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Angela’s Single & Childfree Network crew at sunset in the Sahara.
Here’s the scene: a rooftop in Marrakech in April 2026. A group of single and childfree women is passing around the wine, petting whichever cat wandered up the stairs, and waiting for their henna to dry. Rachel’s modeling the pink leather jacket she bought in Fes like it’s Paris Fashion Week.
Nobody is doing anything…and that’s kind of the whole point.
Over in the corner, Angela Gentile, the woman who brought every one of them here through her Single & Childfree Network, is quiet. Later, on her own podcast, she’ll describe that no-frills moment through tears as “summer camp sleepover belonging” and the first time in her life that she felt like she belonged somewhere.
Angela and I had connected the year before when I was a guest on her podcast (she’s since been on mine too), and she had told me of her dream to do this. She wanted to have the members of her online community not only connect in real life, but to go on an adventure together. We settled on Morocco, and she sold out the trip pretty quickly.
Here’s what Angela wasn’t doing on that rooftop: confirming tomorrow’s driver and schedule, chasing someone’s final payment, sorting out a very specific dietary request for dinner, or obsessively checking the weather in the Sahara because there was a chance that a sandstorm could change the group’s plans for ATVing in a few days.
That was our job. Hers was to just be there with—and for—her community.
Angela, front and center on ATV day in the Sahara. Somebody else worried about the weather.
That's hosting a trip with Type 2 Travel in a nutshell: you bring the people, we bring everything else.
If you run a community (an online group, a membership, an email list, a club, a podcast) and your people keep asking when you're all going on a trip or retreat together, hear me out.
And if you’re reading this, you’re probably not wanting to do a “typical trip.” No all-inclusive resorts or a guide with a flag and an annoying whistle or clap to get your group to pay attention. If you found your way here, you probably want a “Type 2 fun” kind of adventure: a little hard in the moment, and the best story you've got afterward.
Good news: you don’t need to start a travel company to pull that off. You need one that already exists. We've taken more than 450 travelers to 10 countries, and we design, plan, and run hosted trips so community leaders can bring their people and actually be with them. Here's how hosting a group trip works, what it takes, and how to tell if it's right for you.
The short version: To host a group trip for your community, partner with a tour operator who handles the planning, payments, and everything on the ground, so you can focus on your people. Reach out 12 to 18 months before you want to go, and plan to launch six to twelve months before departure. Your main job is selling the trip to your community. Ours is everything else.
First, what we are (and what we're not)
There are a lot of people running group trips and retreats right now (and good on them). But there's a big difference between hosting a trip and operating one.
Type 2 Travel is an outbound tour operator. We're not an influencer with a booking link trying to talk our followers into a week in Bali. We're the people behind the curtain: the contracts, the in-country partners, the insurance, the plan B for the plan B.
That's exactly why we're useful to someone who does have the following. Or the members. Or the listeners. You're the host. We're the operator. That's the partnership.
Why you don't want our job
From the outside, running group trips and retreats looks like getting paid to drink wine in Greece.
(We wish.)
From the inside, it looks like:
Signing contracts and wiring deposits to partners on the other side of the world
Paying for liability insurance that costs more than we'd like to say out loud
Vetting every guide, hotel, and driver
Tracking payment plans and chasing the stragglers (+ issuing refunds when things go sideways—an oddly expensive expense)
Playing roommate matchmaker + managing group dynamics
Rewriting the day on the fly when someone gets sick, or the weather has other plans, all on a calendar that runs more than a year out.
Which means my life runs more than a year out. Always. 🫠
Then there are minimums. You can't show up with four travelers when you told your partner in Colombia you'd bring ten. And when a trip doesn't run, it isn't just the travelers who lose out. It's the guides, the drivers, the riads and hotels, and every family those paychecks support.
