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May 2025 marks a decade since Whitney and I embarked on our first travel physical therapy contracts. What started as a five-year plan to pay off student loans and explore the country has evolved into ten years of incredible experiences, unexpected turns, and a deep dive into the travel therapy industry.

In our 10 years as travel therapists, we’ve worked in five different states, practiced in several different physical therapy settings, visited all 50 U.S. states and all 63 U.S. National Parks via trips during and between contracts, as well as traveled to over 55 countries and all 7 continents for fun in our free time! Throughout this journey, we achieved financial independence and semi-retired before the age of 30!

Along the way, we created Travel Therapy Mentor to educate and inspire current and aspiring travel therapists. Over the years in this role as mentors, we’ve worked closely with travel therapy companies, recruiters, and thousands of fellow travelers. This unique perspective as travelers ourselves and leaders within the industry has given us invaluable insights.

Whether you’re a seasoned travel therapist, new to the game, or just curious about this dynamic career path, here are 10 crucial lessons we’ve learned over the past ten years:

1. Your Plans WILL Change (and That’s Okay!)

We started with a five-year plan: pay off student loans, get into real estate investing, and slowly traverse the country in our RV from coast to coast, before settling down into perm jobs. Needless to say things didn’t go exactly as we planned! We stayed on the East Coast for longer, taking back to back contracts while focusing on savings rate and prioritizing our goal of achieving financial independence. We decided not to pay off our loans in favor of investing and utilizing income driven repayment plans. We then semi-retired and started traveling all over the world while working only 1-2 contracts per year. Our five years turned into ten, and we never took permanent jobs as originally planned. We unexpectedly became entrepreneurs and built a thriving mentorship business. We now have a family but continue to live a flexible lifestyle where we don’t work full time.

As a travel therapist, we learned it’s important to be flexible, embrace the unexpected, and allow life to open up opportunities you never envisioned.

2. There’s No One-Size-Fits-All Company

This is perhaps our most important lesson for aspiring travel therapists to help you have the best experience overall with your job searches. With over a hundred travel therapy companies out there, there’s no single “best” one. Each company has its pros, cons, and specializations. Which company is best for you depends on your discipline, preferred setting, desired locations, and what benefits you value. Working with the wrong company can lead to a frustrating experience, making you believe travel therapy isn’t for you, when in reality, you just haven’t found the right fit.

Your wants and needs dictate the best company for you.

3. Recruiters Change Over Time – And So Should Your Approach

Just like companies, travel therapy recruiters aren’t static. A fantastic recruiter today might become overwhelmed, change their focus, or have life circumstances that impact their responsiveness down the line. A recruiter who’s great for an experienced traveler who knows exactly what they want might not be the best fit for a new traveler needing more guidance.

Don’t be afraid to explore new recruiters or work with multiple ones as your needs and their circumstances evolve.

If you’d like help getting connected with travel therapy recruiters and companies that align with your own personal goals, you can fill out our Recruiter Recommendations form here and we will help point you in the right direction!

4. Housing is Never Perfect

We bought a fifth wheel thinking RVing would solve all our housing problems – easier moves, cheaper living. While there were some benefits, it wasn’t the “perfect solution” we imagined. We eventually sold it and have done short-term housing options for more recent contracts. Both housing options have their headaches. Overall, finding travel therapy housing options can be challenging no matter which route you go.

The “best” housing option for you depends entirely on your situation (i.e. traveling with pets/partner/family and your travel style). You’ll have to choose the “lesser of evils” that best aligns with your lifestyle.

5. Moderate Pay in Low Cost-of-Living Areas Can Be More Lucrative

It’s tempting to chase the highest-paying travel therapy contracts, but often these are in expensive metropolitan areas where your housing, food, and daily expenses will eat significantly into your take-home pay. We learned that taking a moderately-paying contract in a rural or lower cost-of-living area often allows you to save and keep more of your money at the end of the day.

When choosing contracts, always consider the net income after expenses, not just the gross pay package.

6. Traveling with Kids is Harder Than We Thought

Before having our daughter, we envisioned continuing our travel lifestyle with kids. Now, with a six-month-old who doesn’t consistently sleep through the night, we’ve had a humbling reality check. The logistics of finding suitable housing, childcare away from family support, and managing sleep deprivation on the road are immense. Not to mention packing and all the extra things you need!

While many families successfully travel with children, it’s a far greater challenge than we anticipated. You’ll have to weigh the pros and cons of travel with a family if you’re considering it.

