Exclusive Luxury Experiences Founder, Holli Rovenger, Talks Travel, Triumph and Reinvention   

Women can relate to Holli Rovenger who once found herself middle aged, facing a nasty divorce, and unsure what her next move should be. Like most women, she had her moments of despair and faced ugly truths like not having paid close enough attention to her finances. With her days of working for the sheer enjoyment of it ending, Rovenger needed a new career fast.

Today, Rovenger is a trained dietician, speaker, two-time author, entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Women’s Inner Circle. She just added to her credentials, founder and travel guide of Exclusive Luxury Experiences, a travel adventure designed especially for baby boomer women who have faced a life transition. Reinvention expert that she is, Rovenger accomplished it all in roughly four years.

Although Rovenger described her divorce as, “two trains hitting her head on.” She channeled her initial nervous energy into writing her first book, The Simple & Sassy Guide to Financial Empowerment. The book was a natural manifestation of what was happening in her life at the time. Here she was, a strong woman with an MBA, who hadn’t paid enough attention to her own finances and was caught off guard. Rovenger wanted to empower women to become more financially savvy and secure.

When you’re already a successful author, and speaker who teaches women and men how to improve their overall health and success through changes in their mindsets and behaviors, why launch a travel experience? Personal growth and a desire to help others grow were Rovenger’s reasons for expanding into luxury travel.

Rovenger’s shared her three main goals for participants at each Exclusive Luxury Experience:

Learn to Express Gratitude
“You don’t see the world as it is; you see it as you are.” Keep gratitude at the forefront and learn to express it daily. “Nobody wants to be divorced, and no one wants to be widowed,” Rovenger said of the women who travel on an Exclusive Luxury Experience, but she believes gratitude keeps a person’s focus positive. She advocates writing down at least three things for which you are grateful each day.

Some days, she said, being grateful is as simple as, “I’m glad the sun is shining,” or “I’m glad that I opened my eyes.” However simplistic, it’s a step toward seeing the world from a positive perspective.

Learn to Experience
Rovenger has traveled extensively. In the beginning, she traveled with tours that herded people about and showed them things. Along the way, she learned there’s a difference between seeing and experiencing a place. She teaches her travelers to experience the richness of the people and cultures they visit by talking to the locals and getting the back door experience to understand how people differ in other cultures. To that end, Rovenger hires private guides for her excursions that know the area, not as a tour guide, but as a native who lives the culture daily.

Rovenger asks her fellow travelers, “What would you do because of the travel experience? How will travel change your life? Is there something that you want to come out of this trip?” because part of the experience, in addition to luxurious accommodations and learning about the culture, is self-discovery.

Learn about Yourself
While on one of Rovenger’s trips, like the upcoming Tuscany experience slated for spring 2016, travelers will stretch their comfort zones and increase their self-confidence. The death of a spouse or an ugly divorce can leave a person feeling a bit like a drifter carrying emotional baggage—even decades later. New experiences help women to stretch their comfort zones in a positive way to uncover their “why” or motivation to move forward in their lives.

Why Women Only?

Why does Rovenger plan women-only trips? “It’s a lot different when you’re traveling with guys. You put your makeup on. There’s a little flirtation going on… I’m creating an environment where women can get together and travel. It’s a safe environment.” The focus on baby boomers came about because Rovenger wanted a specific age group that could easily relate to each other.

Rovenger has carefully researched the locales for her trips, but being the detail-oriented woman she is, she didn’t stop there. She also took classes to ensure the safety and success of her trips, as well as how to create an experiential travel atmosphere. When choosing a destination, Rovenger draws from her extensive personal travel experiences.

She quickly pointed out the difference between the austere accommodations of a major hotel chain and a stay at a comfortable, luxurious bed and breakfast. The comfortable and inviting environment of the later, makes it much easier for the women to immerse themselves in the culture and be comfortable enough to focus honestly on personal growth. Smaller groups, contribute to the more intimate setting as well.

Connecting the Dots

As travelers share an experience, such as a cooking class, Rovenger quickly helps them to link the experience to their daily lives. For example, how do the ingredients in a dish they have just prepared correlate with the ingredients necessary to create the life they want to live. To enrich their travel experience even more, Rovenger just completed a travel journal/planner that each traveler will receive, which she plans to market to the general public as well.

Rovenger called Santa Fe, the location of her fall 2016 trip, “the perfect location for self-discovery and wellness.” She loves Santa Fe with its serene environment and hot springs enough to plan the ultimate “Wellcation”—a vacation for health and wellness. Rovenger will tap her experience as a dietician to teach women to become healthy and happy from the inside out. She assures that the Santa Fe trip will focus on self-awareness and self-improvement.

Tools of Reinvention

Rovenger took her devastation and turned it around to make a positive from a negative. She suggests women need three things to succeed after a life-changing experience.

Self-confidence: Rovenger knows that her strong sense of self and her strong “why” are the reasons she kept growing her businesses and her life even after facing one of the biggest ever. The biggest risk takers usually have the most self-confidence.

A Journal: Keep yourself focused on your “why.” Face your feelings every day and put your plans in writing so that you do not drift through life.

Passion: Find something that makes you desire to get up in the morning. If you are not sure what your passion is, there are tests you can take online to help you narrow it down. It can be especially challenging when a woman used to be part of a couple, and now has to decide on her own what her next step should be. A passion might begin with a simple desire to learn to eat healthier. Taking cooking classes to learn to prepare healthy meals could lead to a business catering healthy meals for busy executives.

It isn’t possible to control the people and events around you, but Holli Rovenger has proven that being grateful for the opportunity to start over can be the first step to building a business and life you are proud of. And if you can’t find a reason to get out of bed in the morning, maybe it’s time you took a Wellcation.