How to Travel With the Gig Economy

One of the advantages of on-demand apps is that they’re available in multiple cities around the country, if not the world. If you’re taking shifts on one of these apps, chances are you can do the same when you travel to other cities.

For workers, this opens up more opportunities both financially and socially. The gigs make it possible to combine work with pleasure, travel with minimal expenses, and easily meet locals in the area.

Here are some tips on how to make the most of on-demand work while traveling.

Cover Your Travel Expenses

If you’re going to be driving around a new city to see the sights, it doesn’t hurt to make some money while you’re at it. Pick up a passenger or two doing something you would be doing anyway to cover basic expenses for your travel, like food and gas.

Done right, you’ll be doing minimal work on your holiday while not spending a penny that you don’t earn right back. You can adjust your shifts so you don’t feel like you’re “working” on your vacation. A few hours of work is usually more than enough to cover a meal or a tank of gas.

Get to Know Locals

Picking up rides, deliveries, or tasks is also a surefire way to meet some locals who can offer you tips on where to visit after your shift is over. Depending on what jobs you sign up for, you’ll get to meet a wide variety of people who can tell you where the coolest bars are, or where to get the best view of the city.

Traveling to a brand new town where you don’t know anyone can be a bit daunting for some. But taking on-demand work ensures that you’ll at least meet some people who can give you that local insight and make you feel welcome.

Explore the Town

Many of these on-demand jobs require you to travel to different neighborhoods, which is a great way to explore a new city. You might stumble into areas that aren’t mentioned in any official guidebooks. You’ll also be able to get a much better feel for the place by going where locals go, rather than sticking to tourist areas.

Plus, if you’re a blogger or vlogger, it also adds opportunities to create content that could be useful or interesting for other gig economy workers, or just fun travel content. Write about the unexpected places you’ve been, the streets you passed by, and your impressions of the place based on residential areas as well as commercial ones.

Save Money By Going to a Cheaper City

Maybe you’d love to travel more, but you can’t see how you’re going to cover your housing expenses. One of things you can do with gig economy work is that you can travel to a cheaper city while renting out your place to get the most out of your trip.

So for example, if you live in San Francisco, few places are as expensive. Whether you want to break even on your rent or mortgage, or save a decent amount, you can find a city that would be cheaper to stay in than what it would cost to pay your rent or mortgage back home. If you can make it work, it’ll be like getting paid to travel.

Take as Many Trips As You Want

Since you aren’t bound by the clock or even a boss, if your goal is to travel more, on-demand work can give you the opportunity to see someplace new while continuing to earn an income. Provided you pick the locations where work is available, you can rotate your place of work as frequently as you want.

The advantage of the gig economy is that work isn’t just limited to one location. Combined with a flexible schedule, being location independent gets rid of traditional barriers that can keep you stuck in an office and prevent you from being able to travel.

List of Available Cities

To start you off, here are a few on-demand apps and where they currently operate:

Amazon Flex
Caviar
Dolly
DoorDash
Handy
Lyft
Postmates
TaskRabbit
Uber
Wonolo