As De Vore traveled the globe, social media was widening its reach and high-speed trains and planes were making travel more accessible. She found herself both in the trenches and in the vanguard of the new travel industry. She also met people who were shaping the emerging travel-related fields, including travel bloggers, writers and influencers, technology users and creators, and digital nomads, among others. She also tracked travel-industry organizations representing different niches that she had first learned about in class.

Even though she was in the middle of it all, she was not finding a career path that spoke to her. “I was searching for, but not finding, a position that aligned with what I wanted to do with my knowledge and experience in travel,” she said. “So, as I was approaching my 30th birthday, I remember sitting in a hostel in Bilbao, Spain, with my little laptop computer. I started googling ‘How to start an online business,’ and ‘What are online travel jobs?’ I was absorbing as much information as possible and trying to come up with different ideas. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. That is when I came across the emerging coaching industry—business coaches, life coaches, health coaches. Something clicked inside of me, and I said, ‘I want to be a travel coach.’ I didn’t know what that meant, but my mission became figuring out what that looked like for myself.”

Because she had met so many people on her travels who were quitting the 9-to-5 to see the world, she became interested in understanding why companies were not valuing travel for their employees. “It became like a tag line. You saw it everywhere online, ‘Quit the corporate job to travel.’ ‘Quit the 9-to 5 to travel.’”

She spent the next year researching corporate-wellness vacation policies, the mind-body benefits of travel, corporate burnout, business-travel burnout. She found a lot of evidence on the benefits of travel—mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. She wondered why businesses were not using that information to benefit their employees—both those who were on the road for work and those who worked in one place. So, in 2018, De Vore founded the WTTM Consulting Group, which stands for Wellness, Travel, Tech & Marketing Consulting.

When De Vore started posting online about her travel coaching business, other travelers reached out to her asking, “What’s a travel coach? How do you become one? Where can I learn about it?” Something clicked inside of her again, and she decided to start the Travel Coach Network in early 2019, which now is a global platform. She serves as its founder and CEO. Its tagline is “Building the world’s largest database of Certified Travel Coaches who reshape personalized travel experiences.” 

According to the Travel Coach Network website, a travel coach “aims to guide, educate, and inspire travelers to make informed decisions, overcome obstacles, and create memorable journeys.” It describes travel coaching as a comprehensive approach that helps travelers achieve their travel goals, which leads to a more satisfying and fulfilling journey and to maximizing their overall travel experience. The site further describes travel coaching as the emotional, spiritual, mental, and intellectual well-being and transformative needs that drive the desire to travel in the first place.

The Travel Coach Network is the first and only International Coach Federation-accredited program that trains, educates, and certifies travel coaches through their Travel Coach Certification Program.