Recently, I was discussing my winter solo travel experience with an acquaintance. After telling her...
Today, I’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to a fellow Floridian and travel industry pro, Fred Carlson. Fred and his wife Marie founded their company, SerVacations™ , right in the middle of the pandemic; his company fills an interesting niche for travelers who may be looking for a bit more purpose on their adventures.
Tell us a little bit about SerVacations. How did you get started and what has it been like so far?
SerVacations™ is a group travel community celebrating service tourism that welcomes families and people of all ages to combine volunteering with vacation. We want to inspire folks to create their own volunteer vacations or join us on one of ours! We’re all about a deep dive into a particular city or region. We explore different neighborhoods each day, serving at a local charity, eating authentic and delicious cuisine, and experiencing fun-filled sights that often include a specialty tour with a local guide. Our tours leave you feeling more connected to one another and truly connected to the community that you visit.
God gave us the vision for SerVacations in the summer of 2020 and the company was formed and started tours in the spring of 2021, right in the middle of the pandemic! The company is really just myself and my wife Marie and a team of some very good vendors. We’ve always had a passion for travel and serving, but had never thought of pursuing it as a career, especially during a pandemic! The fact that it did not make much rational sense and that we could not do it on our own, but only by God’s grace actually encouraged us to do it.
What sort of guests & groups do you work with?
Currently, we offer single-day tours in the Tampa Bay area and soon will be releasing a schedule of outbound multi-day trips to some exciting cities outside of Florida, and a series of single-day trips around Florida. One of the markets that we did not expect at first was the big welcome we got from our great homeschool families, many of whom make up our community of regular travelers. We look forward to planning regular homeschool day trips for homeschool groups across central Florida.
Besides homeschooling, many of our guests include cross-generational families where grandparents wish to inspire the value of giving back to their grandkids and adult children by volunteering together on vacation. We also love to serve faith-based groups, senior living communities, and corporate groups. We have the opportunity for a particular charity to create a “fun”-draising event that includes a SerVacation for their supporters and staff, possibly including volunteering at that charity’s facility.
What is the biggest challenge you have faced putting together your trips?
It’s probably lining up an impactful and sustainable volunteer experience with the schedule of our tours. A big part of our job is to have strong partnerships with non-profits across the city, state, and country and always be on the lookout for new causes and charities and work to vet them. There are a lot of ways to serve and those can be on-site and off-site. Service is about others and takes a lot of forms. We wish to explore that in our community of volunteer travelers and love to hear people’s stories about how they served even if it’s in seemingly the most simple ways.
Do you have any favorite memories from your work?
Yes, one of my favorite memories is a private tour of the Tarpon Springs sponge docks that we did for a home school family that lives in central Florida. They had just moved to Florida from Colorado due to changes during Covid, and they hadn’t yet really met a lot of people. The mom Leslie is so sweet, she was very eager to explore Florida with her family and do something special that day for her husband Alex’s birthday. I’m so glad they chose to do a SerVacation.
After the tour, boat ride, and lunch, we had secretly arranged with our step-on guide to take them to Hella’s Bakery. Once there, we bypassed the lines, whipped out party hats and blowers for the whole family of four, and enjoyed some of the best cake and pastries in America. The kids loved it and couldn’t stop hugging their dad. The whole restaurant sang him happy birthday and they went home with some of the coolest photos and memories. I actually just spoke with Leslie the other day as we’re planning their next tour for this fall, and she remarked again just how special it was for them. The thing is, it was really an honor for us to get to be part of this special moment for them, and I will never forget it either. The joy on their faces was truly priceless, and now they are like family.
How do you plan to grow in the future? Anything fun in the works?
We will be starting to offer multi-day tours to other cities so that our current customers have more opportunities to travel with our family and each other. Homeschool families love to travel together and realize how educational travel can be. Additionally, the plan is to offer monthly single-day SerVacations for homeschool groups where each week we pick up in a different area of central Florida.
Why should people consider a service vacation, if they haven’t already?
When we temporarily forget about ourselves and serve others or a cause, we can open ourselves to become more connected to that community. We become available. We’re not just trying to check sights off our bucket list; we’re engaging with the neighborhood. Volunteering is a stellar way to get to know the heart of a community — to understand its challenges, its joys and accomplishments, and what its needs are.
You may just be visiting for a short time, but rather than scratching the surface, you’re diving in deep. Ironically, many of us convince ourselves that in our own community with work and school and schedules, we have less time to volunteer. Well, vacation takes away that excuse if we let it. We finally have the time outside our usual element, along with our family, friends, or simply on our own, to volunteer and give of ourselves.
This is actually a topic I discuss further on our blog, and I encourage your readers to check out this post about Why Vacation Can Be the Perfect Time & Place for Volunteering!
What’s one destination on your personal bucket list and why?
Well, we just got back from a wonderful vacation as a family to Turkey. Our trip included exploring a good portion of the country for 10 days, seeing some old friends, making new ones, (our guide is now like family), and we even went hot air ballooning in Cappadocia! We really stretched ourselves and the kids as far as pace, adventure, and more exotic travel. That said it was the hospitality of the Muslim people that was the biggest take-away for us. I can see us wanting to visit more middle eastern countries.
But one of the next international trips that is on our bucket list is Nepal. We have a great love for two associated charities, Great Commission Partnerships, and Global Mission Nepal that plant churches and raise up pastors in Nepal. We were recently blessed with the opportunity to support the building of a church addition over there outside Kathmandu. The opportunity to see it in person would be amazing. Seeing Mount Everest might be neat too.
Domestically, a trip that I am eager to do and offer to our community is San Antonio, Fredericksburg, and the Alamo in Texas.
I’ve also never been to Pigeon Forge and hear that it is the place to be around Christmas time these days. But first, this June, we are going to be doing a trial run for an exciting Fathers Day baseball trip to be offered in Summer 2023, where we watch a major league game at Wrigley Field, tour that and the city of Chicago, volunteer in Des Moines, set a world record in Omaha, and even visit the Field of Dreams movie site! Sorry I guess that wasn’t just one 
How can potential travelers learn more about you?
Check out the website at www.servacations.com or give us a call at 813-498-2229. We’d be more than happy to discuss plans with you!
