Travel without masking: neuroaffirming adventures for families

Somewhere along the way, a lot of families quietly cross travel off the list. Not with a big announcement, just a gradual letting go. The beach holiday that ended in meltdown. The airport that was too loud, too unpredictable, too much. The well-meaning relative who said, "Maybe next year when things are easier." And so the suitcases stay in the cupboard, and the dream of seeing the world together gets filed under "not for us."

Here is something worth pausing on: when over 600 neurodivergent young people were asked to list their interests, the top answer was not gaming, not animals, not trains. It was travel. The desire to explore the world does not disappear because airports are hard. It just goes unmet.

In Episode 42 of the Neurodivergent Pulse podcast, host Laetitia Andrac speaks with Agnes Abelsen, founder and CEO of Travengers AU, a multi-award-winning inclusive travel company creating supported travel experiences for neurodivergent young people across Australia and overseas. Agnes trained as a learning disability nurse in Norway, was inspired by her autistic younger sister Elise, and is a late-diagnosed ADHDer herself. Their conversation covers the neuroscience of why preparation matters, the moment Agnes knew her model was working, and the small everyday things parents can do right now to build a child's confidence long before any big trip.

Is travelling good for an autistic child?

Travelling with an autistic child is not only possible. For most neurodivergent young people, it is something they actively want. The biggest barrier is not airports, or sensory overload, or unpredictability. It is the assumption that neurodivergent people do not actually want to go anywhere. Agnes Abelsen has been quietly dismantling that assumption for six and a half years.

When people join Travengers, they fill in a profile listing their interests. Agnes expected gaming, animals, maybe trains to dominate. Instead, "at the top of our interest list is travel and destinations, and that's of, you know, over 600 people, that's the top one." She acknowledges there is some self-selection at play, but the pattern is consistent enough to be meaningful. A lot of neurodivergent young people are dreaming of the world, and quietly being told, by circumstance if not by words, that it is not for them.

Agnes saw this gap early, while working in disability support in Australia. She met a young neurodivergent man who had no friends and really wanted to travel. He asked if she would go with him. That question gave shape to something she had been thinking about for years: people with some support needs often do not get the opportunity to travel, and they also struggle to find friends who are similar to them, people they can be themselves around without worrying about saying the wrong thing or having to mask. At the time, there were no social groups for neurodivergent young people, let alone any way for them to travel together without needing a dedicated support person. Travengers was her answer to that gap.

The reframe at the heart of everything Agnes does is simple: the barrier is design, not desire.

What autism friendly travel actually looks like

Autism friendly travel starts with one foundational design decision: removing the need to mask. Agnes describes it plainly: "for our groups, the first thing is that everybody's neurodivergent, so it's a... yeah, it's naturally a safe space, where, yeah, if you go in another tour group, for example, there might be a mix and you might feel like you have to mask or not feel safe to be yourself." If you want to understand the real cost of sustained masking, Laetitia shares her own lived experience of what masking takes from a person over time.

In a national survey of over 1,000 Australian parents, 39% named better understanding of masking and burnout as one of their top priorities for the future, placing it alongside access to therapy and neuroinclusive schools. The desire for spaces where masking is not required is not a niche preference. It is something families are actively naming as essential.

Beyond group composition, Travengers builds its trips around several principles that any family can adapt:

• Safe group composition. Travelling alongside other neurodivergent people means shared interests are the norm, info-dumping is welcome, and nobody is performing neurotypicality for the benefit of strangers.

• Support guides on the ground. Guides help with everything from getting from A to B, to medication reminders, to social navigation between group members. Many guides are neurodivergent themselves.

• Sensory breaks built into the schedule. Not as an afterthought, but as a structural part of each day. Agnes notes that rest looks different for different nervous systems: "sometimes when we have rest breaks, we might have one person who just really needs to move. So then, yeah. There can be space for that too."

