In the most recent Women Leading Travel & Hospitality report, Game Changers, we asked women entrepreneurs in the travel and hospitality industry a series of questions about starting and running a business. They provided honest and actionable answers. One of those questions was, “What inspired you to launch your business?” The responses were as varied and inspirational as the women themselves.

Kim Bennett, founder and CEO of AtlasGuru, was planning a 12-day trip with three other people to Vietnam and Cambodia and struggling with how to build the itinerary to maximize their time. They wanted to visit smaller villages yet still see important cities and sites, but not spend too much time in airports or on long drives.

“I spent hours on blogs, books, reading trip reports in forums, and studying maps,” Bennett said. “What I really wanted was a way to look up itineraries, maps and images from people that have traveled in those regions. After thoughtful consideration, I quit my corporate marketing job and started the process of building a business.” AtlasGuru is now incorporating AI-assisted trip execution into its business model.

For others, like Elsewhere Co-Founder Alexis Bowen, the business was a product of COVID-19.

“It was the summer of 2020 and the whole industry was out of work and at a complete standstill,” Bowen recollected. “My co-founder and I had both worked in travel for the last 10 years and — along with the rest of the industry — were sitting around wondering what was next and whether the industry would ever be the same. And without knowing where it would take us, we started talking about a project. We knew what we loved about the industry, and we knew what we wanted to change. We had a killer network of local partners around the world that we knew should be at the center of the project, and we knew we wanted to create a more ethical and sustainable model of tourism.”

With the industry crumbling around them, they convinced themselves that was the perfect moment to start something new and build a modern brand with a sustainably-driven purpose built into its foundation.

Experience Alive CEO Sue Graves said the inspiration to launch her business also came during the pandemic, when the hotel industry was facing its worst scenario with nearly 85 percent of staff laid off overnight and struggling to recover. It was at this time that many in the industry were calling her, saying they could no longer sustain the demands of the industry and they were quitting.

“I thought to myself, ‘So much thought leadership leaving the industry will bring pain to this industry I love so much,'” Graves said. “Many were working in excess of 14 to 18 hours a day checking guests in, cleaning rooms, and trying to please owners, corporate staff and guests at the same time. With the industry struggling to recover and decimated teams at both the corporate level and field level, I felt the urgent need to step up. I thought if I could go out and find solutions to help solve some of the greatest problems using technology, that could really be an important transition for the industry, reducing expenses while utilizing technology solutions to eliminate repetitive tasks, create better workflows for teams while increasing satisfaction for guests and employees and building value for owners.”

CEO and Founder Sally Bunnell said NaviSavi (short for navigational savviness) started after she felt like the experiences she was being shown through promotional videos and the actual experiences were different.

“I was the head of video content at a record label and was seeing the rise of user-generated content (UGC) videos and the authenticity of them when they were unedited,” she said. “I started doing just that and posting unedited videos on my social channels of the places I would travel and then email packets of all the places I stayed each trip to friends who were interested in doing the same. In 2013, I created and pitched NaviSavi as a TV show for short-form travel video content and pivoted into a crowdsourced app in 2017.”

Over the years and as her career progressed, Loretta Anderson-Webber, founder and CEO of Law of Hospitality, found that not many people demonstrated a level of passion for serving others nor a zeal for excellence in performing the basic job duties in the hospitality industry. However, it wasn’t because they were all bad people, but mainly because they spent more time focused on operating the systems, navigating the fast-paced and ever-changing environment than making a connection with the guest, which is what hospitality is truly all about, Anderson-Webber realized.

“I quickly shifted my focus to making sure that my staff was properly equipped, allowing them to make better use of their time connecting with people and making a difference in the lives of others,” she said. “In 2014, I had a vision to extend my reach and started my business part time as an independent hospitality professional consultant, trainer and service culture infuser to improve the market for highly skilled, cross-functional hospitality leaders. During the pandemic, the need increased as the world attempted to reopen and all industries struggled to establish a new norm. In March 2020, I took a full-faith leap and began operating my business full time, growing from a team of one to a first responder community of now over 900.”

Check out the full interviews with these women as well as others like them by downloading the full Game Changers report here.