Welcome
If you’ve arrived here looking for Travelman, you’re in the right place.
A brief synopsis: Travelman is the memoir of Wellington-based travel industry veteran Jerry Bridge. It combines extraordinary travel adventures with the story of building one of Britain’s leading long-haul travel companies, set against the changing face of the global travel industry.
I’ve spent most of my life travelling the world, first with a backpack and later building two award-winning travel companies. Somewhere along the way, I realised that the greatest journeys are not always the ones marked on a map. Travelman is the story of how a London lad with more curiosity than common sense turned a love of travel into a career, and why the lessons learned on the road proved just as valuable in business as they did in life.
I hope you’ll click through to my website – travelman.nz – that’s where you’ll find an outline of the story, along with photographs and news about the launch.
A few lessons learned along the way.
Life has a habit of teaching us lessons when we least expect them. Some are amusing, like discovering why burying your passport in the sand on a beach in the south of France is not the best of ideas. Others are more serious, including the moment I learned that writing a shareholders’ agreement on the back of a beer mat is unlikely to end well.
The adventures, the mistakes and the people I met along the way shaped both my travels and my business life.
Where it all began
My father, Walter Bridge, was one of Britain’s early travel industry pioneers. In 1949, he founded a Swiss travel service, making overseas holidays possible for ordinary families after the Second World War. He also encouraged me to interrail and hitchhike around Europe when I was just 16 years old. At the time it felt perfectly normal, and it sparked a lifelong curiosity about the world that has never left me.
If you’d like to learn more about Walter’s remarkable life, you can find his story and archive film on the video link above.
From backpacker to travel entrepreneur
University gave me a degree, but travelling gave me an education.
After graduating, I set off on a 22-month overland journey to Australia without a mobile phone, a guidebook or a credit card. The trip included driving 24,000km around Australia in an ageing Holden Station Wagon, taking whatever work I could find to pay for food and fuel.
Those experiences eventually led me into the travel industry, where I founded Bridge the World and later Bridge and Wickers.
Travel and business
People often ask me where they should travel next or how they should approach building a business. After more than 30 years in the travel industry, and a lifetime spent exploring the world, I’m always happy to point people in the right direction. If you’re planning an adventure, starting a business or thinking about selling one, feel free to get in touch.
