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A travel nanny, sometimes called a traveling nanny, is a nanny that travels with your family for any trip, vacations, or relocations.
Their main duty is to provide the same steady care for your children in every destination, be it at home or abroad.
For globetrotting families, that consistency is the whole point. Your children stick to their routines they’re used to at home, from meals to bedtime. A familiar face allows your children to feel safe and settled in any environment.
Morgan & Mallet, as a luxury household staffing agency, places travel nannies worldwide from our international offices so that when your family moves, the right nanny moves with you.
Since 2022 we’ve advertised traveling nanny jobs in 10 countries, from the US and Canada to France, the UK, Switzerland and the UAE.
Having a single person whom both you and your children trust means no more having to hire a new sitter in every city.
And that’s where Morgan Richez, our co-founder, notes the rising demand seen in our travel nanny agency comes from.
“Clients travel a lot, and they own more and more properties overseas. They don’t want to employ people everywhere in the world, so they prefer to travel with their own staff.”
Contact us today to hire a travel nanny.
Source: Morgan & Mallet job ads for traveling nannies in 10 countries, May 2022 to July 2025. How we count
From your first call with us to your travel nanny's first day
The hiring process begins from your first call to prepare your travel brief. The whole search is built around how your family moves.
An in-depth brief allows our recruiters to know exactly what you’re looking for and where to start looking.
It helps your recruiter narrow down the applicant pool, so all you see is the top three candidates and not a hundred resumes. That’s why families use a travel nanny agency like ours.
We need to know
- where you travel to,
- for how long,
- and how often.
The answers vary a lot. In the US briefs we’ve worked on, trips ranged from a one-week family vacation to whole summers in another home.
A thorough brief means you can avoid legal troubles later. Spending more time in countries like France or the UK means you need the right contract and visa applied for the candidate.
Morgan Richez says you should tell your recruiter the entire travel plan from the very start so you don’t run into any issue with the law on your trip.
Morgan had this conversation with a client who wanted his staff on a UK contract:
“He travel[s] a lot between France, Spain, Portugal [and] Greece, and today he made a UK contract.
“But I told him you are not allowed to do that, because the people [don’t] work in [the] UK.”
“You are not allowed to make a contract in one country and the people, they work in another country,” he says.
After shortlisting, you can see if the match is right through interviews and trial periods. Eric Rios, our recruiter in New York, suggests asking candidates to walk you through how they would handle a situation step by step.
This shows if the candidate is capable of thinking ahead, solving issues before they become full-fledged problems.
Getting the travel fit right is a big part of our 96% placement success rate for nannies.
To learn more about our hiring process, from the shortlist to after placement support, see our page about how to hire a nanny.
Source: Morgan & Mallet job briefs, US nanny, governess and nanny-housekeeper searches, August 2022 to June 2026; placement success rate from our 2025/26 Household Staff Salaries Annual Report. How we count
What every travel nanny passes before you meet them
When you hire a travel nanny, you’re not just allowing someone to enter your home, but you’re trusting them with your children. The travel factor adds another layer of checks that a home-based nanny never needs.
Co-founder Morgan Richez sees it from the family’s side.
“If I am a client and I travel everywhere in the world and I ask [someone] to travel with me, of course I need to make sure she’s flexible and she’s able to travel with me.”
Starting with the basics, we look for candidates with a valid passport and visa flexibility.
We also prioritize candidates with strong language skills in French, Italian, Spanish, or Arabic along with English.
Having a nanny who can speak to a doctor or driver in the local language makes your trip easier from the moment you land.
Between them, the traveling nannies in our network speak 12 languages, English, French and Spanish the most.
A nanny could be the perfect caretaker at home but might falter on a trip. That’s why we only present candidates with prior experience in traveling roles.
“For example, for a private island role, we look for someone who’s worked on one before,” says Morgan Richez. “Someone who knows how it really goes.
“It can look like a dream job on paper, but doing it is something different.”
The same goes for constant travel. We look for people who’ve already done it, with strong references that back up their experience.
Families ask us for very experienced travel nannies too. In our briefs for US clients with travel that named a minimum, 72% asked for at least five years’ experience.
An exhaustive 90-minute interview with each candidate gives our recruiters everything they need to know about the candidate’s skills.
