Doni Belau of Girls’ Guide to the World On How To Create A Travel Experience That Keeps People Coming Back For More
An Interview With Savio P. Clemente
Don’t try to see or do it all. One of the biggest mistakes I see, and one we’ve made plenty of times, is trying to do too much. If you try to see and do everything, you can be left feeling like you haven’t really seen anything. It’s OK if people feel like they want to come back for more.
As part of my series about “How To Create A Travel Experience That Keeps People Coming Back For More”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Doni Belau:
Doni Belau fell in love with Paris when her sister took her there as a high-school graduation gift. Ever since she knew Paris and traveling would need to be part of her life.
For the next 25 years, Doni visited France as often as she could. Then, after a girls’ trip to Paris with friends one year, a light bulb went off. She realized something magical happens when a small group of women travel together to a place of great beauty and culture. The story-telling, the dreams, the heartbreak, the laughter, and the discovery all meld together to develop a lasting kinship with one another. It was a completely different experience than traveling by yourself, with your family, or with a partner.
In 2009, Doni started Girls’ Guide to Paris so she no longer had to choose between what she did and what she loved. The company began with small-group, women-only trips to Paris, then expanded to other parts of France, and eventually to countries outside of France.
By 2022, the company was offering trips to more than 40 countries, so it changed its name to Girls’ Guide to the World. Doni’s heart will always be in Paris, but the spirit of Girls’ Guide trips transcends any one place.
She invites others to see the world with women who share an appreciation for beauty and a spirit of adventure. Doni feels like the luckiest woman in the world; she gets to travel to beautiful places and share the experience with incredible women who have so much to offer.
Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
For about a decade I had been working in politics on some high-profile political campaigns and with not-for-profits including an NGO in South Africa that I co-founded supporting kids with HIV. It was exciting, rewarding work, but every day was a battle. As I tell friends, saving the world is tough work! The part of me that appreciated beauty and loved exploring new places was unfulfilled.
So I decided the time was now to create a job out of what I loved. I’ve always loved travel — discovering new cultures and meeting people with different life experiences than my own. I’ve also always been passionate about connecting and empowering women. So with the help of an amazing life coach, I decided to unite my wanderlust and desire to bring women together into a travel company for women. So far, it’s been the best thing I’ve ever done career-wise.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
I remember on the first Girls’ Guide trip to Paris, one of the women had lost her husband to a long illness only 6 weeks before the trip. She had gone back and forth about whether she should or wanted to come as planned, and at the last minute, decided to join us.
Of course, I was concerned about her emotional well-being, and that her understandable sadness might overshadow the trip for everyone else. What developed was one of the most profound experiences of my career that recalibrated how I think about what I do.
From the very beginning, the other women on the trip embraced her. I’ve found whenever a small group of women travel together, they bond quickly. But in this circumstance, everyone sensed that it was more important than simply becoming travel buddies. She needed to know she wasn’t alone.
When we entered Notre Dame Cathedral, she lit a candle for her husband and stood at the very back of the church looking in awe at the 800-year-old masterpiece where so many have stood and prayed over the centuries. Her tears began to flow. A group of us nearby went over to her and hugged her. The vulnerability that she displayed opened our hearts to her and each other. She said, “I know he’d have wanted me to be happy.” We all felt a larger perspective on what we were really doing that week in Paris.
For the rest of the trip, I noticed she found joy and beauty in everything she saw and experienced. It was as if she had a heightened sense of how precious each moment really was. Her outlook was infectious for the rest of us; everyone felt like we could see, hear, and taste more vividly. This is perhaps why Buddhists meditate on death. It seems incongruous, even macabre, but the more we realize that our time on earth is fleeting, the more we can be present in the moment and be grateful to have that moment.
Getting away for a week or more can lead you back to what’s important in your life and reset what type of life you want to lead. As Mary Oliver said in the final lines of her poem, The Summer Day: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Don’t drive and guide. On our second trip, which was in Provence (France), I thought I needed to know and do everything myself as economically as possible. Ridiculous! I drove the van, bought the flowers and put them in the rooms, learned the history of every town and village, and scouted each hotel and restaurant. It was not only exhausting for me, but I wasn’t fully present for all the ladies on the trip. I was harried; I was stressed; I was parking! After that experience, I wised up and hired a professional driver and started augmenting my knowledge with specialist guides to lead us through the various sites and experiences. Although I still love researching restaurants, boutique hotels and networking relationships for incredible, unique experiences, I have an amazing team who helps me do that now.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Yes, her name is Debbie Phillips. She was my life coach and mentor. She gave me the freedom, and frankly, the permission, to imagine a future career that was bigger and brighter than I allowed for myself. She challenged me when I came up with roadblocks and helped me work through fear. After my VIsion Day™ weekend with her, I walked away with a plan that I could put in motion. Once I had Girls’ Guide up and running, she partnered with me on two “life coach” trips to France; she did the coaching and I handled everything else. Everyone was profoundly moved by these trips, and it became the template for the wellness trips we do to this day.