• Decompression days, not just sightseeing days. Time to decompress is treated as essential, not optional. A day by the pool or in a quiet space is as valid as a museum visit. Families can apply the same energy accounting framework at home to understand what charges and drains their child's nervous system.

• Matching trip intensity to the nervous system. Travengers offers everything from calm, nature-based experiences to high-stimuli city trips like Tokyo. Families can apply the same logic: a camping weekend and an international flight are both travel, and both have value.

• Flexibility over rigid itineraries. Plans shift when they need to. The goal is the experience, not the schedule.

• Pre-trip social stories and Zoom calls. Before any trip, Travengers sends a social story explaining what to expect, and runs a group Zoom where everyone can meet, see the itinerary, and ask questions. Reducing unknowns reduces anxiety.

How to prepare your autistic child for travel, step by step

Knowing how to prepare your autistic child for travel is the most powerful tool a family has, and preparation is free. Agnes is direct about this: over-planning is not overthinking, it is nervous system care.

That preparation work falls almost entirely on parents, and it is heavier than most people realise. Research from a national survey of 1,091 Australian families found that parents of neurodivergent children spend close to 10 hours each week on emotional regulation, advocacy, and administration alone. Planning a trip well is not a luxury. For many families, it is the difference between a holiday that works and one that does not.

Laetitia shared her own example from a recent trip to Malaysia, where she discovered that Kuala Lumpur airport offered a butterfly lanyard alongside the better-known sunflower lanyard, giving her family access to a sensory room and a simplified boarding process. She only found it because she looked, and that is exactly the point.

Here is a practical preparation sequence to work through before your next trip:

1. Check the airport's accessibility page. Agnes recommends this for every airport on your route: "before going to an airport, you can look up the airport's accessibility pages and see if they have a sensory room, if they have sensory maps. Some of them do." Many also offer hidden disability lanyards (sunflower, butterfly and others) that signal to staff that your family may need extra support.

2. Build a visual social story. Agnes suggests creating one "that explains step by step where you're going, what you're doing there, why you're doing it. Maybe have a photo on the side of it." Walk through the whole journey: the drive to the airport, check-in, security, the gate, the plane, arrival, the accommodation. If you want to understand why visual supports work when verbal instructions fall short, speech pathologist Jenn Winstone explains how visuals create anchors for emotional security during transitions.

3. Watch YouTube videos of the destination together. Seeing the airport terminal, the hotel lobby, or the beach you are heading to reduces the number of unknowns. It also builds anticipation rather than dread.

4. Hold a pre-trip family planning meeting. Sit down together, go through the itinerary, and let everyone ask their questions. Agnes frames this as an opportunity to "just make it exciting rather than scary."

5. Plan decompression days into the itinerary. Before you finalise any schedule, identify which days are low-demand. These are not wasted days. They are what makes the rest of the trip sustainable.

If you are carrying a stack of reports, therapy notes, and observations about your child's sensory triggers and patterns, that information is genuinely useful for trip planning. Understanding Zoe helps families make sense of those patterns so they can plan, whether for a holiday or for everyday life, with clarity rather than guesswork. You can try it free for 7 days.

How to build travel confidence in small steps

Neurodivergent travel tips often focus on the big trip. But confidence for big travel is built long before the first flight, in small moments that accumulate over years. Agnes is clear that parents do not need to wait until their child is "ready" for a major trip to start building the skills that will eventually make one possible.

It starts with language. Agnes recommends "just speaking positively about it, talking about the world and, maybe it can be even looking at travel videos, travel guide programs and things like that, or National Geographics. Like first getting that wonder of the world." The way we talk about travel shapes how children feel about it long before they ever pack a bag.

If you grow up thinking that travel is a scary thing, then it might always be a scary thing.

That does not mean pretending travel is always easy. Agnes is honest that it is not. But there is a difference between acknowledging challenges and leading with fear. Wonder first, logistics second.

