Today we’d like to introduce you to Eva Keller
Hi Eva, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I was born and raised in the Dayton, Ohio area – mainly Kettering and then Beavercreek. I moved to Florida for college to pursue my Bachelor’s in International Hospitality and Tourism Management with a minor in Leadership. During that time I interned at Disney World in the Disney College Program twice. First in attractions at Epcot, then in attractions at Animal Kingdom. Once I graduated I did the Disneyland College Program for 8 months out in California where I worked attractions at California Adventure. When that was over, I returned to Florida to get my Master’s Degree in Hospitality and Tourism Management and a Graduate Certificate in Destination Marketing and Management from University of Central Florida (the #1 hospitality Master’s program in the US & #2 in the world). During that time, I was interning with Disney again, working in attractions at Magic Kingdom. After just one semester I moved back to California with no job and moved into an apartment sight unseen with 2 roommates I had never met before – they both worked at Disneyland and we had mutual friends, so it felt safe and it was. Within less than a month I began working front desk at a Homewood Suites right outside of Disneyland while finishing my Master’s degree online. About 6 months later I was also rehired by Disneyland to go work at the same attractions in California Adventure again, so I held 2 jobs for about a year. This time at Disneyland I was working part time instead of as an intern, so I had opportunity for advancement. I became a trainer and a lead for my attraction and cross trained at 2 other attractions. Then, in Fall of 2018 Disney was looking for more attractions cast members to be on the project team for Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. The attraction had barely been built, the land was still just a pile of dirt in most places and I moved over to that project for almost a year. In August of 2019, just before Star Wars was set to open, I left Disney for a more stable, higher paying job, working in guided vacation sales. In the first six months there I was able to move over to the direct consumer team, which gets a higher commission and I consistently was at the top of my group I hired in with. Then in February 2020 I got very sick. Sicker than I had ever felt in my entire life and I left in the middle of the work day to go to urgent care. I stayed in bed for the next 2 weeks wondering how I could go back to work without a doctor’s note because they didn’t know what was wrong and thought it was just some viral infection – obviously we later found out it was covid. So I quit my job and never went back. I had just started working on a travel in January 2020 hoping to transition into working for myself and that’s exactly what ended up happening. I’m so lucky it happened on my own terms rather than being forced upon me by all the covid lockdowns that resulted in massive layoffs for the travel industry. Ever since I’ve been road tripping around the US with my husband creating content for our travel blog.
In our travel blog, we highlight couples travel around the US, mainly road trips, national parks, California, and more recently Florida and Ohio since that is where we spend most of our time. I’ve been featured in Time, Business Insider, The Guardian, AOL, USA Today, CNN, Northwestern Mutual, Capital One, The Associated Press, Yahoo Finance, Forbes, News.com, Good Rx, TLC, and dozens of other publications.
This year we were also ranked #10 of the 35 Best USA Travel Blogs and Websites on FeedSpot. Our main blog, Discovering Hidden Gems is also nationally syndicated on MSN.
Our ultimate goal is to begin offering group trips around the US and Canada, maybe even cruises too, anywhere from 1-4 times a year. Each trip would have different themes like national parks, wine regions, historical sites, etc.
In February of this year, we moved to the Dayton, Ohio area where most of my family is still located. My sister had just moved back to the area after her husband was done with his military service and they have 4 small kids, so we thought we’d come and help out and get to spend time with them in their more formative years. We later found out that my sister has a rare genetic mutation called FAP where she had hundreds of polyps all throughout her digestive tract. She had to have her colon, large intestine, appendix, and rectum removed, then be fitted with an ostomy bag. Soon she will have a reversal surgery where she will have J pouch inserted. But this surgery severely limited how she was able to care for her children, especially since she had to be in Cleveland for a week to get it done, so the timing of all of us moving back to our hometown really worked out.
In our professional lives though, there’s been a lot of turmoil in the blogging world with Google re-shaping the entire system of how it works. So we’ve started two more blogs this year that are more niched down into our interests. One is a Disney blog (Mouse Transportation Tips) and the other is a Resorts/Hotels review site (Timeshares, Resorts, and More).