Thank you for that. Let’s jump to the core of our discussion. Can you share with our readers about the innovations that you are bringing to the travel and hospitality industries?
Our big innovation is deceptively simple — we focus on women. When I started Girls’ Guide, I wanted to do small-group, women-only trips because they were more fun. But women make 80% of the travel decisions and over 50% of all adult women in the US are single. So there’s tremendous latent demand for a great travel product that meets the needs of women.
The big tour companies are discovering that it’s not as simple as just copying an existing tour and saying “This one is for women”. Women want different experiences and activities, they like different kinds of hotels, and they relate differently with one another and the people they meet while traveling. Quite frankly, they deserve a product designed with them in mind by one of their own.
We’re also bucking the norm by keeping our group size small — usually 6–8 women. We feel a small group size is more conducive to the connection we make with one another, and doesn’t overwhelm the places we visit with our presence. By focusing on the quality of experience over large-group economics, we’ll enjoy more repeat customers who appreciate our approach.
Which “pain point” are you trying to address by introducing this innovation and how do you envision that this might disrupt the status quo?
We hear over and over from women who want to travel but don’t have the perfect companion. Perhaps their husband can’t get away from work or don’t enjoy traveling. Or maybe they don’t have a partner. Or their friends’ schedules don’t align or they can’t afford to travel in the same way. Understandably, they don’t want to go on a trip with other couples and feel like a fifth wheel. So many women have been held back from pursuing their dreams because there hasn’t been a safe, engaging way to travel that meets their needs.
Once women realize they can go where they want, when they want it without having to wait for a friend or spouse, there’s no turning back.
As you know, COVID19 changed the world as we know it. Can you share a few examples of how travel and hospitality companies will be adjusting over the next five years to the new ways that consumers will prefer to travel?
As devastating as COVID-19 was to travel in 2020/2021, it’s remarkable how quickly travelers have put it in their rearview mirror. Our customers rarely mention Covid concerns anymore. However, we have noticed that there’s less reticence to purchasing travel insurance than there was pre-COVID. You don’t need to explain to ladies that they should have protection against something unexpected happening that might prevent them from traveling.
I’ve also heard from our customers that their Covid experiences were a wake-up call allowing them to realize that the freedom we enjoy can be taken away in a flash. There’s more of a sense of urgency to visit the places they’ve dreamt about, rather than “Someday I’ll do it”. At a certain age, we all realize we only have a finite number of years to travel.
You are a “travel insider”. How would you describe your “perfect vacation experience”?
My perfect vacation experience is to have someone do for me what I do for everyone else. That is, curate it all! No organizing, no planning, no researching, no booking, no deciding. Just show up and experience all that there is to see and do. It would have to be somewhere I haven’t been before, and the food would have to be great. Not necessarily fancy, but made or purveyed by someone who cares. Access to beautiful gardens or nature and a view of some body of water are a plus!
I also really enjoy staying in a place for extended periods. It’s like a real relationship rather than a first date or two. Recently, I had the opportunity to live in Oaxaca Mexico, and in the Bordeaux region of France, each for 2 months. It’s a different experience than visiting somewhere for a short week. You get to know people; you work on your language skills; you find your favorite bakery or tortilleria; you cook at home; you’re not under pressure to pack your days with activities. You imagine living there.
Travel is not always about escaping, but about connecting. Have you made efforts to cultivate a more wellness-driven experience? We’d love to hear about it.
A Girls’ Guide trip is a safe space for women to get to know one another, understand one another, and bond while they explore new places and cultures. Creating a connection between the women on our trips is an essential component of the Girls’ Guide experience. But the connection doesn’t always happen automatically; it must be developed and nurtured in a manner that feels organic, not forced. We provide our trip leaders with specialized training to facilitate a positive group dynamic.
We also offer trips specifically focused on wellness or other skills development like writing. For example, this September we have a Mind, Body and Soul Retreat in Fiji, and in January, Capturing Joy in Todos Santos and Uruguay: The Haven Wander Writing Retreat. Traveling somewhere fantastic and coming home with a better understanding of yourself and your place in the world is a home run!
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a travel experience that keeps bringing people back for more? Please share a story or an example for each.
1 . Create and offer experiences that you love and would want for yourself. I create trips that I’d like to go on. We stay in the kinds of hotels I like (very nice, in keeping with the ethos of the region, no big chains), eat in restaurants I’d go to with my friends that serve local food, and do things I’d be excited to do if I were on the trip (and I often am). It’s impossible to try to anticipate anyone else’s travel sensibilities. Of course, you have to listen, but our customers appreciate that we’ve created something we love and are sharing it with them. It feels like you’re visiting a friend who’s showing you their favorite places where they live.