Every trip, no matter how small, has skill-building moments woven into it. Agnes suggests looking for them deliberately:

• On a driving holiday, let your child navigate with the map or choose where to stop for lunch.

• At a hotel, encourage them to speak to the person at the front desk during check-in rather than stepping in yourself.

• At the airport, let them put the bag tags on themselves, hand over the boarding pass, or ask a staff member a question.

• On any trip, give them one small responsibility that is genuinely theirs to manage.

• After the trip, talk about what they handled. Name it specifically. "You asked that question yourself" means more than "you were so brave."

These moments accumulate. A child who has checked into a dozen hotels has a felt sense of how that works, and that felt sense is what makes the next unfamiliar thing slightly less frightening. Understanding how co-regulation works in overwhelming moments can also help parents stay regulated themselves during these skill-building opportunities, which matters more than most people realise.

The ripple effect: belonging and neuroaffirming travel

When travel is designed well for neurodivergent young people, it creates the conditions for genuine belonging, often for the first time. According to our research on neurodivergent families, 46% of parents say their greatest priority is for their child to feel safe and accepted as they are, and 44% name real friendships and social connection as a top hope for their child's future. These are not abstract wishes. They are the outcomes that well-designed travel, in the right environment, can actually deliver.

Agnes describes what she has watched happen over six and a half years of Travengers trips, and it is not what most people picture when they think about neurodivergent social connection.

The very first Travengers trip was a weekend away. Agnes had no idea how it would go. She wondered whether a group of neurodivergent strangers would actually connect. Then: "we came there, we're in Airbnb, and everyone just kind of naturally got on so quickly and they had been encouraged to bring their own board games, a board game they liked, and we sat down and played board games and they were connecting and chatting and had lots in common and shared interests" and the conversation ranged across Harry Potter and everything else they loved. That was the moment she knew the model worked.

What she has seen since then is the longer arc of that connection:

Seeing people over the years who have really started out being very shy or closed off and then they just click with someone and they just chat and chat and chat and there's so much in common, and it's just like they've known each other for 10 years.

This is what happens when the environment is right. When masking is not required, when shared interests are the entry point rather than something to hide, when everyone in the room is navigating a similar experience of the world, connection comes naturally. For more on what genuine connection looks like for neurodivergent young people, psychologist Isobel Ziatas explores the conditions that make belonging possible.

For many neurodivergent young people, a Travengers trip is the first time they have experienced that. For families watching from home, it is worth holding onto: the loneliness your child may be feeling is not a fixed state. It is often a mismatch between person and environment, and when the environment changes, so does the experience. If you recognise the isolation many autism families carry quietly, Vanessa Gauci from Autism Community Network speaks honestly about why peer support is essential, not optional. To understand more about what families across Australia are experiencing and hoping for, explore Understanding Zoe's full research findings.

What makes travel easier: a young traveller's perspective

Planning a sensory friendly family holiday becomes much clearer when you hear directly from a neurodivergent child about what actually helps. Zoe, Laetitia's daughter, joined the episode briefly after the family returned from Malaysia. What she shared is worth including here, because it is rare to hear a neurodivergent child speak directly and honestly about what travel actually feels like from the inside.

On what makes travel easier: "It makes it easier when I have my headphones, when I have, like, a sensory area in the airport, when I have, like, a calm environment."

On the anxiety that comes with travel:

Sometimes I feel kind of anxious and, like, it's gonna be, like, a lot of change, but then after a few weeks, it passes.

That is a remarkably clear piece of self-knowledge. The anxiety is real. The change is real. And it passes. Zoe also shared that she likes travelling most of the time, but that short stays do not work well for her: "when we only stay at that area for only a little bit of amount of time, it doesn't work for me." She prefers to settle into a place rather than move through it quickly.

These are not small observations. They are exactly the kind of information that helps a family design travel that actually works. Headphones, sensory spaces, calm environments, longer stays in fewer places. Simple things, once you know to ask.