A little background about us:
We met during my Disneyland College Program in 2016 and we were inseparable. When I went back to Florida for that first semester of grad school we talked every single day and I just couldn’t fathom continuing on in life without him. That’s the number one reason I moved back to California when I did. When I got back there we started dating. In 2019 we took a weekend trip up to Solvang and that’s where we got engaged. Then on February 6, 2020, our 3rd anniversary, we got married in Corona Del Mar with just our immediate family in attendance.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The first struggle was that I had never read a blog in my life when I started travel blogging. I never followed influencers, never watched YouTubers, I just had no experience with that industry at all. But my husband had the idea that I should start a travel blog because of my extensive experience in the travel industry. With my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees, working in theme parks, hotels, special events, and guided vacation sales, I know way more about the industry than the average person. I’m also a planner and thrive when creating itineraries, so it just made sense. I purchased a course about how to start travel blogging and just went from there. It was January 2020 and I was still working full time, so it was slow going at first. But I made up my investment in less than 6 months.
But also, covid hit right after I started my travel blog. Luckily, I had documented all of our travels together, so I had about 3 years worth of content to go off of before even having to get out on the road again. It was hard getting brand deals at first because budgets were wiped out, but we got lucky with several collaborations including the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau and Visit New Orleans. We were also getting a ton of media features at the time due to our expertise on a variety of travel topics.
Most recently, the Google Core Updates have thrown the entire blogging industry into upheaval. Some people’s entire livelihoods were just decimated overnight. We lost about half of our site traffic so far, so our ad revenue is down, but our affiliate revenue continues to increase even with less site visitors.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We are an age-gap husband and wife, food and travel blogging team. We create content for weekend getaways, road trips, and day trips, highlighting the hidden gems we discover along the way. Our travel style is adventurous and flexible. We enjoy visiting national parks, wine tasting, trying new restaurants, and exploring unique places.
We’ve developed our Travel Better For Less Framework so that others can make their travel dreams come true. Our framework is made up of 3 components – Loyalty, Flexibility, and Spontaneity. The 3 of these work together to travel better (and more) for less, every single time.
Our blog features a variety of travel content from around the US. We love to feature national parks, historic sites, resorts, weekend getaway itineraries, and road trip itineraries. One of our favorite projects is our “Best Restaurants” series, which has expanded to feature Southern California, Northern California, Las Vegas, and Dayton, Ohio. We promote seasonal local events (Halloween, Christmas, etc) that are relevant to our interests and have a variety of sponsored content that fits into the food, travel, and lifestyle niche.
I am most proud of our features in major publications like Forbes, Time, Associated Press, Yahoo, and more where we’ve been able to share our expertise and experience with others.
Our signature product is actually our free Discount Travel Secrets Resource Bundle. It includes resources like how to save money in each sector of the tourism industry (lodging, food, attractions, transportation), how to create your own travel bucket list and vision board, how to create a travel budget and itinerary, journaling prompts to inspire travel, inspirational travel quotes and exercises, ways to travel the world for fun and profit, sample weekend getaway itineraries, and over a dozen bonus sections.
These bonuses include our ultimate road trip packing list, national park resource guide, best restaurant loyalty rewards programs, how to make your theme park visit a success, best cheap and free ways to enjoy Fall & Winter, and things you didn’t know you could do for free in a variety of destinations like Vegas, Orange County, LA, San Diego, Florida, Ohio, and Maui.
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I love the food and history of Dayton, Ohio. Dayton has some of the best pizza places in the world! I lived in Southern California for 8 years and only found 1 good pizza place. Dayton has so many! We love Donatos, Cassano’s, Marion’s, Milano’s, and some larger chains like Jet’s. We also can never get enough of Skyline Chili. I recommend it to literally everybody all the time.
Dayton is actually a really great city for a weekend getaway too. With the air force museum, Sunwatch Indian Village, Carillon Park, Boonshoft, Young’s Dairy, the Ale Trail, sporting events, parks and trails, there’s so much to do here. Then in the Fall there are so many seasonal things to do like pumpkin patches, corn mazes, haunted trails, seeing the Fall foliage, and more.
What I like least is how much it’s talked down about. Anybody that’s from here thinks it’s lame and small and there’s nothing good here. But if you leave and go out and explore the rest of the world or live somewhere else you will understand just how good you have it here, if you choose to. Dayton gets put on the world stage a lot now, so there’s really no excuse anymore for people to have never heard of it or think it’s just a giant cornfield with nothing going on.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://discoveringhiddengems.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/discovering_hidden_gems
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/discoveringhiddengems1
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/discoveringgem
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/discoveringhiddengems
- Other: https://mousetransportationtips.com and https://timesharesresortsandmore.com
