite places.
In India, on a train from Chennai to Calcutta, we met a man who had been living there for 15 years and worked as an individual escort - they were traveling together with a girl who wanted to travel around India, but was afraid alone, so such a service exists.
A separate direction is photo tours. If you know your way around a certain area well, know unusual places to shoot, and at the same time understand photography, this is also in demand. For example, we have a photographer friend who periodically goes on tours with famous photographers to learn from them, but sometimes he is willing to pay just to be taken to a good place and not have to think about hotels, route, food, transport, etc.

Well, in general, a huge number of amateur photographers have appeared recently, so if you know how not to overwhelm the horizon, you are already a guru for many of them