How Danielle Dybiec’s Nine Muses Travel Found Its Niche

Let’s face it: not everyone has the privilege of working their dream job. This is one of the unique qualities of the travel advisor industry; it’s a role that often attracts travel lovers as a second career, whether it’s a retired police officer booking cruises or a retired software developer embracing adventure travel.

What is rare, however, is for an agency owner to have already had their dream job before they launched their travel business.

Danielle Dybiec, founder and president of Nine Muses Travel in Brooklyn, spent nearly a decade in what she calls her “literal dream job” in performing arts management — a role that ultimately laid the foundation for the bespoke, culturally driven travel experiences she designs today.

“My two passions in life have been the performing arts and travel,” she told Travel Market Report. “I had my dream job right out of grad school, and then I’ve just been building on my passions and my interests ever since then.”

From Artist Management to Travel Entrepreneur

Dybiec’s career journey began in the field of performing arts. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh with a major in communications rhetoric — and a minor in theater arts — she pursued an MFA degree in performing arts management from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York (CUNY). Right out of school, she landed her first dream job: associate director of artist services for the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).

Dybiec’s role at BAM involved managing relationships with visiting artists as well as providing daily support for cultural programs. Her duties included coordinating travel and on-the-ground experiences for visiting performers, and the work required meticulous planning, relationship-building, and a deep understanding of experiential programming. After that, she spent five years running rehearsal studios in Manhattan, further developing logistics planning and high-touch client service skills.

By then, however, Dybiec had reached as far as she could go in that career path, and decided it was time for a change. “I had to broaden my idea about what my next steps would be,” she told TMR.

Travel seemed like the best next step. Although Dybiec loved working in the world of performing arts, she had another passion as well: travel. She caught the bug during her time studying abroad during her undergrad, and knew she wanted

“It was on a particularly beautiful trip through Scotland, looking out the window at the heather, I thought, I always want this [travel] to be a part of my life.”

She took a job with luxury tour operator Academic Arrangements Abroad as manager of operations, designing bespoke itineraries for the company’s Travel with the MET program (a partnership with The Metropolitan Museum of Art). The role had her planning trips for high-profile clients, often with creative themes.

“And I learned how to put together itineraries as a tour operator, like how they flow and see how people respond — what works and what doesn’t.”

A Boutique Agency Built for the Culturally Curious

After years of developing itineraries for other companies, Dybiec eventually felt the calling to go into business for herself and founded Nine Muses Travel in 2018.

Initially, Nine Muses Travel began as an agency catering to donor trips for performing arts organizations. Dybiec has since expanded, however, and now targets her services at the “culturally curious,” helping both artists and arts lovers plan the perfect trip.

Dybiec spent her downtime during the pandemic learning who her target clientele is. She tends to attract those in her home base of Brooklyn and other urban centers, and while she has worked with a variety of income levels and ages, she told TMR one common theme is higher education — and, of course, a passion for the arts.

Because of her background in high-touch, custom-made travel arrangements, Dybiec specializes in FIT and bespoke travel — although she told TMR that her clients cover a wide range of interests and travel preferences.

“Everyone likes a boutique experience… I don’t pull something off the shelf when I’m talking to them,” she explained. “I don’t only do FIT… I will sell cruises, river cruises, [and] escorted tours. It’s really just matched for the clients and their needs. But the majority of them are FIT.”

All Good Trips Start with a Conversation

Although Nine Muses Travel focuses on a specific kind of client, Dybiec said the destinations and experiences vary considerably from client to client.

“It’s all so different, what inspires a person… Everyone is just so different, and the reasons they’re traveling are different,” she explained.

Dybiec always starts her consultations with a phone call, which allows her to truly engage with clients through deep listening. She credits these conversations as a crucial step, especially for developing FIT proposals. For some clients, that’s a European getaway that combines a city stay with a countryside escape. For others, it’s an all-inclusive sun-and-sand stay with some added culture-based experiences mixed in. Dybiec said the key is to really listen to what your client is saying — and what they aren’t saying.

“I’m very interested in non-verbal communication… that’s a service that people pick up on — being listened to — in a way that no search engine, no ChatGPT can replicate.”

Dybiec’s advice for launching a travel agency? Take your time and pick a host agency or consortia that really speaks to your goals and interests. She told TMR that ICs stand to benefit from the built-in communities these bring, and that new-to-the-industry advisors should learn to lean on their peers for advice and support.

“You are a solopreneur when you start out, but I’ve never once felt alone because I’ve got Gifted Travel Network. I’ve got my host agency. I’ve never felt like I’ve been on this journey alone.”