Pros and Cons of Traveling Together

Whitney and I have been traveling as a physical therapist (PT) pair for almost 5 years now since we were new grad PTs in 2015. During this time, we have learned a lot about both the benefits and the disadvantages of traveling as a healthcare pair. Traveling with a healthcare partner can be a wonderful experience and can make pursuing a travel healthcare career much easier in some ways, but there are certainly some struggles to be had at times. If you’re considering pursuing travel therapy with a partner or friend, here are some of the biggest pros and cons you should consider, based on our experiences.

Pros:

1. Having a guaranteed adventure buddy!It’s not uncommon for Whitney and I to have some sort of adventure planned nearly every single weekend when we’re away on travel assignments. This is especially true if we’re in an area where we’ve never been before and there are lots of things we want to do and see within a few hours drive. For example, while working in Massachusetts, we took weekend trips to Boston, New York City, Rhode Island x 2, Maine x 2, New Hampshire x 2, Vermont, Connecticut, Quebec City, and Montreal! That was a busy and exciting few months! In our opinion, going on hikes, visiting waterfalls, and exploring cities is a lot more fun with a partner. It’s certainly possible to find someone to explore with in a new area as a single traveler, but it can be much harder than taking your adventure buddy with you!
2. Saving money on housing expenses!Our thoughts on this have actually shifted a little over time. Initially we looked at it as basically half the costs when traveling as a pair due to being able to split housing and utility costs when at each location. While this is true theoretically, in reality housing options are more limited and more expensive for a pair than for a single traveler in many cases. This is especially the case when comparing a single traveler that’s willing to rent a room in a house to a travel therapy pair. We’ve found that most people who are renting a room in their house don’t want two people there and if they will allow it, they always want higher rent each month. That almost always leaves the travel pair looking for an apartment of some sort, which can often be 2-3x as much as a room in a house. But, when comparing traveling as a pair and renting an apartment to traveling as a single traveler who wants their own space and isn’t willing to rent a room in a house, the pair will come out ahead by splitting housing and utility costs!
3. Less potential loneliness!We’ve met tons of single travelers that seem to really thrive on getting a brand new start in each location. But we’ve also met many other single travelers that feel lonely when starting a new assignment, or never start traveling at all because they fear being away from everyone they know. This seems to be the case even more so for travel assignments in rural locations where there is less to do and it’s harder to meet people outside of the clinic. We find that many single travelers avoid rural locations because they’re afraid they won’t be able to meet new friends or find people to hang out with when population density is lower and options are more limited. Meanwhile, Whitney and I love traveling to rural places as a pair due to the more laid back environment, lower cost of living, and usually more friendly people. We know that even if we don’t meet new friends in the area that we will always have each other to hang out and do things with! And it decreases our loneliness from being far away from our home community, family and friends.

Cons:

1. Less available jobs.This is definitely the biggest downside to traveling as a pair in our opinion. While there might be hundreds of open travel PT jobs throughout the country, there are usually less than a dozen jobs that are outpatient (the setting we prefer) and close enough to each other for us to consider at a given time. We’ve been lucky to mostly avoid lengthy commutes and find consistent outpatient jobs near each other, but we’ve had to be much more flexible on the location we’re willing to go to in order to make that happen. When we’re looking for new states to get licensed in, we aren’t necessarily looking for where we really want to go, but instead where we have the best chances of finding two outpatient jobs close to each other since that’s our main priority. For a travel therapy pair, it is vital to be lenient on either setting, location, or both, whereas a single traveler will undoubtedly be able to be more picky when job searching.
2. Less negotiating power on new contracts.Anyone familiar with negotiation knows that the more good options you have, the more negotiating power you have. For a single traveler with many jobs that fit their criteria, it’s not a big deal if they miss out on a job by playing hardball to make a little extra money on a contract or passing on a job until the perfect one comes along. They’ll almost always be able to find something else that is decent with a start date in their desired time frame (provided they aren’t being too picky). For a travel pair, trying to negotiate for higher pay on good fitting contracts can lead to missing out on one or both of the jobs, which means going back to the drawing board and potentially one or more weeks of missed work. Because of this, Whitney and I only work with recruiters that we trust to give us their best offer right off the bat so we don’t risk missing out on two good jobs near each other, which can sometimes be tough to find.
   • *For our recommendations on travel companies/recruiters click here.
3. More difficulty finding housing.As mentioned above, a travel therapy pair will have less housing options in any given location than a single traveler will. This is simply due to the fact that landlords offering some rooms or small efficiency apartments will only accept an individual, not a pair. This difficulty with finding viable and affordable housing was the primary driver of us deciding to buy our fifth wheel camper. For our very first assignments in a rural area of Virginia, we spent dozens of hours trying to find housing, only to settle on a less than ideal place. Had we been single travelers, there were rooms in houses in the surrounding area where we could have stayed, but none of them would accept a pair!
   • *If you’re considering traveling in a camper like we did, there are a whole other set pros and cons which you can read about here.

