Which Jobs Allow You To Travel For Work The Most?

The obvious: flight attendants

Becoming a mega famous international Movie Star.

Lots of travel involved in that profession.

There are very few people who globetrot for work - you need to be a very senior level. You can't just a get a job traveling all over the world, unless you're a flight attendant. Even then, long haul flights are competitive and it will take some time before you can get international flights.

Most people who fly a lot fly domestic. I flew over 100,000 miles the past year and spent 200 hours in the air.

It. is. not. fun. Business travel isn't like vacation travel. Sounds like he wants to magically see the world. Business travel doesn't work like that. You rarely see much outside of hotel, office and restaurants.

Consultants.

Also, becoming a wealthy famous internationally known socialite is another option. Lots of jet setting there too.

Look at Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.

Becoming a Rock Star is another option. They get to Jetset too.

Auditors

They could also become a federal politican. They travel internationally quite a bit as well. Look at the Clintons and the Obamas. Lots of travel all the time.

Celebrities travel internationally all the time too.

“Sales”

Self help gurus travel internationally too. Lots of speaking engagements, and lots of huge paydays as well.

I understand cat burglars travel a lot as well

There are very few consultants who travel the world. Most consulting companies have offices in each country and use their own.

Same with auditors and accounting firms.

Travel to exotic lands, meet interesting people, and kill them.

Academic.

A hitman.

Merchant marine, military, cruise ship employees

R15 is right. More specifically, become an internationally renowned scientist in a major field, especially biomedical science. There are lots of international meetings to attend. You'll often travel free or at a reduced rate because you'll be an invited speaker. There is also the annual national meeting of the main society in your specialty. These are usually held in leading tourist and convention destinations because, if you've chosen your research field wisely, there will be thousands of attendees. And there will be smaller conferences in your highly specialized corner of research. These are often held at very nice resorts.

If you are a big deal in Big Science or Big Medicine, you can travel almost constantly. Of course, you have to be really, really smart and willing to work 23 hours a day in your 20s, 30s and 40s and also be lucky.

Most of these jobs require years of experience. He might as well become good at any job that pays well, and take lots of vacation. I knew someone who would take long breaks between jobs, and travel during those breaks. He’d just work enough to afford to travel again.

Read what R3 wrote. Everyone I know who travels for work hates it. When I've had to travel for work I never had time to visit - just work, eat and sleep. If you're lucky, your company might let you tag on a few days of vacation to your trip but that is rare.

Cruise ship employee- cruise staff, entertainer, gift shop, hair stylist, croupier, wine steward, slot machine mechanic, etc. Some experience/talent/education needed but not a college degree. A big company will move you around to different ships, different routes. Some of these positions are not direct hires by the cruise line but by franchises (can't think of the correct word) who "own" the shops and supply the staff. Generous time off in port.

Teaching ESL, need certificate at least.

Govt employee working at US military bases around the world. Teaching and other jobs, posted online.

All the people doing some kind of software development on their laptop who telecommute and live anywhere there is broadband.

My father traveled a lot domestically. He was a quality control engineer for aerospace industry. Back then, a lot of the parts were sub contracted out to smaller companies all over the US.

He hated it.

This:

Perfect jobs for cumdumps, try the tops of cities around the world..

A travel vlogger.

I know travel nurses who do it to experience different areas before settling down. I’ve worked with travel RNs who did assignments in Hawaii and the UK. You get paid housing and on off days you go around exploring nearby cities.

Internal auditor for a large multinational group. I did that for 2 years in my late 20’s. It’s glamorous at first. You jet about the world in business class. You stay in 5 star hotels. You discover far away countries and cities. You save a lot of money since it’s all on paid expenses. The novelty wears off after a while though. You realise you can’t have a social life at home because your friends stopped inviting you to parties as you’re always away. You always eat restaurant food which becomes boring after a while. It’s difficult to keep a normal gym routine. Etc. I’d say it’s fine when you’re young, but unbearable when you’re older.

Thot or whore. Some sort of major-domo for Mid East billionaire prince or a billionaire in a kleptocracy such as Russia. Those two groups are nomads - constantly traveling.

Travel agents I know seem to travel a lot. Low pay, usually a job of Fraus who just want an excuse to travel but still it is one way to see the world.

OP....

Event planning

Experiential Marketing

Field Marketing (like for retail / restaurant chains)

Crew for touring (concerts, theatre etc.) -- lighting, sound, production etc.