Neurodivergent travel tips to get started today

Travel is not something your family has to grieve or quietly give up on. It just needs to be designed differently, around your child's nervous system rather than around a neuronormative blueprint that was never built for them.

Start with wonder. Talk about the world with curiosity before any trip is planned. When a trip does come, prepare visually, check the accessibility pages, build in decompression, and look for the small moments where your child can do something themselves. Those moments add up to something real.

If you want supported travel experiences for a neurodivergent young person in your life, Travengers AU runs social events and trips across Australia and overseas, with guides who understand what neuroaffirming travel actually looks like in practice. And if you are trying to make sense of the patterns behind your child's meltdowns, sensory responses, and therapy reports so you can plan more confidently, try Understanding Zoe free for 7 days. It is built to turn scattered observations into a clear picture you can actually use.

Frequently asked questions

Is travelling good for an autistic child?

Yes, and the evidence is in the data. When Agnes Abelsen surveyed over 600 neurodivergent young people at Travengers AU, travel and destinations came out as their top interest. The barrier to travelling with an autistic child is rarely desire. It is design. When trips are built around the nervous system rather than a neurotypical blueprint, travel becomes genuinely enriching rather than overwhelming.

What should I do when flying with an autistic child?

Start preparing well before the day of travel. Check the airport's accessibility page for sensory rooms, sensory maps, and hidden disability lanyards (such as the sunflower or butterfly lanyard) that signal to staff your family may need extra support. Build a visual social story that walks through every step of the journey, from the drive to the airport through to arrival. Watch YouTube videos of the terminal together so the environment feels familiar before you arrive. Preparing your autistic child for travel this way reduces unknowns, and it is unknowns that drive most of the anxiety, not travel itself.

How do I help my autistic child with airport anxiety?

The most effective autism travel tip for airport anxiety is reducing unknowns before you arrive. Look up the airport's accessibility page and locate the sensory room in advance. Request a hidden disability lanyard so staff know to offer extra support. Walk through the journey visually using a social story or YouTube videos of the terminal. On the day, build in extra time so there is no rushing, and identify a quiet space to decompress if the sensory environment becomes too much.

What sensory tools should I pack when travelling with a neurodivergent child?

Noise-cancelling headphones are the most consistently helpful item. Zoe, who joined Episode 42 of the Neurodivergent Pulse podcast, named them first when asked what makes travel easier. Beyond headphones, consider a comfort item from home, a fidget tool, sunglasses for bright environments, and any snacks that feel safe and familiar. These neurodivergent travel tips are simple, but having them ready means sensory overload is easier to manage when it does occur.

Can neurodivergent young people travel independently?

Yes, with the right support structure. Agnes Abelsen founded Travengers AU specifically to make autism friendly travel possible for young people who want to explore the world but may not have a travel companion or the confidence to go alone. Travengers trips include support guides, pre-trip social stories, and group Zoom calls so participants know what to expect. Independence is built incrementally, starting with small responsibilities on family trips and growing from there.

TL;DR

Travelling with an autistic child is not only possible. It is something most neurodivergent young people actively want. Agnes Abelsen's data from over 600 Travengers members shows travel and destinations as their top interest, so the barrier is design rather than desire. The key ingredients for autism friendly travel that actually works are preparation (visual social stories, airport accessibility pages, pre-trip Zoom calls), sensory-aware design (decompression days, matching trip intensity to the nervous system), and environments where masking is not required. As Agnes puts it: "if you grow up thinking that travel is a scary thing, then it might always be a scary thing." So start small, speak about the world with wonder, and let your child put the bag tags on themselves.

Connect with Agnes Abelsen

• Travengers AU: supported social events and travel experiences for neurodivergent young people across Australia and overseas

• @travengers.au on Instagram

• @agnesabelsen on Instagram

• Agnes Abelsen on LinkedIn