Learn how to see the world while you earn with our top 10 jobs that involve travel.
While salary and benefits are important, there’s more to choosing a career than the number on your paycheck. If you’re happiest when exploring new places, jobs that involve travel may provide the biggest perks.
Career options like travel agent, cruise director, and pilot are obvious choices, but there are plenty of jobs with travel opportunities outside of the travel industry itself.
From sales to accounting, we’ve gathered a few of the top job descriptions for careers that allow you to travel for business.
You don’t need to be a war correspondent to travel the world as a journalist. While some work for local and regional publications stay within the area, others travel far and wide as part of research for long-form articles and documentaries. A journalist’s job is to gather information and present it to the public in detail, which requires searching for interesting stories around the globe – ideal for anyone searching for careers that involve travel.
The days of door-to-door selling are over, but a career as a corporate sales representative still requires travel. In this type of role, you could be working for a pharmaceutical, manufacturing, or tech company. You’ll need to showcase the latest products while answering questions and monitoring their use. This not only involves in-person visits but also a high degree of client entertaining to close those deals – sometimes a Zoom call doesn’t cut it. Maintaining long-term relationships with contacts is key to success with this type of job.
Searching for a job that involves travel and pays well? Do you like to be your own boss? Consider becoming a consultant. Management consultants travel domestically and overseas to work at their client’s sites. Their main role is advising, helping companies streamline processes, and making businesses run more efficiently. To do this, you’ll constantly be on the move from one client location to another, suggesting and implementing business solutions while maintaining those all-important client relationships.
Like consultants, public relations officers must travel frequently to meet face-to-face with clients and devise PR strategies. Some officers work for big corporate brands, while others work for agencies or as freelancers. You might manage talent during high-profile product launches or red-carpet events, which makes this an exciting opportunity for someone who loves travel and thrives in a fast-paced work environment.
Do you love meeting new people and exploring new places? If you’re the life of the party, consider becoming an event manager. This career involves managing corporate events from start to finish, including high-level international conferences and fundraisers. You’ll scout locations and venues, book entertainment and catering services, and oversee the planning process to ensure everything’s delivered on time and within budget.
If you want a job that allows you to travel in the healthcare industry, consider becoming a travel nurse. You’ll make a real impact on people’ lives while working and living in other countries. Travel nurses move on demand to wherever healthcare is needed most, including developing countries and disaster relief zones.
Joining the foreign service for your government is a great choice for those who want to travel and work abroad. Becoming a diplomat drops you right into the heart of another country, where you’ll play an important role acting as a liaison between departments. When it comes to careers and jobs that require international travel, a diplomatic services position is certainly one of the more interesting fields to explore. Duties include everything from handling visa applications to translating treaties. In addition to living abroad as part of your post, you’ll also need to travel between embassies.
Work and travel go hand in hand for a retail buyer. As a buyer, you could be scouring the markets of Morocco for textiles and color trends, browsing Italian workshops for the next season’s trends, or touring local factories to build relationships with suppliers. Buyers are always on the hunt for fresh, innovative products to bring back to consumers, which involves frequent travel to trade shows and marketplaces.
When you think of jobs that involve travel, construction management isn’t always at the top of the list. But construction managers oversee residential and commercial projects all over the world, along with mining and energy expeditions. Commercial projects can be vast in scope, with sites in multiple cities and countries. A construction manager oversees building sites, monitoring progress and budgets, which all requires hands-on, in-person visits. At the upper end of the salary bracket, international construction manager falls into the category of jobs that require travel and pay well.
Another surprising career that sometimes requires travel is accounting or auditing. Corporate and financial auditors handle lots of investigative paperwork. Auditors spend days, weeks, or even months on location to fully investigate corporate spending and to prepare financial statements, verifying that internal fraud management controls are sufficient. These services are essential, so clients will cover expenses as part of corporate travel management.
Though it’s difficult to pinpoint a specific overseas job that pays the most, the ones that require travel and pay well tend to be in consulting or business-related. Of the jobs listed above, management consultant is likely to net the highest salary, though you should also look out for similar roles, like business analyst, management analyst, strategy consultant, and so on.
Today’s corporate productivity apps and widespread internet connectivity has led to the rise of the digital nomad. Interested? Let’s dig into a job where you can travel practically anywhere, anytime, thanks to remote work.
While many remote workers stay at home, it’s also possible to log in to work platforms from anywhere with a Wifi connection. A growing number of countries are now offering remote working visas to entice long-term visitors, including European countries like Estonia, Germany, and Portugal, as well as Caribbean islands like Bermuda and Barbados.
This opens the doors to work and travel in a brand-new way, letting you make money while seeing the world. Of course, this type of lifestyle works best for those who can self-manage and don’t have any ties back at home.
Typical remote work careers involve online services, such as graphic design, copywriting, and web development. Online teachers and virtual assistants provide services through digital platforms, maintaining contact with clients through video chats.
At the same time, many overseas jobs are industry specific. Working in either the aviation industry or the travel and tourism business comes with perks, often with free travel for friends and family as well as for yourself.
There aren’t too many careers where you travel that require you to clock more air miles than cabin crew members. Flight attendants get firsthand experience with business flights. They can travel to multiple cities in a day, providing a high level of customer service while maintaining safety standards aboard each aircraft.
With flight comparison sites and booking engines, is there still a need for travel agents? Some travelers still prefer the personal service an agent provides, particularly for niche experiences like cruises and safaris, and many agents will visit popular destinations to provide the best advice.
Like journalists, travel writers are natural storytellers documenting their own journeys. They travel to unique or remote locations to share hidden gems and create inspiring itineraries for magazines, newspapers, and online travel websites.
Whether you’re interested in remote work or corporate jobs, here are a few tips to make your resume stand out from the crowd.
Rather than searching for specific job titles, research the companies that frequently advertise jobs that involve business travel and match your skill set. Then optimize your search using the keywords like “flexible,” “work from anywhere,” “travel required,” and “freelance.”
If there’s a particular industry you’re interested in, sign up for networking events. Attending a marketing or tech conference in person will give you a feel for what the job would be like, and you’ll also make vital new contacts that will put you a step ahead of the competition. Use social networks like LinkedIn to stay connected and share your goals. If your network doesn’t know you’re interested in a career where you travel, they can’t reach out to you with that perfect opportunity.
Not all candidates love to travel, so make the right first impression. Highlight travel experiences in your cover letter and resume, focusing on overseas jobs and remote work. If you haven’t had the opportunity to undertake any business travel yet, highlight challenges outside of the office.
Travel lovers have more opportunities than ever in today’s interconnected world. You’ll find jobs and careers that allow you to travel across different industries, from retail to event planning to pharmaceutical sales.
Of course, along with the perks of business travel comes the need to stay on top of expenses, bookings, and itineraries, which makes a good corporate travel management system essential. With a unified platform like Booking.com for Business, you can manage all the details in one place, leaving you free to enjoy all those new experiences.
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