Hi! We are Bettina and Kyle from The Next Trip. The Next Trip is a travel and fashion blog and our way to share our travel stories and Bettina’s latest fashion addictions. We are both full-time professionals with limited free time and want to inspire other people with the latest fashion trends and to travel more. A lot of people see traveling as stressful, time-consuming, and expensive. But it doesn’t have to be that way! On The Next Trip, we share our adventures and experiences, our insights into how we find and book cheap flights, and how we manage to fit a full trip into a weekend. We hope to inspire our readers to live life to the fullest and go on a weekend trip (or longer!) to explore another city, state, or country that interests them.
Being an international couple, Bettina is from Bern, Switzerland and Kyle is from Vancouver, Canada, we often get asked about our story. Our story began 7 years ago, when we both studied in Helsinki, Finland for a semester. We fell in love and discovered our shared passion for traveling. Only a few people know that we didn’t fall for one another in Finland, but during a weekend trip to Riga, Latvia while on exchange. After half a year of studying in Helsinki and exploring Europe together, we were forced to master a long-distance relationship (long distance being a 9 hour flight) for 2 years until Bettina decided to move to Canada. For work reasons, we both moved to Chicago, where we’re currently based. We absolutely love living in Chicago and find it is a great base for continuing our fashion and travel adventures.
When did you start blogging and what inspired you to start you blog?
Ever since we met, we have been exploring the world together and have been expanding our already large bucket list of places we want to go to and see. We often get asked by friends, family, and coworkers how we manage to keep up such a busy travel schedule while working full-time, and how we come up with our itineraries. All these questions made us realize that we want to share our passion for traveling with the hope of inspiring others to use their weekends and time off to explore the world.
Bettina has been a fashion addict as long as she can remember. She used to bike to school and eat very small lunches in order to save her bus and lunch money to invest in a growing wardrobe. While studying, she worked part-time in retail and used to “invest” the majority of her paycheck back into the store she worked at. Nowadays her fashion addiction is expressed through taking over Kyle’s closet, his suitcase space, and having 4 closets of her own around the world (literally: her closets are located in Chicago, Vancouver, and 2 in Switzerland). On The Next Trip (www.thenexttrip.xyz), Bettina shares her latest fashion inspiration and how she manages to travel with all her favorite pieces (and there are many) while complying with the limitations of airline hand-luggage regulations.
What is your favorite blog post that you have written?
Kyle: My favorite blog post is the Introduction to Asia 2017 post. My passion for travel begins well before we arrive at our destination. I love the hunt for great flight deals and happily spend my free time researching and piecing together a crazy itinerary for our next trip. We often get confused faces when we tell people where we’re going as they don’t understand how it’s possible. That’s why I really enjoyed writing our Intro to Asia 2017 post as I pieced together our destinations, flights, and layovers. Most people begin planning a trip around a destination they have in mind. Generally, this is not true for us- our bucket list is so long, pretty much everywhere is fair game. What usually happens is I find a good flight deal and we piece together everything around that flight!
Bettina: This is a really tough question! I put my heart into every single blog post. If I had to choose though, I would say my favorite blog post is A Mini Vacation in Cancun, Mexico (https://www.thenexttrip.xyz/a-mini-vacation-in-cancun-mexico/). Our trip to Cancun was a spur of the moment trip. One Sunday morning in a coffee shop in Lincoln Square, Kyle and I reviewed our calendars for May and realized we had no plans for two weekends in a row which is almost unheard of for us. We quickly checked Southwest for cheap flights and found a great deal to Cancun thanks to our Companion Pass. The weekend in Cancun was our first beach vacation in almost a year and it was a well-needed and heavenly break. I loved sharing the weekend with our readers and hope I was able to inspire one or the other to take a weekend off and go to Mexico. After all, it’s only a 3 hour flight from Chicago!
What do you love about blogging?
Blogging for us is a way to share our passion with everyone who is wanting to hear/read about it and to keep family and friends up to date. It is also a great way for us to re-live the entire trip by journaling it. We are relatively new in the blogging world and love everything about it – from the planning, picture taking, writing, to the publishing, and most of all engaging with our audience.
What are some brands that you have worked with, or some brands that you would love to work with?
Bettina works with Swirl + Sparkle who provide her with amazing handmade makeup brush cleaners which are hand luggage approved.
We work with CaseApp who makes sure our phones and laptops are beautifully protected while on the road.
We would love to work with smaller business and help them grow and gain more exposure.