Just weeks after J was diagnosed with multiple allergies at 9 months old, we were due to fly to America to visit my husband’s family.
Suddenly I had so many questions – Can I take an epipen on a plane? Is it safe to fly? What is food labelling like? Where could we eat out? The list goes on. I found myself Googling, searching Facebook forums and scrambling around trying to find all the information I needed from different sources. It was stressful, time consuming and I wasn’t sure who I could trust.
Since then we’ve had another allergy baby and been on five more international trips including France, Spain and Dubai. We’ve learnt a lot about travelling with allergies along the way, had a few minor mishaps – like when J had a reaction from a hired car seat – but also had amazing family experiences.
I am a passionate traveller – I have visited over 50 countries across six continents – but travelling with allergies is a whole different world. So I started to wonder if there was a way to bring together all the information I wanted and to help other people travel more confidently with allergies.
Then fate struck! I was in a forum on Facebook when Kyle Dine (Canadian food allergy educator) wrote a message asking if anyone was interested in a website about travelling with allergies. We got chatting, he introduced me to Kortney from AllergyGirlEats and Allie from MissAllergicReactor and an idea was born.
These people are inspiring. They have all grown up with multiple allergies but have never let them hold them back – they have all travelled, lived and explored extensively abroad. They have shown me that it is possible to live the life I want for my children.
We bounced ideas around and on very little budget but with a lot of hard work, designed, created and built a brand new website for the allergy community. There was lots of research, a few big overhauls, many nights spent tinkering and one major last minute redesign.
But a year later, having still never met in person, we have just launched Allergy Travels!
I couldn’t be prouder of what we have achieved together.
The site lets you leave reviews of airlines and countries to help others see how allergy friendly they are. There is also an extensive forum which we hope will grow into a hive of information and a chance for allergy travellers to connect and share their knowledge.
The other great thing about the site is the Travel Tips pages. We already have some interesting and inspiring articles on there and this is going to grow as we speak to more allergy travellers, holiday providers and share our top tips.
The response from the allergy community has been amazing and I am so pleased to see how excited people are about it. This is only the beginning and as people start leaving reviews and the site starts growing, I hope we will help many more people to travel the world with allergies.
But for now, we are sitting back and enjoying seeing our vision come to life.
So head on over to AllergyTravels.com, take a look around, leave a review and start planning your next adventure!
Great to hear that the new website is up and running. Good luck with the new venture x
All your hard work, finally here’s the end result (so far…) just think of how many families you’re going to help with this venture, it’s wonderful – keep it up peeps xxx
So pleased for you that Allergy Travels has take off so well…and lovely to read the back story! Fingers crossed for you that it continues to do well and help many people. Eb x
I would have been so scared to get on that plane so soon after diagnosis. It is such a scary time, isn’t it? You feel like you’re in limbo a little bit at the start of that journey, and I remember you saying that it was very different for you when A. started showing signs of allergies. The more we talk about allergies, the better.