For example, I fell in love with Todos Santos, a small town a few hours north of Cabo San Lucas on the Baja peninsula. I created a trip based on my experiences in this off-the-beaten-track gem and was so excited to share it with everyone.
2 . Know WHY you’re doing what you’re doing, and make sure your customers know too. If your customers know where you’re coming from, they’ll buy into the experience and help propagate the feeling! For example, our goal is “to empower women to safely expand their presence, connections and belonging in the world”. We try to express this to the women who travel with us at every opportunity we get, albeit not so formally. As a result, everyone’s on board with the mission, and they’re an active participant in making it happen.
There’s no better evidence of this than the friendships that have blossomed from Girls’ Guide trips. I believe that the best souvenir you can bring home is a new friend (or three). A high percentage of the women who travel with us join us on trips year after year, often with other women they met on previous trips. They feel at home in our close-knit community that welcomes women of any age who are open to discovery. We support this connection with a private Facebook group to connect women who have gone on our trips and others who haven’t yet. It’s a place to talk about travel and empower other women to get out there, follow their dreams and see the world. What’s remarkable is that women have made our mission their own, and are often more zealous advocates than we are!
3 . Get hands-on and meet local people. Everywhere we visit is someone else’s home. We are guests, not entitled tourists. This approach has numerous implications, such as minimizing our impact on the destination by going when it’s less crowded, respecting local customs and traditions, and honoring the way other people experience the world — their histories, food, language, customs, values, and priorities.
This principle comes alive by just interacting with the people who live there. We always create opportunities for our travelers to meet and converse with locals. It’s often the element of the trip they remember most fondly. A hands-on experience like making gin in Cornwall or an Ikebana flower arrangement in Kyoto is a great way to facilitate this interaction.
4 . Try to create experiences or moments that feel unexpected, serendipitous and magical. What people remember most about a trip isn’t the big monument, it’s the unexpected thing that happened that feels magical.
Recently on a trip to Peru, we ended our last night in Lima at one of the best restaurants in South America for a tasting menu in a private room. We had the owner/pastry chef (also a woman) surprise us by coming to say hello, answering questions and taking pictures with us. It made the whole evening feel special.
5 . Don’t try to see or do it all. One of the biggest mistakes I see, and one we’ve made plenty of times, is trying to do too much. If you try to see and do everything, you can be left feeling like you haven’t really seen anything. It’s OK if people feel like they want to come back for more.
I often create a lens through which to access a city or culture. For example, our Paris Authors and Artists or Art & Artisan Japan trips explore these locations from an artistic perspective. We also make sure to bake time into our itineraries so people can just “be” in the destination, without having to be constantly doing something.
Can you share with our readers how you have used your success to bring goodness to the world?
As a woman-owned business that focuses on helping women experience the world, we strongly believe in supporting other women and girls in all the places we visit. We try to eat at restaurants that have female head chefs. We make a point of delving into and understanding what the women’s experience is in each country we visit, not from a perspective of superiority but from one of respect. We have so much to learn from one another. On our trips, we almost always visit organizations supporting women locally, like Beads for Education in Kenya or Amal in Morocco.
Making a difference is in my blood and everyone on our team is invested in this calling. If women stick together and look after one another, we’ll be OK.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
My movement would bring people together, specifically women from 21–91, to mentor one another. I see great opportunity in what we can each learn from one another. Young women can teach older women about technology, how to appreciate current music, and enlighten them about life as a Gen X’er. Those of us who have lived a while longer can teach the younger women how to forgive themselves, to be kinder to themselves, to put down their phones and notice everything and everyone around them, to slow down and not sweat the small stuff. Perhaps they could help each other protect our environment and get back out into mother nature which in turn heals us all.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
@gg2theworld on IG
@gg2theworld on FB
https://www.pinterest.com/girlsguidetheworld/
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About The Interviewer: Savio P. Clemente, TEDx speaker and Stage 3 cancer survivor, infuses transformative insights into every article. His journey battling cancer fuels a mission to empower survivors and industry leaders towards living a truly healthy, wealthy, and wise lifestyle. As a Board-Certified Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC, ACC), Savio guides readers to embrace self-discovery and rewrite narratives by loving their inner stranger, as outlined in his acclaimed TEDx talk: “7 Minutes to Wellness: How to Love Your Inner Stranger.” From his best-selling book to his impactful work as a media journalist covering resilience and wellness trends with notable celebrities and TV personalities, Savio’s words touch countless lives. His philosophy, “to know thyself is to heal thyself,” resonates in every piece.