Congessman/Former Congressman

Many tech jobs will allow you to be a "digital nomad" and do your job from wherever you are in the world.

r32 I'd edit that "some" tech jobs allow you to travel anywhere. My husband is an at-home tech employee, and needs a T1 for the Virtual VPN; regular DSL will not suffice. His company does not permit employees to do their work outside of the US (even from Canada).

I former college roommate works as an ESL instructor at a university overseas. He gets 4 months of vacation and travels extensively, but lives/works in some rougher areas (Saudi, Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan).

Male prostitute for Republican or Evangelical Christian gatherings.

News reporter

a Fuller Brush man

OP, lots of company's use and want sales people that travel for international sales. But, as others pointed out, he will tire of it very quickly.

Have him check out the r/digitalnomad sub on Reddit - I'm not entirely sure what they are all doing, but maybe he will find some ideas there.

High level athletes, dancers, or other performers get to travel quite a bit.

Hit the gym and become a highly paid escort.

Datalounge Foreign Bureau Chief

Traveling nurse. So many opportunities; resorts, hospitals, spas, cruises. corporations. It used to be you only needed an RN which is 2 years but now I think you need to get your BA.

Work for the Red Cross. They will send you all over the world, from one horrible disaster to another.

In a year, you'll be PTSD'd out of your mind. But you will have traveled.

Travel writer

If he's creative and wants to travel for traveling he should try becoming a YouTube Star. He could get some HD camera equipment and film himself visiting wherever he goes. He will have to edit his videos for maximum appeal but it could be a way to support himself as he travels.

Some people get confused and think they want a job. What they really want is to experience the world. There has been no better time to broadcast your own travel show. Only a few decades ago this type of job was inconceivable.

You should ask him if he really wants a "job" traveling because as others have pointed out, being at an airport, on planes as a way of getting from point A to point B, with an inflexibly rigid schedule is not as fun as vacation traveling. Being a 21st century digital nomad sounds 1000% better, though Bohemian.

Or teach English somewhere.

As a university administrator I flew (mostly domestic but 2-3 overseas trips a year x 30 years or so) 100,000 miles a year or more.

My Dad told me I'd hate it and he was right. He did a lot of travel during his working life and told me he'd rather sleep on the sofa in the den at home than in a suite at the St. Regis in NYC.

OP - it sounds like your nephew is a naive 18 year old. You don't choose a vocation based on the potential for travel.

Besides the fact that he needs to understand what work travel is like. I traveled to one major US city 13 times in the past year - I went out downtown once. There's nothing more frustrating than to be in many cities and never see anything. That's more common than not.

And, as mentioned above, it is not fun eating all of your meals out. Restaurant meal calorie totals are much much more than you would eat at home. You will gain weight unless you are extremely strict with your diet.

Plus the time differences can wreak havoc on your body.

I agree with R3 I traveled for work and hated it, all I had time spent in the office, hotel and restaurant. There were plenty of things to se in the places I was sent to but had no time for it.

Another issue with being a FF depends on the work you do. I was basically a sales support engineer for a while, so the job also included rewriting proposals and entertaining clients at night, so no free time. Even when I wasn't with sales, I still found myself entertaining.

R48 - nothing worse than being dog-tired from a flight, working all day, then have to go to a client dinner and drinks that night.

I was usually the client being entertained and I hated it. The free dinner isn't worth it. Plus, the restaurants are always more expensive places that take a long time to get through service. I fucking hate steakhouses - I don't eat a lot of meat, but you really don't have much of a choice. And the bill is ridiculous.

100% - CONSULTING. The very premise of the job is being on-site at clients in different cities for weeks at a time. It is a naive idea as I can guarantee he will very quickly grow to dislike it. But I wow I don’t discourage. I was the same at 22. After 20+ years, you realIze it prevents you from having a life.

And God forbid you have kids - you will never see them. I am amazed at the middle age mothers with whom I work - they see their kids from 9PM Friday to maybe Sunday night. Kids are totally raised by cheap labor nannies. It’s the same for men - but generally I find men enjoy NOT being home and dealing with kids/family.

But I will admit until my late 30s, I didn’t mind. As a single gay man who grew up poor and isolated, I got to see the country (most consulting ends up being domestic in US) and lived what I felt at the time was a glamorous life. There is also the “Up in the Air” psychology of using work to avoid deep personal relationships and obligations. Also, it paid pretty well - and you can generally find a lot of job opportunities after doing consulting if you choose to settle down.

Sales. Corporate trainer.

I was a corporate trainer for 5 years and loved the amount of travel (domestic) it involved, but that was back in my 30's and it was a lot of fun. I got to travel with a training team, and for the most part we all got along. We were away from home for a month-6 weeks at a time which gave us the opportunity to explore the cities in which we were.

