Go Big. Go Bold. Go Alaska.

I recently attended my very first Adventure Travel Trade Associations World Summit in Alaska where global partners in adventure tourism gathered to discuss the latest and greatest trends in Adventure travel. The president of the organization asked attendees to write about the impact that the Summit had on us so I did and after having written it, I figured it'd be a great blog post. So here you go, here are my insights from 9 days in Alaska with ATTA ( Adventure Travel Trade Association and the Juneau and Haines tourism board.)

Where do I even begin to describe the impact that attending my very first ATTA World Summit has had on me? Let me start my ramblings by saying . . .

This was my very first Summit although I’ve been a member of ATTA for about 2 years now. I saw that the Summit was being held in Alaska and that they were accepting applications to be hosted so I jumped on it because 1. I’ve never been to Alaska, 2. I have never considered myself a real fan of cold weather destinations and wanted to challenge myself to try something different like I often preach to my clients to do ( step out of their comfort zone) and 3., I was really wanting to connect with more global partners who could could help me become the best experiential/ transformational travel agency I dream of being.

From the moment I met all of the members of my PSA in Juneau, I knew we’d become one fantastic group of traveling friends. Two were travel writers and the other two were twin brothers, one of which owned a tour operation in Morocco and then there was me, a travel agent. Together, our traveling experiences were mind blowing;  There were tales of solo stays in haunted Irish castles, extreme sickness in Morocco, rappelling down Nicaragua’s steepest cliff to treks across Peru. Together, we had a lot of travel experience and a lot of great stories to share. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I felt a bit insecure in the fact that I was “only” a travel agent and not a travel writer or tour operator but within this group of people, all titles were thrown out the window and we just became explorers together.

I was blown away by my time in Southeast Alaska. I felt like I was a world away from anything I’d ever known and I didn’t even have to use my passport to get here. That’s where a-ha moment #1 kicked in. I often promote travel outside of our country thinking that our culture isn’t as rich as other countries cultures and that people will feel so much “more” being in a foreign land. I was looking outside to find the richness, the culture, the dramatic landscapes when all along it has really been in  my own back yard ~ so why don’t I promote it and sell it! Go America! There’s a lot that can be taken from that last awakening  in terms of self growth and self awareness. We can look outside of ourselves for happiness, fulfillment etc but really all along, it all lies within the borders of our bodies and minds. A-ha moment!

As a social worker turned travel ambassador ( agent), I really focus on the power of travel to improve our lives, of pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zones in order to see just what we are made of because it is then that we see the growth. That being said, I realized that if I am going to preach these words, I need to live by them. I have a terrible fear of heights. I’m terrified of helicopter rides because in my  mind’s eye, I see them crashing. I hate walking on ice, although I’m from Minnesota, and I really dislike the cold. So, what’d I decide to do? Take a helicopter ride to the ice fields. I stepped into that helicopter with my traveling tribe, one of who was more terrified of the experience than I was, and put my adventurer pants on. I decided that I would put the trust and faith into the pilot's hands and know that if anything did go wrong and we crashed into a fiery heap of helicopter scraps atop of a glacier that I was living my life out loud and without fear and that’s just what I did. I found  myself consoling my traveling partner and telling her we’d be just fine. I rubbed her back to soothe her worries and gave her a hug and up we went. My heart raced, I thought the worst for a second and then I let that thought go and put myself back in the moment that I was living and NOT the moment I was fearing and I felt alive. The fear dissipated, the wonderment began as did the feeling of knowing that I can do just about anything I set my mind to. What’s the take away on this? When we acknowledge fear and doubt within ourselves but still allow ourselves to go just a little bit further than we would normally go, we grow. We not only grow, we burst into our wings and a new version of us emerges. I know this because it happened to me in Alaska.

Onto the marketplace and connecting with global partners. . .

I’m a kid in a candy store when it comes to meeting new tour operators and learning about what they do and what kind of crazy cool adventure they offer to travelers. I become entranced in learning about all the beautiful landscapes and interesting cultures of the destination that my eyes light up and I find myself in that state of “flow” where time stands still and everything is perfect. This happened again for me in the Summit marketplace. But this time, as I connected with the destinations and business owners, and they asked what I’m all about instead of me drilling them with questions, I began to really realize what the core of Viva la Vida Travel is. It’s about growing, exploring, becoming one with a destination and it’s people and in turn, becoming one with oneself. It’s about incredible and thoughtful customer service. It’s about personalized service. It’s about transformational travel.

The more I continued to share with people what I am all about, the more they shook their heads in agreement. The more they pulled out fantastic opportunities geared towards helping me fulfill the mission for Viva la Vida Travel and ultimately for myself; I was being given opportunities to help enhance and improve people’s lives through travel and help them continue to  emerge from the cocoon that they have been living in and I had some pretty amazing and very devoted partners to help me do it.

The classes offered on Transformational Travel and how to work with Travel agents were perfectly perfect for me. Those classes reinstated everything I knew to be true about travel and what made it even cooler for me was that I now knew a bunch more people who felt the same way. My transformation became clear to me, looking at how insignificant I felt as JUST a travel agent in the front end of my adventures in Alaska to the last day when I felt that I had finally found  my people who were going to be integral parts of my businesses success, my own personal success and last but not least, every one of my clients happiness . I no longer felt like a small player in the industry but quite the opposite, a true asset to the industry and that made all the difference in my life.

And so there it is. . . my very first Adventure Travel World Summit but definitely not my last.

Viva la Vida!