Empowering Neurodiverse Travellers – a Personal Travel Manager’s Mission
Featured photo: PTM Melanie Whyte’s quest to unlock the joy of travel for families with neurodiverse children has been a long-term passion project.
Devonport-based and certified autism travel professional, PTM Melanie Whyte, can now add ‘Swiftie’ to her CV.
When Taylor Swift stepped onto the stage in Sydney last weekend, TravelManagers’ Melanie Whyte was there, swept up in the joy of more than 80,000 adoring fans. For most of the Swifties in the crowd, acquiring tickets to the concert was the tricky part. However, for Whyte, the priority was putting arrangements in place to ensure that her teenage daughter, who has autism, would not feel overwhelmed by the sensory overload of such an experience.
As a Certified Autism Travel Professional with more than a decade of experience in arranging travel for people with special needs, Whyte has exactly the creativity and understanding required for such an undertaking. Her quest to unlock the joy of travel for families with neurodiverse children has been a long-term passion project for the Tasmania-based personal travel manager (PTM), who says much of her expertise in understanding the specific needs of children with autism stems from personal experience.
“Kids with autism deserve to see the beauty of this world as much as anyone else, they learn so much through travel,” she states. “I have two neurodiverse children of my own, and figuring out how to provide them with positive, enriching international travel experiences has truly opened the world to them.”
Whyte says TravelManagers’ culture of collaboration has been integral to her success. She is known as a knowledge bank for other personal travel managers’ whose clients have these specific requirements. As a result of her expertise, she regularly takes on new client referrals shared by others in the network.
“When PTMs heard I was arranging accommodation and transfers for this trip, within twenty minutes, I had received phenomenal offers of support from colleagues across the greater Sydney area as well as from TravelManagers’ National Partnership Office (NPO) team.”
Whyte hopes that her daughter’s experience in Sydney will inspire other families to introduce their neurodiverse children to the delights of seeing the world together.
After three and half hours of dancing at the Taylor Swift concert it was time for the girls to take their shoes off.
“I earned major kudos from my daughter, and set the tone for our entire experience, by tracking Taylor’s real-time flight location as she made her way to Sydney,” she concludes. “If you pay attention to the finer details, it’s entirely possible to create wonderful holiday experiences for families with additional needs.”
