This is the candid and insightful story of how Kevin Warren turned his travel passions into substantial earnings, fun, and adventure.
In August 1970, Warren brothers Kevin, Steve and Tim moved their family from Chicago, Illinois to San Diego, California. As teenagers, they grew up surfing, riding dirt bikes, camping, flying hang gliders and ultralight planes, traveling to the countryside and near Baja, Mexico.
It is true.
They were all energetic “slightly challenged young men.”
One of the schools they attended was the Athenian School in Northern California; a co-educational college preparatory boarding school with an emphasis on academics and the outdoors. His first rafting trips, snow camping, backpacking and cross-country skiing trips, as well as extreme skating, building a bamboo hang glider out of bamboo, secret under-bed beer-brewing experiments and many other adventures, it all happened in Athenian. .
Part of his graduation requirements was a 28-day outdoor skills and survival training in the high Sierra Nevada mountains.
It was fantastic!
And yes, between adventures, they also studied.
It was clear. They loved the outdoors, flying, adventure, and novel business ventures…
Fortunately, none of them died, they were not expelled, and they eventually graduated from Athena.
Back in San Diego, adventurous, young and entrepreneurial, Kevin started a business towing aerial billboards at slow speeds along the beaches of North San Diego County with our ultralight aircraft around 1978.
I was getting $175 for 1/2 hour to pay for our hobby. How cool that she got paid for what she loved to do!
In the early 1980s, Kevin’s passion for flying continued. He wanted to fly for the airlines and began flying with his companions to remote areas of Baja, Mexico, to surf, increase his flight hours and share the cost. He started getting calls from people he never met with questions like this,
“My friend Jeff flew to Baja and went surfing with you. Sounds great! How can I go too?”
Kevin thought, “Could I get paid to do some of the things I love most: surfing, flying, and traveling?”
———The answer was a big YES ———
What began as a hobby turned into a life-changing tourism career with the launch of Baja AirVentures in 1985. Kevin’s early travels focused on 4-day surfing expeditions by plane to remote swaths of land in the isolated Pacific coast of Baja California. Empty, perfect waves, pristine wilderness, attended camps – just what most professional men who loved to surf wanted.
Kevin’s Baja Surf Travel Company grew into a diversified and profitable multi-sport Baja Eco-Adventure tour company, asking its guests what they wanted on their active vacations,
Many tourism professionals that Kevin has met over the last 15 years, or those who want to get into tourism, are also looking to combine their passion for travel, sports, adventure, the outdoors, and also earn a lot of money.
Does this ring a bell to you?
Or something you’re dreaming about…?
Kevin’s tourism business and income has earned him two eco-adventure resorts in Baja, Mexico, a new large 5-bedroom house in San Diego, 4 airplanes, a lovely wife, and three beautiful daughters.
Kevin’s material success is only a small part of the most valuable rewards of appreciating life, living your dreams, and experiencing daily joy in your tourism profession.
Success and quality of life, however you define it, is what you can have as a tourism professional if you take the right steps.
Follow this link to read part two of this real-life hotel marketing and tourism business case study, and listen to a Interview series “The secret of his success”, plus best practices and resources that have absolutely increased the results and quality of life for Kevin and so many tourism projects around the world.
The travel business has been good to Kevin and sharing these articles and tips is a way of giving back to the industry.
Starting, promoting and managing any type of business or tourist destination requires a lot of time and work. Therefore, all articles, tips, resources, and news will be in short “reader roundup” versions.
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