NY Times Travel Show: Twelve Years with the Travel Tribe

The Travel Tribe descends on the Big Apple’s Javits Center.

I am here again, for the fourteenth year, to my favorite place to be every January, New York City.

I looked back at the archives of this mighty blog and found the post from 2008 when we famously ‘moved on up’ and began exhibiting with a booth of our own at the New York Times Travel Show.

We would drag a giant booth and set it up and readers and advertisers would come by and say hello. The only problem was that so many people I wanted to see were OUTSIDE of the booth, and so each time I’d leave, I’d miss the other people who wanted to meet us.

So, a few years later we scuttled the booth idea and just began roaming the show and finding our friends and colleagues to schmooze.

I have been coming here and talking about travel, but mostly, I am here to absorb the fantastic energy and inspiration that comes when I’m around smart people who travel all the time. So many places, hotels, airlines and excursions. So many great stories to share, and new ideas for my website. It’s how progress is made.   I shared this statement on Facebook last night.

All Hail my Fantastic Travel Tribe!

I spent today in the company of perfectly like-minded people. People who love to travel, and write, and take photos and share stories and videos and totally LOVE what I love.

They are my tribe, they are my peeps. I love them all so much, I love coming here to visit the booths and see the friends, I love the intimacy that can emerge after traveling with someone to a faraway place.

There is this sense of knowing like you spent 24/7 with them and you all encountered something new and different, a whole world across an ocean.

Travel is a bonding agent, a glue that brings our tribe together, we always have a ‘next trip’ and we always have fond memories of our travels and when we see that person we traveled with, the trip is rekindled.

I am grateful for my tribe, and for those in my tribe who I haven’t met yet. We are all a fantastic trove of stories and adventures, and truly living life to the fullest!