TravelCon: Was it Worth Going?

What is TravelCon?

TravelCon is an annual multi-day conference for travel content creators. There are hundreds of attendees and every year it is held in a different location in the United States. This year it was held in Tucson, Arizona, March 14-16, 2025.

It’s marketed as “The business event for travel creators” to help them “Go Pro” with their content and “Scale” their business.

The TravelCon Agenda

TravelCon happens over a three day period, usually Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Each conference day is arranged to include a combination of different speakers, workshops, breakout sessions, niche meetups, and Q & A panels that you could attend.

I was expecting everything to be tagged as either “GoPro” or “Scale” but it wasn’t. You pretty much looked at the schedule, read the description of the session and the bio of who was presenting, and decided if it was for you or not.

Some of the breakout sessions I went to included:

• “What to email your subscribers” presented by Allea Grummert of Duett
• “25 Things You’re Doing Wrong on Your Wordpress Site and How to Fix Them” presented by Andrew Wilder of Nerdpress
• “How We Built Our Audience from Zero to 100K” presented by Matt & Nat of Adventures of Matt and Nat.

One of the workshops I attended that was probably the most beneficial for me was creating a 30 day challenge. We worked in small groups to focus in on whatever our particular niche is and came up with ways to engage with our social media audience for 30 days that would encourage them to follow, like, comment, and share.

This helped me get over my fear of using social media. I’m still not good at it but I’m less afraid of it now. I take that as a win.

I tried to go to a niche meetup for solo travel but the location of the meetup was in such a noisy area that it was nearly impossible to hear whoever was talking. I ended up leaving to go find something else. Based on what I heard from others, this was a constant issue with all the niche meetups.

Hopefully, the TravelCon event planners take this into consideration when the plan the next event.

There were also small group gatherings for lunch and dinner at local restaurants. Tucson has an incredible food scene! I ate so well the entire time I was there. If you’re curious where I ate (and what I’d go back for), here are 10 places I ate at while in downtown Tucson.

On top of that there was a welcome reception the first night with light food, drinks, and a mariachi band!

There was a lot going on!

Brand and Tourism Board Expo

There was also an expo area with several tables set up for different travel brands and tourism boards.

You could chat with one of the reps and pitch yourself to try and land a collaboration deal with them. I didn’t try to pitch myself (next year!) to anyone, but I did work up the courage to chat with some of the reps to learn a little more about what they are looking for and how the process works.

I also made sure to visit the NerdPress table where they were doing free site audits of your website and answering any questions you have regarding WordPress. They gave me some tips to improve my site speed and post layout as well as how to fix a couple of formatting issues. Very valuable!

There are FAMs!

FAM is the lingo for familiarization trip. It’s often a local activity that you are invited to participate in for FREE in exchange for posting about it on social media. How fun, right?!?!?

These weren’t little things like free admission to a museum. These were higher ticket activities that were fully immersive. The fun choices this year were:

• Open air jeep tour through the dessert and White Stallion Ranch, presented by Stay22
• Ziplining across the Santa Catalina Mountains with Arizona Zip Line Adventures
• Hands-on falconry in the Sonoran Desert with Sky Island Falconry
• Custom tour of the Pima Air and Space Museum and riding in a tank
• Clay Shooting Tour with Tucson Trap and Skeet
• Hiking and Yoga in the Tucson mountains with Southwest Guided Adventures
• Saguaro National Park e-bike tour with Tucson E-Bike Adventures (this is what I did and it was AMAZING!)
• Mosaics, Pizza and Brews in the Arts District with St. Theresa Tile Works, Anello, and Crooked Tooth Brewery
• Tucson Silent Dancing Tour with Silent Adventures AZ
• Astronomy, Lasers, and Piano Bar Cocktails tour with Flandrau Science Center & Planetarium and the Monsoon Room at Jojo’s

You were required to sign up for the FAMs ahead of time. A few weeks before TravelCon, I received an email introducing what the different options were as well as how to sign up.

You were only allowed to sign up for one and they were first come, first served. A few additional spots did become available closer to the date so you still had a second chance to sign up in case you were late to register.

The FAMs only occurred the day BEFORE TravelCon or the day AFTER. So, Thursday and Monday. You want to keep this in mind if you are purchasing plane tickets. I flew in on Wednesday so that I could attend a FAM on Thursday morning.

TravelCon All-Access Pass

The All-Access Pass was new this year. It included additional benefits like early check-in, preferred seating at the sessions, early access to the FAMs, a networking lunch, and lounge access at the conference.

When I registered for TravelCon, the All-Access pass was not an option. It hadn’t even been announced yet. My only choice was the standard “Creator” pass for $299.

When the All-Access Pass did become available, it was $399. At the same time, they also dropped the price of the Creator pass down to $99! That was significantly less than the $299 I paid. To try and soften the blow (and probably to prevent refunds), TravelCon sent an email out saying that we would be converted to the All-Access pass for free.

It was nice to have the All-Access pass but, I’m not sure it’s totally worth the price difference.

The TravelCon Lounge

The lounge was only available to All-Access pass holders. It was in a separate room at the convention center and was easy to access throughout the day. I popped in there quite frequently to grab some coffee and a bite to eat or just to decompress from all the people-ing.

There were things like fruit, muffins, and yogurt in the morning and sweet and savory snacks in the afternoon. Of course, coffee (sadly, no flavored creamer), tea, and water were available all day.

TravelCon Hotel Block

The Doubletree Hotel by Hilton is attached to the Tucson Convention Center and that’s where TravelCon had a block of rooms reserved at a reduced rate for attendees. I think I paid $250 a night instead of the going rate of $350.

The room block with the reduced rates was only available Thursday through Sunday nights.

I was arriving on Wednesday so that I could attend the FAM on Thursday morning, but the reduced rate did not begin until Thursday. I didn’t want to pay the full $350 for Wednesday night and just ended up staying at the Holiday Inn Express by the airport to save a few bucks.

It’s A LOT of People-ing

Being in the middle of 500 people for three full days and making small talk is not something I looked forward to. It was also a little intimidating at times to be around so many successful travel creators.

But you know what? I put myself out there, I got to know some pretty incredible people, I learned actionable items that I can start implementing right away, and I feel like I am more focused on what steps to take to reach my goals.

Would I Go Again?

This was my first time attending TravelCon, or any travel conference for that matter, so I don’t have anything else to compare it to. I also had my doubts if TravelCon was a good event for me to attend since I am so new to travel blogging.

I’m glad I went.

Surprisingly, I found plenty of other people there that were also pretty new or had been around a while but just now starting to take creating travel content seriously.

The days were long and it was a lot of people-ing, but it was well worth it. I ended each day feeling inspired and having more confidence in myself that I could actually do this.

I would definitely attend TravelCon again.

And if Tucson is on your radar for a future trip (conference or not), I put together a post on What to See in Downtown Tucson. It was my first time in the city and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.