Tourism and software might seem like two very distant fields at first glance. One is a sector that requires face-to-face interaction, instant decisions and emotional intelligence. The other is screens, code, and logic. But there is a point where they intersect — and I feel that point every day.
Learning to Read People
In the tourism sector, you work with people from different cultures, arriving with different expectations. Some say directly what they want, some imply it, some never say it but find a way to make you feel their dissatisfaction. In this environment, you learn to read people, build empathy, and manage expectations.
The same skill is needed in software. What a user says they want and what they actually need are often different. A good developer is someone who can see this difference.
Thinking User-First
Tourism teaches you one thing very clearly: service centers the other person, not you. No matter how good a process you've built, if the user can't easily feel it, it has no meaning.
When I brought this perspective to software, I realized: many developers build something technically excellent but don't think about their user. The flow is complex, error messages are meaningless, the user doesn't know what to do. Yet good software is what hides technical depth from the user.
Making Quick Decisions Under Pressure
Tourism is the stage of instant crisis management. Booking errors, cancellations, complaints, communication problems — all of these require real-time solutions. You have to think fast, stay calm, and make the right call.
In software too, there are moments like production errors, unexpected bugs, deadline pressure. In those moments, staying calm and thinking systematically makes a big difference. Tourism taught me this very early on.
Two Fields, One Skill Set
My tourism background might sometimes seem like a strange combination. But I see it as an advantage. Most developers know how to think technically — but understanding people is a separate skill. Carrying both of these together takes the software I build to a different place.
Writing good software isn't just writing code. It's understanding people, building empathy, and designing the experience of the person in front of you. I learned this before software — and it helps me every single day.