Article originally published by Voyage Minnesota Magazine on May 5, 2022
Today we’d like to introduce you to OLYE Travel.
We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
OYLE Travel’s beautiful story starts out as organic as they come. It is truly a story about a chosen family, and the love for travel and aligning dreams. Micayla and Tyler were born into the same given family, as cousins, yet born 10 years apart. They were not especially close growing up, yet their deep personal, chosen family relationship truly started to blossom when, at age 16, Micayla visited Tyler in Honolulu, HI where he was living at the time. Britt was living in Honolulu at the same time as Tyler and they met while working at the same restaurant. They learned quickly that they were both from Minnesota, and while that connected them, it was not what bonded them. They both spent the majority of their 20’s in Hawai’i, where they grew up together, learned from and supported one another, while creating a lifelong friendship and family dynamic. Britt ended up moving back to Minnesota while Tyler moved to Las Vegas and ultimately ended up in Florida a year after. Even with physical distance between them, they continued to grow their relationship, beginning with planning domestic trips to visit one another on adventures. This mutual love of travel grew into Tyler visiting Britt in Puerto Rico in 2014, where she stayed for a month and then they embarked on a trip to Colombia together in 2015, where Tyler showed her the ways of traveling on a budget, staying at hostels, using public transportation and really embracing the locals and the culture outside of the common “touristy” perspective. At that point, Tyler had been traveling for several years through the military and his own solo travels around the world. After this remarkable endeavor, Tyler and Britt planned a trip to Egypt in 2016, in which Micayla was then invited to join. Britt and Micayla had only met once, briefly, and this adventure bonded them as chosen family for life as well. During this time, Stephon and Tyler had already met and were starting a flourishing, romantic partnership of their own. Their travels together across Europe in 2017 bonded them on a much deeper level, recognizing common passions for photography, architecture and most of all, travel. As their bond deepened, Stephon became part of our chosen family and thus began the continuation of our yearly family vacations. The first of which was a cabin trip in 2018 to New Hampshire with a group of twelve mutual friends, which in turn, led to a second, gigantic group trip to the island of Vieques in Puerto Rico in 2019. (Let’s talk about group travel!! You need help, we got answers!)
In March of 2020, we embarked on a beautiful, yet an intense trip to Switzerland and Portugal, right in the midst of the spread of Coronavirus. Whereas we ended up getting stuck in Portugal and had to come together to navigate what that looked like to get back to America. We then took on traveling to Costa Rica in March of 2021 where we navigated traveling amongst a pandemic (Lots of advice to share about that!!) and an OLYE camping trip to Florida’s beautiful, natural springs in the summer of 2021. Our last big family trip was back to the islands where we celebrated the union of Stephon and Tyler with twenty five family and friends on the Big Island of Hawai’i, while making new memories on the island of Oahu. (Lots of advice on how to plan a trip for a very large group!)
It continues to be an unspoken agenda, that the four of us would all travel together, internationally, once a year, and domestically together in between. We have made all our own travel plans and have learned and grown so much from each place we have had the opportunity to explore. Our next international trip is to visit Indonesia in celebration of Britt’s 40th birthday and our dreams remain endless of all the places we seek to visit next.
The way OLYE Travel came to be, as we were sitting at a restaurant in Manuel Antonio, also known as Quepos, in Costa Rica and reminiscing about our adventures and having such deep gratitude for how the universe has aligned to make all these dreams become a reality for us. We got the notion of wanting to help others create their reality and showing people that through our experiences made possible, so can theirs. Thus why the name “Our Lens, Your Eyes” came to fruition. Our desire is not to create a trip of our dreams for our clients, but in order to create the dreams in their eyes, via the knowledge from our lenses.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
As comes with any new venture in life, we knew there would be obstacles along the road to success. What has not been an obstacle, and what we believe are the pertinent keys to our success, is our tenacity, gumption, drive, determination and desire to be fully invested in the prosperity of our passion, OLYE. One hindrance we have experienced is navigating the balance between our traditional jobs that bring in a steady income, and the amount of time and place where we must all contribute to make OLYE successful; to make our passion and dreams a reality.
A second challenge we have come across is realizing our lack of knowledge with certain social media platforms (Facebook in particular) and maintaining SEO, of which is quite new to the four of us.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
The name of our business is OYLE Travel which stands for “Our Lens, Your Eyes” Travel. We’d like readers to know that we utilize our own personal experiences to guide clients through the complete travel process, from the planning stage to the experience, as we would from our own lens, yet we create a personalized experience through their eyes. In a sense, we are a “one stop shop”, whether it comes to answering any multitude of travel questions; from creating a seamless and simplified trip itinerary; to booking flights, lodging, excursions and reservations for the client; even to hiring OLYE to provide drone/videography/photography services for the client on their trip; down to travel blogs that are always accessible to answer FAQS and get inspired by; and lastly, continued support along our clients’ journey to ensure that they not only feel 100% satisfied, but confident and secure during the duration of their travels.
What we are known for at OLYE and what we specialize in: travel services, travel curators and designers, videography, photography, travel blogs and media, and soon to be travel merchandise!
What sets OLYE apart from others and what we are most proud of brand wise, is that we have deeply diversified ownership within the company and demand inclusivity of every client who touches our business. “We” being Britt, Stephon, Micayla and Tyler, are four unique individuals from diverse backgrounds, cultures and present day experiences, yet we are deeply interconnected through our travel together and being one anothers’ chosen family.
The OLYE team encompasses young, old, female, male, black, white, straight and queer individuals. Their individual passions range from spirituality to photography, to nursing, to architecture. We’ve got single and married individuals, with and without kids. So we have a good representation of many different clientele backgrounds. Some of us have been traveling since our childhoods and others only began recently in the last 5-10 years, however, we have all embarked on numerous epic travels around the world, both solo and together as a team.
What OYLE wants your readers to know about our brand, offerings, services, etc… is that each of our own personal travel journeys as individuals began in a place of unknowing, a lack of finances, questioning, risk taking and searching, in order to discover how on earth do we make traveling the world a part of our ongoing lives? What we want your readers and our clients to know about that statement is that you do not have to have a single ounce of knowledge or have an abundance of financial security in order to make a dream trip become a reality. We personally have done the arduous and tedious legwork so that our clients can sit back and enjoy their adventures. OYLE Travel meets each individual or group of travelers, exactly where they are, and we customize our services to fit their singular needs and desires for their travel goals.
What does success mean to you?
How we define success at OYLE travel is not some wordy definition that conforms to society’s traditional expectation of success. For us, success is a state of being and a state of mind. It is realized in those indescribable moments where we feel our truth and know for certain that we are accomplishing something spectacular that truly fulfills our spirit and soul. Success for us is also not a place where you “get to” and you’ve completed the task of being successful. It is a continuous journey of accomplishing and redefining our version of achievement.
Advancement does not only fall into place when there is prosperity, it also lies in the moments of faltering and strife. The reason for this is that we recognize that during those junctures, there is tremendous opportunity for profound growth outside our own limited vision. When we reach those occasions, it is validation that we are pushing ourselves to our limit and limits are meant to be shattered!
Contact Info:
Email: olyetravel@gmail.com
Website: www.olyetravel.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/olye_travel
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/olyetravel/
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