Travel
A lifelong constant. From childhood road trips and backpacking to travel tech, writing, and 57 countries later.
Travel has been one of the clearest through-lines in my life. It has shaped how I see the world, how I work, what I have built, and where I have often felt most at home. Long before business, technology, speaking, or writing became part of my professional identity, travel was already there. Over time, it became much more than a personal interest. It became part of how I think, how I build, and how I move through the world, linking the personal and the professional in a way few other things have.
A constant from early on
I spent part of my childhood in Brussels, and some of my earliest memories are tied to the road. Family trips across Europe made movement feel normal from the start. Borders changed. Languages changed. Landscapes changed. Cities, villages, coastlines, mountains, and long motorway stretches all came and went through the window. That stayed with me.
It gave me an early sense that the world was there to be explored, not kept at a distance. Travel did not feel unusual or remote. It felt natural. Looking back, that period probably shaped more than I understood at the time. It built a lasting curiosity about places and a habit of wanting to see things for myself rather than rely on second-hand versions.
Learning through travel
In my late teens, that curiosity became more independent. I backpacked around Europe with limited money, light plans, and a strong appetite for seeing more. That kind of travel teaches you quickly. You learn adaptability, observation, and how to move through unfamiliar places without much insulation. You notice more when you travel simply. You remember more when you have to figure things out as you go.
After college, that widened into Africa. I spent years travelling on a shoestring, often choosing the more interesting route over the easier one. Those journeys mattered. They gave me a much deeper understanding of the continent than I could ever have gained from a distance. Africa became real in the most practical sense. Roads, border crossings, markets, small towns, guesthouses, flights, and conversations. That experience shaped both my worldview and my instincts. It made travel feel less like an escape and more like a way of understanding how places actually work.
When travel became part of my work
Over time, travel became inseparable from my professional life. Much of my career has involved moving across countries, markets, and industries, often at speed. There have been long stretches when airports, aircraft cabins, hotel receptions, immigration counters, and departure boards felt almost like an extension of the office. Travel did not sit beside my career. It ran through it.
That is also a large part of what drew me into travel tech. With Savanna Sunrise and later HotelOnline, I moved from being someone shaped by travel to someone building inside the systems around it. Hospitality, hotel operations, digital distribution, payments, visibility, efficiency, and growth across African markets. It was a natural progression. Travel had already given me the perspective. Travel technology gave me a way to apply it professionally and help modernise part of a sector I knew from both lived experience and business reality.
Never just the meeting
Even when I travel for work, I rarely treat a trip as purely functional. I almost always add time to explore. A meeting may be the reason I arrive, but it is rarely the whole reason I stay. I want to understand the place beyond the venue, the hotel, and the airport transfer. I want to walk around, get the rhythm of it, and see what lies beyond the obvious route.
That habit has shaped the way I work as much as the travel itself. Quite often, it is in those extra hours that you notice what others miss. A city starts to make sense. A market changes your view of a place. A conversation shifts the picture. That instinct to explore has stayed with me throughout my life and continues to inform how I think, travel, and build.
57 countries, one constant
So far, I have travelled to 57 countries. Some visits have been brief. Others have become deeper chapters. Together, they have shaped how I think about people, markets, tourism, opportunity, and the practical realities of moving through the world.
Travel has made me more observant, more adaptable, and better at connecting dots across cultures, sectors, and contexts. Personally, it has given me energy, perspective, and a lasting sense of freedom. Professionally, it has influenced the sectors I have worked in, the businesses I have built, the partnerships I have pursued, and the way I approach the world. It remains one of the areas where the personal and the professional come together most clearly in my life.
Writing and Wandering Africa
Travel has also remained central to my writing. Over the years I have written a large number of travel-related blog posts, destination pieces, reflections, and observations. More recently, that has taken clearer form through Wandering Africa, where travel, photography, and storytelling come together more directly.
That work is not separate from the rest of what I do. It is part of the same thread. The same curiosity about place. The same instinct to explore, understand, and document. Writing has given me another way to process travel, not only as movement, but as perspective. It has allowed me to turn experience into stories, observations, and ideas that connect with others who are equally drawn to places, journeys, and what happens when you step outside the familiar.
My older travel posts and photo archives remain part of the legacy section of bauck.com, while my Africa travel writing has moved to Wandering Africa, a dedicated platform for that work.
Contact
If you are working on something travel-related, whether in tourism, hospitality, travel tech, destination development, media, partnerships, or a broader venture connected to movement and place, feel free to get in touch. Travel has been a constant in my life from childhood until now, and it remains one of the areas I know best, both personally and professionally.