7. Job Boards Give a Skewed View of the Market

When we started, travel therapy job boards didn’t even exist. Now, they’re everywhere, and while they seem convenient, they don’t always represent the full reality of the market. Often, they highlight only the highest-paying jobs, which can be misleading regarding realistic take-home pay for most travel jobs. They also don’t show the full spectrum of available positions or the unique requirements of each. Relying solely on job boards can give you an inaccurate picture of opportunities, often overstating average pay or listing jobs that are no longer available.

Your recruiter is often a more reliable source for accurate, up-to-the-minute job information, which is why we recommend having solid relationships with 2-3 recruiters at different companies.

8. Working Internationally Doesn’t Make Sense for Most

The allure of working abroad as a travel therapist is strong, but we discovered it’s often not practical for most. International therapy jobs typically pay significantly less (50-70% of U.S. rates), come with complex visa and licensing hurdles, and lack the comprehensive staffing agencies found in the U.S. This is why we’ve never worked abroad as physical therapists. We only work in the U.S., then we use the flexibility of travel therapy careers to take time off and travel internationally for fun.

Our advice? Work in the U.S. as a travel therapist for 9 months, save aggressively, then take 3 months off to travel internationally for fun. This approach often yields more money and significantly less hassle, allowing you to see the world on your terms.

9. Be Selective to Avoid Bad Contracts

Travel therapy sometimes gets a bad rap, often from uninformed travelers. Some assume they must take whatever job a single recruiter offers, sometimes leading to miserable experiences in high-volume clinics or demanding settings. This is completely avoidable! You have to be selective. Research the ins and outs of travel therapy before starting, ask thorough interview questions, and have multiple options from different companies and recruiters.

By doing your homework, you can largely mitigate the risk of bad travel therapy contracts and genuinely enjoy your travel therapy career.

10. Your Ability to Negotiate Depends on the Job Market (and Your Leverage)

There’s a misconception that travel therapists can always demand top dollar. The reality is, your ability to negotiate pay and terms depends heavily on the current job market and your unique situation. If you’re a single traveler open to any setting in any location, your leverage is high. However, if you have specific criteria for setting and location, your options might be limited, reducing your negotiating power.

Negotiation isn’t about magic words; it’s about being in a position of strength. If a facility desperately needs your specific skills or immediate availability, and you have other attractive offers, you have leverage. If they have many qualified applicants and you have no other options, your power diminishes. Always work with multiple recruiters to create competitive offers and understand the dynamics of the situation.

Our journey as travel therapists has been full of learning, growth, and incredible experiences. While it’s not without its challenges, the freedom and opportunities that we’ve enjoyed from our travel therapy careers is unmatched. We hope that our insights have been helpful for you!

If you want help getting started as a travel therapist, check out the resources we have on our website and social media channels. You can start here with our Travel Therapy 101 Series and our Travel Therapy Recruiter Recommendations. Send us a message if you have any questions!

Additional Resources:

Written by Jared Casazza, PT, DPT – Jared has been a traveling physical therapist since 2015. He has become an expert in the field of travel healthcare through his experience, research, and networking over nearly a decade.

Finding jobs as a travel therapist can be very easy or very difficult depending on what you’re looking for specifically. The number of travel therapy jobs available to you at any given time will vary significantly depending on the setting and location in which you desire to work, as well as your therapy discipline.

Some states consistently have more jobs, like California, while other states rarely have any travel therapy jobs at all, like Utah. Some settings usually have more jobs across the country, like home health and skilled nursing, whereas some settings generally have fewer jobs, like inpatient rehab and outpatient pediatrics. Along the same lines, evaluating therapists (PT, OT, SLP) typically have many more job possibilities than assistants (PTA, COTA, SLPA). For this reason, a travel PT looking for a home health job in California is going to have a much different experience finding a well fitting travel therapy position than a COTA looking for a pediatric job in Utah. The PT will likely have 50+ travel job options to choose from, whereas the COTA may not have any options at all with that search criteria.

When looking for travel therapy jobs, it’s often very important to be flexible on either the setting where you want to work or the location you want to go, but depending on your therapy discipline you may have to be flexible on both setting and location to find consistent work throughout the year as a traveler. Assuming that you’re reasonable in your search criteria (setting, location, pay) finding a travel therapy job that fits you well shouldn’t be an issue.

Where to Look for Travel Therapy Jobs

There are really only a few different ways to find travel therapy jobs, and they each have their pros and cons.