Is Traveling as a Healthcare Pair for You?

When comparing travel therapy as a pair versus traveling as an individual, I really think the pros and cons even out. This depends highly on your personality though. If you’re an extroverted person who’s great at making new friends, is willing to rent a cheap room in a house, and isn’t worried about being lonely, then traveling by yourself will be an awesome adventure and you’ll almost certainly come out ahead when compared to a travel therapy pair. If you’re more introverted (like me O_O), wouldn’t want to rent a room and live with a stranger, and want someone to experience new things with, then traveling as a pair would probably be better.

Unfortunately not everyone has the ability to choose between the two, as we usually encounter single therapists that are going to travel by themselves or not at all, and couples or friends that are going to travel together or not at all. In that case, it’s important to understand the pros and cons and be willing to accept them whatever your situation happens to be, and employ certain strategies to make traveling successful!

Strategies for Traveling as a Pair

Taking into account these pros and cons for traveling as a pair, there are lots of strategies we’ve learned over time that go into being a successful travel pair. Here are our top suggestions for traveling as a pair:

1. Be Flexible!As I alluded to above, it’s important for travel pairs to be flexible on setting, location, and/or pay in order to successfully line up two jobs together. These variables are always at play regardless of whether you’re traveling as a pair or traveling solo, but when traveling as a pair, your top priority has to be finding two good jobs close together, so the other factors have to go lower on your priority list. In an ideal situation, you’d always find two jobs together, in your favorite setting, in the perfect location, and with the highest pay. Sometimes all the stars align and this is the case, but realistically you need to be as flexible as possible on these factors to maintain consistent employment as a healthcare pair.
2. Work with multiple recruiters!We always recommend that travelers, whether traveling solo or as a pair, work with more than one recruiter to give themselves the most job options and be able to compare how different recruiters/companies operate, and compare pay and benefits on different offers. However this is most crucial for travel pairs. It is much more challenging to find two jobs together, so pairs need to have as many job options available as possible. We generally recommend working with 3-4 different recruiters as a pair. While each recruiter will have access to some of the same jobs, they will each have some exclusive/direct jobs that the others may not have.
   • *For more information on the process of working with multiple recruiters and companies, check out this article.
   • *If you’d like specific recommendations from us for recruiters and companies that would work well for you as a pair, you can fill out this form.
3. Strategically choose states licenses!In order to be more flexible on finding jobs, it’s important to have at least 2-3 different state licenses. You need to be strategic in choosing these state licenses, based on which states tend to have the most jobs for your disciplines. Over time, we’ve tracked different job lists and talked to several recruiters to learn the trends for which states tend to have more PT jobs for us. We also pay attention to which states tend to have two jobs closer together that will work well for us as a PT pair. In our experience, some states that have been good for PT pairs are: California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Massachusetts, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia. We have made sure to get licensed in a couple of these states, and we always have the license in advance before applying to jobs in each state.
4. Scope out housing in advance!A final piece of advice we have for lining up travel jobs as a pair is being aware of the housing situation before accepting your contracts. Quite often, recruiters will try to pitch two jobs close together to you, stating that if you “live in the middle,” then you will each only have a commute of “X” time or distance. However, sometimes when you start looking more closely, you’ll see that there’s no way to actually live in the middle to make this a realistic commute for the both of you. Often, the only real housing options are closer to one job or the other, making the commute unrealistic for one of you, or the area has really bad traffic, so even though on the map it looks close, the commute time would be insane. We always try to at least scope out the housing options to see if there are viable options that will make the two jobs worth our while before we accept a position. Ideally, you’d try to secure the housing before accepting, but this is not always possible with how quickly contracts move in the travel healthcare world. So at least do a little housing research before you agree to any contracts!

The Bottom Line for This Travel Pair

For both Whitney and I, I don’t think we would have been adventurous enough to travel by ourselves, and we almost certainly wouldn’t have continued to travel for almost 5 years now if we weren’t traveling as a pair. Travel therapy as a pair has not only provided us with countless adventures and lifestyle flexibility but has also brought us closer together as a couple when we encounter the inevitable hardships. Despite the challenges that sometimes come with traveling as a pair, we wouldn’t change anything we’ve done to this point for the world!

If you’re a current traveler (individual or pair) let us know about your experience in the comments below!

Written by Jared Casazza, PT, DPT

Jared and his girlfriend Whitney have been traveling as a physical therapist pair since 2015. Together they form Travel Therapy Mentor and offer free advice and mentorship to current and future travel therapists!