Most people who want to travel with their community don’t want any of that stress (and if you do, I’m going to virtually put my hand to your forehead and ask if you’re okay). You want the trip. So if you’re dreaming of taking your people somewhere once or twice a year, let us save you a business license and some very expensive liability insurance. Might I suggest working with us?
The host gets the vibes. We get everything else.
Every hosted trip comes with two roles, and only one of them gets to truly enjoy the trip.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I’ve had a ton of fun on every trip I’ve operated. But the host’s job is the fun one. You get to be present, keep the conversation going, and make sure everyone’s having a good time. Consider yourself the Chief Vibes Officer.
And yes, the Chief Vibes Officer gets perks. Hosts can earn their own spot on the trip, and we tailor the rest to you on our first call.
Lunch at the desert camp. Peak Chief Vibes Officer energy.
The operator's job is to run the whole thing so smoothly that nobody notices there was a job. If we've done it right, you'll never hear about the fires we put out before breakfast. (There are always fires. There is always breakfast.)
That's how Angela got her rooftop, and it's what her travelers took home. Lisa, one of the women from Angela's Single and Child Free Network, was flipping through her photos of the Morocco trip with her dad. She said he brushed off the photos of the women she traveled with, and she quickly set him straight: “We could have been anywhere in the world… It was those women. That is what made this trip.”
Your community is the one thing we can't build for you. Everything else? That's where we shine best.
You don't need a million followers. You need 12 people who'd follow you to Morocco.
Let's clear this up: you do not need 100,000 Instagram followers to host a trip. Twelve people who know, like, and trust you will outsell a big, quiet audience all day long. Your follower count matters a lot less than your people.
Those people might be on your email list, in your paid membership, at your monthly meetup, in your Facebook group, or listening to your podcast on their commute. The format doesn’t matter. What matters is that you can reach them, they show up for you, and you’ve got a hunch they’d love to show up for each other, too.
That trust does a lot of the selling. Jamie booked Angela's Morocco trip because it landed on her 50th birthday, even though Morocco wasn't on her radar. "The decision was made," she said. "I don't have to plan it. I just pony up the cash and let's go." For people who plan everything on their own, that's the whole pitch.
Jamie (50 and fabulous) with Angela in the Sahara.
She turned 50 in the Sahara, in a kaftan, while a table of women she'd known for five days went around sharing heartfelt birthday wishes and advice for her. She even got a birthday cake that night, and let me just say sharing birthday cake at a camp in the Sahara Desert while you’re looking at a clear sky of stars is NOT a bad way to usher in your next decade.
Jamie’s 50th birthday cake, by lantern light at the desert camp.
If you've ever done sales, this is sales
Here's the part nobody puts in the Instagram announcement: trips don't fill themselves.
We've seen trips sell out in a blink and trips that never got off the ground, both our own and ones with hosts. When a hosted trip stalls, the common denominator is almost always the same: a host who assumed everyone would just sign up.
You can post once in your newsletter ("Taking a group to Greece, who's in?") and wait for the stampede. Sometimes it comes. Usually it doesn't. People are spending real money and real vacation days, and they need to hear why this trip, why now, and why with you. Then they need to hear it again. And again.
You’ll feel annoying. You’ll feel like a broken record. Keep going anyway.
If you've ever done sales, this is sales.
The good news: if you've got an engaged audience, you're already halfway there. The other half is on us.
The Cuba group Mel Ripp and Dawn Mullarney co-hosted in 2026, winding down on a Havana patio.
Here's what we take off your plate
Your job is to sell the trip. Ours is everything else:
A trip designed around your people. We start with a call about what your community wants, give you itinerary options to tweak, and build it from there.
Your own trip page, built for your audience, with FAQs that answer questions before anyone asks them, and a booking link so people sign up on their own.
Every traveler question, handled. They come to us, not your DMs.
Payments, payment plans, and tracking. You'll get a heads-up every time someone books, so you're never guessing where you stand. And when people inevitably miss payments, we’ll be taking care of that too.
