EPISODE #887
Vanessa McGovern
Transforming Travel :
Empowering Women Leaders, Partners and Travelers
887 Vanessa McGovern: Transforming Travel
From Authentic Experiences to Cultural Connections, Why Travel is Healing
Often, the most successful businesses prosper simply because they dare to be contrarian, zig when others zag, spot opportunities others miss, and get too rigidly attached to any specific desired outcome or “how” something has to be done. It’s all about getting into the right mindset of resilience, adaptability and abundance.
Today we show how one such contrarian company defied gravity during the pandemic. Gifted Travel Network (GTN) grew during Covid without ever laying anyone off, teed up 400% year-on-year growth post-pandemic.
Vanessa McGovern is one of GTN’s three female co-founders and also its Chief Sales and Marketing Officer. Vanessa is a visionary, and she credits her success both to an adaptable mindset but also one of abundance and a culture of helping others, especially women, get ahead, whether team members, vendors or partners.
Vanessa is passionate about travel and the healing power of authentic experiences and meaningful cultural connections, and she’s always sharing her inspirations as a speaker and thought leader, including on LinkedIn where you can catch her ‘My Life, Leadership, and Love of Travel‘ in weekly LinkedIn newsletter.
🔑Key Takeaways🔑
🚀✨ Travel as Empowerment: How travel unites and heals people, and why Gifted Travel specifically focuses on empowering its partner businesses with resources, education and opportunity across its growing network.
🌱🤝 Mindset for Success: Why an “everybody wins” abundance mindset is the secret of entrepreneurial success, along with resilience, adaptability and optimism.
🌸👩🔬 Women Supporting Women: How Gifted Travel creates supportive environments for women team members, business partners and travelers alike, including amenities for female travelers in hotel rooms and a company culture that supports working parents.
🚀✨ Dare to be Contrarian: Why the best entrepreneurs ‘zig while others zag’, and how Gifted Travel defied the challenges of COVID-19, supporting their whole team and 200 independent contractors during lockdown and achieving 400% year-over-year growth post-COVID by continually supporting and training their travel advisors.
🔥🛠️ Tech in Travel: How AI is changing the travel industry, and how agencies and travel businesses can increase efficiency while maintaining the essential human touch in travel planning for unique luxury experiences.
🌎✨ The Magic of Cultural Storytelling: In our fast-paced disconnected world, travel brings families together and creates moments of connection. Vanessa shares how a trip to Spain was transformed by visiting with a woman whose grandfather saved 5,000 Hungarian Jews during World War II.
More about Vanessa McGovern at www.giftedtravelnetwork.com
Download Podopolo to create and share clips of your favorite moments of this episode across social media, and join the conversation with Vanessa and me in the Wings episode comments section on Podopolo and invite your friends.
More about Vanessa at Gifted Travel Network
Vanessa McGovern is co-founder and Chief Sales and Marketing Officer of Gifted Travel Network, a fast-growing luxury travel business that empowers small travel vendors, supports independent advisors, and curates authentic and memorable travel experiences. An award-winning industry educator and a sought-after speaker, Vanessa innovated a unique approach to empowering other travel entrepreneurs and uniquely grew her travel business during the Covid lockdown, supporting some 200 independent contractors along the way.
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