Our co-founder Laurine Mallet worked as a nanny herself, so she knows how to interview candidates to get real-life examples instead of rehearsed answers.
Instead of asking “are you flexible”,
we ask candidates to share a time when plans were changed and they had to travel with the employer on short notice.
There is no right answer to the question. The point is to see how flexible the candidates can be with an unpredictable schedule.
This scenario-based questioning also tests the soft skills of the candidate, especially in a childcare role. Long trips mean you share the same space for days.
So we look for a calm, level-headed professional who can provide steady childcare during flight delays or exhausting travel days.
A more detailed overview of our strict screening and vetting process can be found on the main nanny hiring page.
Source: our candidate database, people who have worked as traveling nannies, June 2026; and Morgan & Mallet job briefs, US nanny, governess and nanny-housekeeper searches, August 2022 to June 2026. How we count
What is a travel nanny, and what do they do?
The core duties are the same as any nanny role. The travel nanny takes care of the children and maintains their daily routine. The only difference is that this childcare is done on the move.
Schedules can get thrown off balance on travel days. It’s the travel nanny’s duty to make sure that doesn’t happen.
How much a travel nanny organizes depends on the household. Laurine Mallet, who traveled with families as a nanny before co-founding Morgan & Mallet, compares her own jobs with the homes we recruit for now:
“For a regular family, for example, when I traveled with the family I worked with, it’s the parents who organized everything, and we carried our luggage.
“For ultra-high-net-worth [families], they won’t carry their [luggage], they won’t organize their trip. They’ve got [a] personal assistant.”
Flights and long drives can make the children feel restless and irritated. By giving them a familiar routine to hold on to, the nanny keeps the children calm and pacified.
They handle packing the children’s luggage with
- their comfort toys,
- clothes according to the weather,
- and medications if necessary.
A good travel nanny
- takes note of where the safe spaces are,
- removes anything dangerous,
- and finds the nearest doctor before you need one during travel.
Travel doesn’t always mean living in. In the cases where our US travel briefs stated it, 55% asked for a live-in nanny, 26% for live-out and the rest mixed the two or didn’t say anything.
Source: Morgan & Mallet job briefs, US nanny, governess and nanny-housekeeper searches, August 2022 to June 2026. How we count
What kinds of travel do families hire a nanny for?
Most of them want a nanny who travels. Three in four of the nanny searches we’ve carried out for families in the US asked for it, and the travel was quite often different in each case.
| Kind of travel | Share of our US nanny searches | A real example from our briefs |
|---|---|---|
| Travel with the family, at least when needed | 74% | Montana, 2023: one or two trips a month, mostly within the US |
| Trips abroad | 44% | Boston, 2025: possible trips to Dubai and Singapore |
| Time between two or more family homes | 19% | New York City, 2025: a baby's nanny spending one or two months at a time in San Diego and Westchester |
| Family vacations, summers and school breaks | 21% | San Francisco, 2025: a live-in governess who joins the family on its vacations |
| Staying home with the children while a parent travels | 13% | New York City, 2026: 7 to 10 days in a row in the family home whenever the mother is away |
Of the nanny job briefs we took from clients that needed travel, 58% went abroad. When a brief said the country, it was usually in Europe, somewhere like France, Italy or Sweden.
Only 13% of those searches were advertised with travel in the job title. Most were nanny, rota nanny or governess jobs that happened to travel.
Actually, travel was mentioned in all of our rota nanny searches, and in 82% of our governess searches.
Asked what a candidate entering household work in 2026 should bring besides good English, Morgan Richez answered:
“It’s very important to be flexible to travel.
“I think it will be very important, because [in] the new jobs, the employers, they ask for people who can travel with them.”
Source: Morgan & Mallet job ads, all 124 English and French ads from our 70 US nanny, governess and nanny-housekeeper searches, August 2022 to June 2026, with 3,612 applicants. A job’s French twin or a repost counts once. How we count
What type of travel nanny do you need?
Permanent travel nanny
A permanent travel nanny works full-time for a single family, traveling with them throughout the year. It’s the basic travel nanny role, where the nanny maintains a consistent daily routine for the children at home or on the road.
It’s also what we are asked for the most. 92% of our searches in the US with travel were for permanent roles.
