Get paid to travel!  Start making money while you work on your next travel experience.

If you love travel but you’re sick of spending months slogging it out in the office or behind a bar to save enough pennies for the next big trip, why not get a job that pays you to travel?!

Instead of staring at a computer screen for eleven months of the year, check out these awesome jobs to see how you can get paid to travel the world and have fun while doing it!

Air Hostess

Now this is truley one free ticket.  With air-travel becoming so affordable, there are more jobs than ever before popping up for Air Hostesses. If you can handle crazy hours and sometimes-angry customers, being an air hostess is for you!

After all, you could land anywhere with new cities to explore every day. The major bonus is most airlines offer free or discounted pleasure flights to staff. Cabin Crew Jobs and Flight Global have info on hostess jobs and training around the world.

Tour Guide

Tour guides can benefit from enjoying their job and meeting lots of great people along the way.  It can seem like an ongoing party with new people joining along the way!  Anyone who’s ever taken an organised tour knows what fun and mischief can occur; usually so much you’re glad to get home after and have a few weeks’ rest!

But, if you’re the girl who comes home from a tour and just wants to go out and do it all again, tour guiding could be for you! Tour guides can get to know all the local hot spots, important history and local language of the places they work. It's a great way to get to know a foreign place.

Make sure to aim for work at a company who cater for your kind of clientele or participate in activities you love, also be prepared for on call duties 24hours a day. You could find yourself guiding tours atop glaciers, the Great Barrier Reef or a foreign city. Check out our article on Nadége Alloati, a French tour guide, for the DL on how she got her start and how you can get yours, too!

Travel Writer

With all of todays' technology you can create a virtual office from anywhere.  All you need is a good laptop and a wireless internet connection. You can write while you travel or create your own office under a tree somewhere.  Travel writing seems like the ultimate dream job; seeing the world, writing about it and get ting paid! Why not give it a try!  Turn those lenghthy emails and steller blogs into articles.

There’s no denying it’s great fun. But the main problem is often breaking into the industry and convincing an editor you’re the best person to send on a three-week trip to Thailand to write about a new, state-of-the-art spa that’s just opened.

To start writing professionally you should work up a portfolio of pieces by contributing to local newspapers and magazines or internet sites.   Why not try writing for ExplorerGirls.com? We’re always on the look-out for talented women to tell everyone about their amazing adventures in the world!

Photographer

Photography is a great way to see the world.  If you are a skilled photographer or even just a budding lenswoman you can try contributing to all kinds of magazines or websites.  Microstock sites like, www.fotolia.com, www.istockphoto.com and www.dreamstime.com accept digital photography from non-professionals, to sell as stock, if the images are of good quality. 

You could make a few hundred dollars a month by contributing lots of photos.  That's enough to feed you while backpacking across Europe.

If you’re looking to shoot travel photography for major magazines or newspapers you should have a portfolio of your best 20-40 shots to present editors. You can ask to have your name put on their freelance list or propose a project you have in mind.

It’s all about building a portfolio and taking chances.  Once you get paid you can start building your credentials and move on to bigger and better jobs.

Yacht Crew

Does champagne and caviar on the open seas sound good to you? Cannes today, the Caribbean tomorrow?

If you can’t afford your own luxury yacht, try crewing for someone else’s! Duties range from cooking, mending sails and staffing the radio to unblocking the toilet. Having a good working knowledge of boats is essential, as well as a strong back-ground in your chosen field; catering, sailing or hosting to name a few.

Some yacht-crew workers start out on cruise ships, which can also be a great way to meet awesome new friends and travel the world. If you’re looking for work on a cruise ship or as yacht crew, check out Global Crew Network, Yachting Crews or Crew File for job vacancies. 

Teaching English

Travel the world using only your language skills to guide you! Native English speakers are in high demand all over the world to teach students ranging from children to adults.

You will need a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certificate. This can be obtained after participating in a short course located at one of the many institutions all over the world. Then, you are all set to go! All you have to do is choose a country.

Jobs range in areas where you can experiene the refined dignity of temples and gardens in Japan to the rough-and-ready desert colours and spicy foods of Mexico. Teaching English can take you all over the world.

So, what are you waiting for…you can start searching for your next career move, and get out of the office rut and into the open seas, the Japanese classrooms or high in the sky! You never know where your next job experience can take you. 

www.ExplorerGirls.com / Gemma Considine, Courtney Crow