Our Mission
The mission of Traveling Ink is to encourage people to be more intentional with life, people, and travel. We help facilitate this mission with two main services, travel planning and team building. We want your time spent with us to be enriching and fun. And, if possible, we want you to fall in love even a bit more with Charleston, SC.
Charleston Travel Services
While we encourage travel all over the world and quite frequently road trip out for a long weekend trip, we focus our travel services on the Charleston Lowcountry. After all, you can serve folks best in the travel industry when you are extremely well acquainted with the area where you are encouraging the travel.
Being well acquainted with Charleston has been a part of the character of Traveling Ink from the start. Our team spends copious amounts of time out and about in Charleston visiting attractions, testing tours, attending events, and, yes, eating Charleston cuisine for your benefit. We do that research so that we can make unbiased recommendations for people visiting the Lowcountry (and quite often for locals who just want to enjoy their city more).
None of the tours or attractions we recommend pay to be featured on the Traveling Ink site. We reccommend the tours and venues we do because we are confident that guests will enjoy a quality experience there. These are the same places and activities we recommend to our family and friends when they visit Charleston. Since one size does not fit all when it comes to a tour or a meal, we try and offer a variety of reccommendations and will happily plan a full vacation itinerary for a couple, business associate, family (or family reunion) in need once we find out what is important to your group. We offer this planning service at no extra charge to your party, so there's no reason not to give us a call to pick our brains about the city we love.
Charleston Team Building
You may wonder what travel and team building have to do with one another. We realized over time that many of the tours and activities that we recommended to travelers were also a great fit for groups trying to build community and strengthen their group dynamic. We've also built some of our team building offerings from the ground up taking advantage of many wonderful locations and activities in Charleston.
These activities quite often allow for team building in a non-traditional environment for groups looking to think outside the box when it comes to team building. There's nothing wrong with a Myers Briggs test, but we'd rather get your team to come together tackling a scavenger hunt in downtown Charleston, noshing on some Charleston cuisine, climbing around a ropes course, or participating in one of our team building events that supports a local charity.
We can help you plan and execute team building for a one time event or conference or as often as once a month. We offer options that can be brought to your office or meeting space as well as options out and about for those looking for a change of scenery. You may select from one of the activities in our team building section or let one of our team planners build a custom experience for your group. We look forward to making building community with your team fun!
Our History
Traveling Ink was launched in April of 2013, but the research for the site came long before the springtime launch. Founder, Audra Gibson, spents years in the Charleston tour industry working in various capacities for two of the downtown carriage companies. She already loved the city of Charleston (living downtown for a time will do that to you), and soon fell in love with serving travelers from around the world.
She saw a gap in the hospitality industry here however, in that many of the travel sites were advertising driven and a number of the folks giving recommendations had never actually been to the attractions they were telling people about. There's too many wonderful things in Charleston not to send folks to the best, so she set out to research and recommend the Charleston attractions she would recommend to her own loved ones when they visited town. As the company grew, she expanded Traveling Ink's reach to be able to offer the ability to search for hotels, plan events for groups both large and small, and even hire your own private concierge for the day if helpful.
Find What's Helpful For Your Time In Charleston
What services are most helpful to you? Please click below or browse using our navigation above to find resources for your group. We always encourage our guests to reach out for help. If you can't find something easily on the website, just give us a call at 843-633-1338 or fill out a contact form and someone will get right back in touch.