After founding three travel startups, it’s probably pretty obvious that I love to travel. I get a lot of energy from experiencing new places. The brain releases endorphins when it’s in a new environment — seeing new things, hearing new sounds, smelling new foods. These endorphins have a powerful effect on my happiness and creativity.
Growing up in a small city in Virginia, I didn’t travel much. In fact, I didn’t catch the travel bug until I was 22. But once I did, I quickly became obsessed with visiting new places, plotting all the trips I’d taken on a map, and researching all the future ones I wanted to take.
When I was ready to start a business, I looked for 1) big markets, 2) a business that didn’t require a lot of capital and 3) areas that combined my passions and abilities. The travel industry was a natural fit — it’s the largest category of e-commerce, I could start a web business for less than $100k, and it combined my passion for travel and my background in the web. (Note: while I was an English major, I am pretty tech-minded and taught myself what I needed to write all the front-end code for my first company, TravelPost. Necessity is the mother of invention.) The irony was that in my first two travel businesses, I actually didn’t get to travel all that much. It was all about building a product, honing SEO, and doing sales via the phone — so while I was helping other people get out there and experience the world, I was usually at my desk, which felt confining and limiting.
With my next business, I resolved to travel more often — and starting HotelTonight made it much easier to do so, even when I didn’t have a ton of time to get away or to plan. One of the reasons I wanted to build HT was because the idea of being more spontaneous, and encouraging that spontaneity in others, was really attractive to me (whether that’s booking the hotel for your business trip once you land or deciding at the last minute to go away for the weekend). Part of the rush of travel is all the new things you experience, and spontaneously deciding where you’re going to stay doubles down on that rush. So I made travel (often spontaneous, sometimes planned) a priority in this job and in my life.
I have a personal goal to visit two new countries and five new places (a city, a national park, etc.) every year. It’s fun to check things off and daydream about where to go next. I’m really inspired by being around the HT team — someone’s always off on an amazing adventure (Patagonia, Iceland and Mexico City are all high on my list after hearing the team talk them up). In fact, because I believe that travel is so important in stoking creativity and boosting happiness, HotelTonight has an unlimited vacation policy and we give the team hotel credits several times a year. These credits expire at the end of every quarter to encourage people to really use them — to frequently go to new places and experience new things and to come back excited and refreshed (I’ll write more on this in a future post).I also love showing my sons the importance of travel — that people live differently in different parts of the world, and that endorphin release you get from seeing something totally beyond your everyday world. I hope to instill in them a passion for travel while they’re still young.
The magic number for me is a trip about every 6-8 weeks, whether that’s a business trip, a family beach vacation, or a spontaneous getaway with my wife. When I travel too frequently, it can be hard on my family and the HT team, but any less and I start getting antsy. It was important for me to find a balance, so that travel is something I look forward to and get energy from, rather than something that adds stress or is just another thing on my to-do list. I’d challenge you to make travel a priority, and find what works for you — what leaves you energized and inspired and ready to crush goals when you get back.
KINGSMITH.
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