Travel Company Recruiters

The most common and easiest way to find travel therapy jobs is through a recruiter at a travel company. You’ll give the recruiter information about what you’re looking for, and they will search their database of open positions and give you a list of jobs that may work for you. They may also be able to “cold call” facilities in a particular area to see if they can find a position for you. If what you’re looking for is too specific or unrealistic, then the recruiter can help you to expand the search criteria in a way that still meets your needs. Experienced recruiters are experts in travel therapy jobs and have great insight into how often they see jobs in a particular area or in a specific setting, to know how likely it is for you to find what you’re looking for.

When working with a recruiter to find a job, it’s very important that you have a good recruiter that has your best interest in mind so that you are set up to succeed as a travel therapist. We’ve talked to many travel therapists over the years that had recruiters that pushed them into a travel assignment that didn’t fit them well just so that they could get a job filled instead of waiting for the right fit for the traveler. This is a recipe for disaster. These are often the therapists that have a bad experience and end up quitting travel therapy after a couple of assignments, and subsequently discourage other therapists from trying travel.

If you’d like assistance finding a few recruiters that we trust that will help you find travel jobs, fill out our recruiter recommendations form to give us some information about your specific needs, and we’ll help you get connected.

Job Boards/Lists

Another way to find travel therapy jobs is through a job board. A job board is basically a list of open travel jobs across the country. Some job boards include jobs from various different companies, while some are specific to only one company. We created our hot jobs list last year so that the travel therapists who we mentor would have a place to see a sample of the best and highest paying travel jobs open from all of the travel companies that we work closely with. Individual travel companies often have their own job boards only listing their jobs, but keep in mind that any one company won’t have access to all the travel jobs available nationwide, since some travel companies have direct relationships with clinics that other companies may not. In our experience, these direct jobs are often some of the best travel jobs and the majority of our travel assignments have been through direct clients of various travel companies. If you’re looking at just the job board of one company then you’ll be limited in the options you see.

One big downside to finding a travel job through a job board is the lag time involved based on how often the lists are updated. Since travel jobs, especially the desirable ones, can open and close very quickly (sometimes in a matter of hours) it’s extremely difficult if not impossible to keep them up to date on job boards at all times. In addition, even if a job on a job board is open when you see it, it can often be filled with another candidate before you have time to get connected with the travel company and submitted for the job. Job lists can certainly be useful, and we’ve had dozens of people placed in good jobs from our list since we started it, but it’s important to be aware of their limitations.

Calling Clinics Directly

The last option for finding travel jobs is more rare and difficult but can work depending on the situation. Whitney and I as well as other travel therapists that we know have occasionally had success in the past finding our own travel jobs by calling clinics with open permanent positions in the area in which we want to find a travel job. Websites like Indeed are often filled with hospitals and clinics looking for permanent therapy staff. In some cases, once they’ve been unsuccessful in finding permanent staff, they’re willing to take a travel therapist but just haven’t gotten around to contracting travel companies to advertise the job yet.

If there’s a very specific area you want to go to, and it doesn’t appear that there are any travel jobs open there based on the recruiters you’ve talked to and the job lists you’ve looked at, then it’s worth looking to see if there are facilities in the area currently hiring that would be willing to have you there as a short term employee. If you do find a job this way, you can take this job to a recruiter that you trust and have them negotiate with the clinic and set up a contract for you. Almost all travel companies will pay you a finder’s fee for bringing a job to them like this which can be a significant amount. You could also choose to take that job directly through the facility without going through a travel company as an independent contractor. While it seems like cutting out the middle man (travel company) would be obvious choice, it can sometimes be more hassle and less financially lucrative than you would imagine.

Summary

Depending on your search criteria, finding a travel job can be really easy or very difficult. Certain states, settings, and therapy disciplines have many more job options than others, so it’s important to be realistic in your search criteria to find consistent contracts as a travel therapist. Finding good fitting travel jobs through a trusted recruiter is the most common and reliable way that travelers find work, but job boards and calling clinics directly can also be helpful as long as you understand the limitations involved.

If you’re interested in taking a look at a selection of hot jobs offered by the recruiters we know and trust, check out our Hot Jobs List. And if you’d like to get recommendations for different recruiters who can help you be proactive with your job search before the jobs hit the job boards, fill out our recruiter recommendations form and we will get you connected!

Written by Jared Casazza, PT, DPT – Jared has been a Travel PT since 2015 and has mentored thousands of current and aspiring travel therapists.

Tag: travel therapy companies

10 Lessons Learned in 10 Years as Travel Therapists