It started with
a plane ticket
Type 2 Travel exists for many different reasons, but here’s the biggest one:
the world is wide open, and the people you’d most want to see it with are either busy, tied down, or just not ready. So the trip never happens.
We’re here to change that.
But like most business ideas, this one has a bigger story…
the back story
Let's rewind a bit and get real about how all of this started.
Nearly a decade ago, I walked into a courtroom and ended my marriage. The TL;DR of that story is that I'd spent the better part of the previous ten years in a relationship that had slowly eroded my sense of self.
So when that chapter ended, I did what any newly divorced woman in her late 30s would do:
I panicked about what came next.
I questioned every decision I made.
And then, I bought a plane ticket.
A few of them, actually.
I impulse bought a ticket to Australia one evening in late 2019 because nobody wanted to travel with me — or maybe they did, but my friends were all juggling relationships and kids and mortgages and couldn't fathom putting everything down for ten days to head out on an adventure with their newly single friend.
Australia was everything I hoped it would be. And I did the whole thing alone — booked it alone, navigated it alone, stood in front of things I'd only ever seen as screensavers, alone. I'm still proud of that trip.
It also taught me something I wasn't expecting:
I don't love solo travel.
I flew home with two souvenirs:
proof that I could see the world alone, and the certainty that I didn't want to.
The Australia trip led me to other places that had my curiosity.
Colombia. Mexico City. Turkey…
Those trips taught me that every time you successfully navigate a confusing metro system in a foreign language or make a friend in a new-to-you city, you remember who you are and who you're becoming.
That realization hit hard. Hard enough that by the end of 2021, I traded my safe, well-worn 14-year career in higher education for entrepreneurship — something I knew nothing about. I had so little experience, in fact, that I named the company Laura Ericson Group Trips simply because I couldn't come up with anything better, and picking a name was keeping me stuck.
It wasn't a brand strategy — it was a placeholder so I could get started.
And I had absolutely no clue what it was about to become…
Somewhere between a mud bath in Cartagena and a cave hotel in Cappadocia, I stopped being "Laura, recently divorced" and started telling stories about the quinceañera I crashed in Bogotá.
(A much better conversation starter, for sure.)
I launched this company because I wanted to create the trips I couldn't find.
Because back then, "group travel" meant cramped buses of people heading to tourist traps and following a guide with a microphone and a flag or listening to them talk for hours while we burned in the hot sun.
Yeah, no. Hard pass.
I wanted off the beaten path. Places where we'd be welcomed to somebody's table, not photographing it from across the street. Local guides who start the week as strangers and end it as friends. Small groups that bond by day two — usually over too much wine and an urgent bathroom stop on the side of the road.
Five years later...
400+ travelers.
10+ countries.
2 marriages.
A few "I'm done settling" divorces.
A growing collection of travel tattoos.
A bathroom-emergency tally we refuse to disclose.
And our travelers only tell half the story.
The guides, the drivers, the families who wave us into their homes — every trip creates jobs and keeps money in the neighborhoods we visit.
We've put our time and our dollars behind people doing work that matters: things like supporting acid-attack survivors rebuilding their lives in India, fighting period poverty in Kenya, funding dance costumes for kids in Georgia, and spending one very good afternoon walking every stray dog at a Mexico City shelter.
Somewhere along the way, my own life changed too. I’d built a life I loved, and I slowly realized that travel was no longer my exit door.
It had become part of building and feeding my life, not finding a way out of one that wasn't working.
Meanwhile, the business had grown into something I couldn't have imagined five years ago — more trips, more travelers, more countries than one woman could reasonably hold. I was damn proud of it, but I was also running on fumes.
So I finally said the truth out loud: I didn't work this hard to build a life I love just to wave at it from an airport. I want to travel and have a home.
Which meant the company I'd built for a woman on the run no longer fit the woman I'd become.
So I gave it a new name…
Type 2 Travel
named for something called Type 2 fun:
the kind that's hard, weird, or deeply "WTF?" while it's happening, but hands you the stories you'll tell for decades.
Type 2 moments
Celebrating Holi in India and still having pink hair two months later
Getting demolished by mosquitoes during rainy season in Brazil's Pantanal
Getting mugged by a monkey in Morocco
Breaking down on the side of the road during a flash flood in Maasai Mara
Watching my friend shit her pants at O'Hare before we even made it to the gate
The truth is, I never wanted this business to be about me.
So after five years, I finally made a change I'm proud of and also a little terrified of:
I’ve stepped back from being on every single departure. There's a team now — trip leaders I trust with the thing I love the most. People who embody the Type 2 ethos because they've lived those moments right alongside me.
If I'm being honest, that's the most "Type 2" thing I've ever done:
I finally let go of the handlebars, and let it become what it was always supposed to be.
Because this business was never built to just be about me.
It was about you, the places you go, and the stories that happen when a flash flood hits the Sahara Desert, your truck gets stuck in the mud, and seven women roll up their sleeves, line up against the bumper, and push that thing out themselves while the men stand by and watch.
(Yes, there's photographic evidence. We are extremely proud.)
Those are the stories you're going to tell five months, five years, and five decades after the trip.
-Laura
Founder, Type 2 Travel