A launch plan with real runway: copywriting, graphics, video clips, an email sequence for your list, a launch timeline, and a live info session or Q&A with your community. Consider us your launch HQ.
Backup plans and check-in calls when selling spots stalls. We troubleshoot it together.
Traveler orientation before the trip, and everything on the ground during it.
Most hosted trips are built for 10 to 14 travelers, depending on the destination and our partners there. If you want something smaller, we can build it. Either way, you'll know your exact goal before we launch.
Sunset camel trek in the Sahara. Somebody else booked the camels.
When to start (spoiler: earlier than you think)
Reach out 12 to 18 months before you want to go. Yes, eighteen. I know. But your community has people who block their vacation days a year out and people who book on two months’ notice, and a long runway catches both.
Building the trip is the easy part, especially if it’s one of our repeat destinations. The time goes into two things: getting your trip page and launch materials ready (give yourself about three months before launch) and leaving you enough runway to sell. The sweet spot is launching six to twelve months before departure.
Some launches sell out in a few weeks. Some take a few months. Which one you get depends a lot on how often you talk about it. (See above, re: broken record.)
Angela and I were talking about round two before Morocco even wrapped. We landed on Greece for September 2027, and more than 200 people in her community raised their hands. We launched a couple of months later. A month after that? Sold out, with a waitlist. It was the same story with the women's trips to Cuba we ran alongside Mel Ripp and Dawn Mullarney of The Unique Connector: both sold out eventually, but it took consistency. (Want proof from the travelers themselves? It's all on our reviews page.)
Mel and Dawn’s sold-out Cuba crew in Revolution Square, Havana.
Bring your people. We'll handle the rest.
If you run any kind of community, you’ve seen the signals. The “wouldn’t it be fun to travel together?” comments you can’t stop thinking about. The spreadsheet you’ve opened (and quietly closed) a few times. And then the realization: you don’t actually want to plan it. You just want to be there. On the rooftop, with the wine and the cats, not on the phone with the driver.
Don’t start a travel company unless you truly want to deal with all the logistics and the headaches that come with it. Work with us instead. Bring your people, and we'll handle the rest.
Your community already found each other. Now let's get them in the same room, preferably one with a view.
Want to host a trip? Email Laura at laura@type2travel.com and we'll set up a call.
Planning a trip for your friends or family instead of a community? We plan private trips as well.
FAQ
Do I have to go on the trip I host?
Nope. It's a great perk if you can come, but your trip isn't contingent on you. If your community would love traveling together either way, you can send someone from your team, or we'll provide one of our trained trip leaders. We'll pick the one who best fits your people.
Where can we go?
We regularly plan trips across Latin America (Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Puerto Rico), Africa (Morocco, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Egypt), and Europe and beyond (Greece, Spain, Georgia, Turkey, Italy, Japan and Australia). If your community has its heart set on somewhere else, ask.
What will the trip cost my travelers?
Every hosted trip is priced per person based on the destination, group size, rooms, and experiences. For reference, our 2027 group trips run $3,799 to $6,480 per person in a shared room, not including international flights. You'll see the full price before anything launches.
Is travel insurance required?
Yes, on every international trip. Travelers buy their own policy, and we recommend one with cancellation coverage. Our go-to is Wanderwell, our affiliate partner.
Does my community have to be women?
Nope. Plenty of our hosted trips have been women's trips, but we plan for any community: coed groups, professional networks, clubs, podcast audiences, or whoever your people are.
Can I host a retreat with you?
Yes. A retreat is a hosted trip with a little more intention built in. If you’re a coach, yoga teacher, or wellness pro, we can build your workshops, sessions, or quiet mornings into the itinerary and handle everything around them. Every trip is customized, so it can be as relaxed or as adventurous as your people want.
Related: Angela on the Type 2 Travel podcast (episode 3, Childfree and Thrilled About It) · Angela’s episode with Lisa and Jamie · Dawn on episode 24