We all had the option to go home 1 weekend of the trip (paid for by the company) or we could fly someone in and the company would cover the fare up to $400 (try doing that nowadays). I loved it, but don't think I could do it again. After 5 years I was ready to call it quits.

I did a bit more traveling a few years later (this involved international travel) but not on such a hectic schedule. That was nice as it broke up the monotony of the daily grind. Overall, I think if you can land a job with travel at a young age...GO FOR IT! Best way to see the country/world is on someone else's dime!

R50 - OP talked about international travel. You can on occasion get overseas jobs with consulting, but not often.

I worked in consulting for 8 years. I can't believe you lasted as long as you did.

Each year doing work travel is like 3 years off of your life. It's exhausting and then you don't want to go anywhere for vacation. Plus, watch your personal life go down the tubes.

What I hated is that we had to get a 6AM flight Monday morning - with the consulting team. So at 430AM you had to meet your boss and coworkers - who I generally disliked as it was a cut throat environment where people were ambitious, greedy and aggressive. After a 2-5 hour flight, you landed and went to the client where you then worked all day. Then everyone had to go to go to dinner together. Work all week 8-7 followed by dinner. Get flight home on Friday - which with delays ended up getting you home at about 9-10PM. Sleep as much as possible for 36 hours - and do it again.

If I didn’t have social anxiety and enjoyed being with people, the job would have been much easier. I could push myself to work hard and learn to live without sleep. But the anxiety of dealing with people who weren’t friends or nice or interesting people from 430AM Monday to 9PM Friday is what really burnt me out. By 45, I was on anti anxiety meds Xanax and Ambien and binge drinking on Friday and Saturday nights. I was absolutely miserable. Now I’m poor and live on a very limited income, but I’m happier than I’ve ever been.

R53 - I assume you were the consultant in the previous post. Yep - that's the life - and it really isn't much of a life.

On top of all that, the problem with consulting is that you constantly have to prove yourself to new clients. There really isn't a possibility to create a good reputation and then clients are always suspicious of you and that you may tattle on them or make them lose their jobs.

I would get into severe depression bouts when I was in consulting. And the travel and meals wrecked my waistline.

“Client relations” at some big corporation, like a financial company. Part of the job is traveling to the client and taking him out to a ball game or concert. A friend just did 5 years as a relationship manager in Australia, in a company apartment with a view of the Oprah house. Just beautiful. He’s back in Boston, now. It paid really well, too.

I had a friend who was a nurse and did 6 months in Saudi Arabia. He saved a lot of money as he was paid well and there was nothing to spend it on. I think that might be fun for a limited time. Though, I’d be afraid I’d be enslaved by some mean shrew wed to a wealthy Prince.

Did anyone say “International Spy”, yet? This thread is hilarious, by the way.

I was so excited when I finally got to travel for work. Now I travel and hate it.

I had one job where they expected travelers to fly one way on their own time, like a Sunday, unpaid. The return trip was on company time. I refused to do that.

Sometimes a company will let you keep the Frequent Flyer. Ike’s you earn, so your vacation flights may mostly be, essentially, free.

Get a job as a pilot. They travel fairly often and on the company's dime. They also get private seating.

I usually describe the burn out with the phrase "You can only eat so many steaks".

[quote] As a university administrator I flew (mostly domestic but 2-3 overseas trips a year x 30 years or so) 100,000 miles a year or more.

Why would a university administrator need to fly anywhere?

Super Model!

FBI agent. It’s a good job. You get to travel around and shit. Better places than this anyway.

I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had a job where I could have a designated weekday to fly, check in to the hotel and have a good nights sleep before working the following day. Then have a day to fly home. But in reality, it’s fly early AM, work, fly home late night.

I used to travel domestically in healthcare recruitment attending trade shows (around 100 nights/year in hotels). Days were spent standing in a 10x10 booth (generally 8:30a - 4:30p) then back to the hotel for several hours of email follow-ups and calls. After smiling and talking to hundreds of people all day I would just want to head to bed as soon as I can. Rinse and repeat the next day.

It was generally the same convention cities year after year. I'd be in Anaheim, Orlando, Atlanta, and Chicago several times a year, or stuck at a Gaylord miles away from anywhere I'd want to be. Trust me, New Orleans can be a blast, but not in August.

Agree with R13. I’ve travelled all over the world on biz. I’m a CEO so I usually travel first class or biz class and stay in beautiful hotels. Doesn’t matter. It ain’t fun. It’s lonely and depressing most of the time, and very hard to resist the urge to battle the loneliness with booze.

I stick to a routine when I travel, which helps. Also, even if I’m wiped out, I make an effort to take at least one tour of something interesting in the area. Otherwise, I’m just going from hotel to hotel in city after city.

That said, it was a lot more fun when I was younger. Suggest he looks into pharma sales. Lots of travel and good pay.

Management Consultant working for one of the bigger firms like McKinsey, Bain, or BCG, not one of the Big 4 (PwC, DTT, EY, or KPMG).

Certain specialties in investment banking (or merchant banking).

International law or maritime law.

International aid, foreign service, other NGOs.

Journalist. IG blogger.

Does he have good credit and high credit limits on whatever card(s) he currently has? I work in tech and have had to travel quite a bit, footing the costs up front on my own personal cards then having to wait for accounting to reimburse me afterwards. Things like attending marketing conferences, or training events, would cost $1,500-$2,000 just to get in, and that doesn't even take into consideration having to pay for your airfare, rides, dining, and hotel rooms up front.

International college admissions for an American college/university. I know a young woman who did this; it was a relatively easy job for her to get. She primarily traveled to Africa and Asia, and occasionally to Europe. Although she loved the glamour of it, the physical stress and exhaustion caught up with her after 3 or 4 years, and she decided to switch into a job (still at the university level) that would allow her to stay put and enjoy a better quality of life.

As others on this thread (R3, R46) have already said, business travel is brutal. My friend would often have 4 hours to sleep in her hotel before moving on to the next country or work event. She very rarely got to see the sights. Sure, there was the occasional 3-day weekend free in Thailand, or jaunt to see the pyramids, but she could have done those things, and probably done them better, with the vacation time that a domestic university job would have provided.

[quote] It ain’t fun. It’s lonely and depressing most of the time, and very hard to resist the urge to battle the loneliness with booze.

I thought you were go to say you battled it with local whores. Would've been more interesting.

All that travel and lodging costs a lot. The employer balances the books squarely on the back of the person doing the traveling. It is a grind.

You end up not being paid for a lot of your time: waking up early, coming home late, driving to the airport, time spent on the airplane, checking into hotel, etc. Unless you have a union contract or some other kind of contract that specifically states you are being paid for all that time, you end up with a lot of unpaid-for time.

Take some nice books on Buddhism with Zen books because you will need them in the Airports of Hell.

R72 is right. Your normal 40-50 hour work week becomes around 70+. And the battle with the food and the booze is real.

I'm on the West Coast and in order to attend Monday morning meetings on the East Coast, I had to leave around noon on Sunday. Then the 9am meetings on Monday would be 6am my time. Hard to be fresh and chipper.

Then there would inevitably be drinks or dinner Monday night, so a 12 hour day minimum.

I would be expected to be available for meetings through most of the day Thursday, so 6pm Thursday flight would get me home (with a connection) close to 11pm. And then I had to be back at work 8am on Friday.

The only upside that has changed travel the past few years is wi-fi available in airports (or through a Mi-Fi, mobile wi-fi) and wi-fi on airplanes (although it is the shittiest wi-fi you've ever experienced). It makes work on the go a lot easier.

Oh, and if you live in California, there aren't that many weather delays - that's always a plus.

I have a friend who globetrots for his work. (He works in tourism). It is exhausting and airport sandwiches are more common than 5 star meals.

[quote]stuck at a Gaylord

I've stuck it in a gaylord, and you won't hear me complaining.

Whore!

Traveling for work will suck the life out of you. All those time Zone changes!

Consulting But like a lot of things, it’s not what it used to be. When i was in my 20s, i flew all over the world, with consulting engagements in south africa, europe, the middle east, and all over asia. I loved it. I also worked for a European company for a time, which is another path. Like others, now I’m happy to stay home in New York with the occasional overseas trip

Is this some quest to have the best Instagram posts among his peer group?

Traveling is so January 2020.

I traveled for work in Canada and parts of the midwest the worst times was when travel connections were disrupted due to mechanical problems with the plane or weather. I had a nightmare experience trying to get back to NYC. The plane was overbooked and had mechanical problems it was a compounded by a huge storm over the east coast shutting down the airports. I was stuck in the Chicago airport with hundreds of others begging for seats on the few airlines that were still able to fly into the NYC area.

R63 makes a good point.

It seams like most employers don't allow for "travel days" any more. You are expected to leave home in early AM and be ready to produce as soon as you get out of the airport.

And depending on assignment, catch a flight that night home.