Vacation or holiday nanny
If you need a nanny for a ski trip, a tropical getaway, or a destination wedding, a vacation nanny is the right pick. The vacation nanny provides steady childcare while you get to relax.
One of the shortest US travel jobs we’ve recruited for was a 19-day road trip through California, Nevada and Arizona with a one-year-old.
For US placements, the role should run for at least four weeks. Reaching out to our hiring team two months before your travel is strongly recommended so we can find the right fit and sort the paperwork in time.
Summer or seasonal nanny
A summer or winter holiday means school’s out and the need for childcare cover for the kids during the day.
A seasonal nanny works best here, staying for a defined period as you travel to your second home or go for trips abroad. A vacation nanny handles one trip while the seasonal nanny stays for the entire season.
One family in New York we searched for in 2026 wanted a nanny-housekeeper who would go out to the Hamptons with them every summer.
We successfully placed a bilingual travel nanny for a New York family heading to Europe for the summer. After six weeks, the job wrapped up well, leaving the child happy and the client pleased with the candidate’s performance.
Temporary travel nanny
A temporary nanny is useful for when you need short-term cover for a trip when your regular nanny can’t come, or for a one-off need.
We find that temporary roles are harder to fill as strong candidates look for more long-term, steady roles.
Something we’ve been aware of for a long time is that experienced travel nannies are quite rare to find. Only 141 of the nearly 4,000 nannies in our network have worked as one.
Morgan Richez’s advice is to offer a higher salary for the position to attract the right candidates.
Laurine Mallet filled exactly this kind of gap as a nanny in London.
“It was with a UK family who wanted to travel to Greece, and I went to Greece with them because their own nanny was not available during summertime.
“They needed someone to look after their child in order to let the parents enjoy as much as they can.”
International travel nanny
If you’re relocating for a year or splitting the calendar between two continents, this is the arrangement that keeps the children grounded while everything else moves.
An international nanny has visa flexibility, strong language skills, and prior experience in shifting household routines across countries.
A family on the Oregon coast who spent some of their year between Oregon, Florida and Mexico asked us for a French-speaking nanny in 2025.
A valid passport was a must for any candidate interested in the role, and the family’s immigration attorney could help the right candidate from abroad with a visa.
This was perfect for us because we have an extensive global network of candidates, especially nannies.
Some families opt for rota patterns, with two nannies rotating so there’s always cover and everyone gets time off. For the full range of nanny types, including rota nannies, night nannies, and nanny-housekeepers, our main nanny page will help.
Source: Morgan & Mallet job briefs, US nanny, governess and nanny-housekeeper searches, August 2022 to June 2026; and our candidate database, nannies who have worked as traveling nannies, June 2026. How we count
How much do you pay a nanny to travel with you?
In our job briefs in the US that included travel, pay went from $25 to $50 an hour, or from $50,000 to $200,000 a year. How it’s paid depends on the arrangement.
| Arrangement | Pay in our ads | Where and when |
|---|---|---|
| Short-term cover for one trip | $30 to $40 an hour, or $1,500 a week | A road trip through three western states, 2023; a newborn job in New York, 2023 |
| Live-out, traveling when the family does | $35 to $45 an hour, or $60,000 to $110,000 a year | New York City, Boston and Coto de Caza, California, 2025 |
| Live-in, traveling with the family | $40 to $45 an hour, $70,000 a year, or from €4,000 a month net | Irvine and Charleston, 2025; Upper Marlboro, Maryland, 2025; a family living between Los Angeles and France, 2024 |
| Live-in or live-out, the nanny's choice | $25 an hour, or $90,000 to $110,000 a year | Oregon, Florida and Mexico, 2025; San Francisco, 2025 |
| Rota, two weeks on and two weeks off | $110,000 to $130,000 a year | Tampa, 2025 |
For nanny pay without the travel, see our nanny salary guide.
Source: the pay in Morgan & Mallet job ads, US nanny, governess and nanny-housekeeper searches with travel, August 2022 to June 2026. How we count
Why Morgan & Mallet?
Laurine Mallet worked as a travel nanny herself. She worked with a London family, accompanying them as they traveled to Greece, France, and Spain.
It’s this real-life experience that grounds the Morgan & Mallet approach to travel nanny placements.
Since 2015, we have placed travel nannies for families all over the world, with our offices in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, London, Paris, Dubai and Geneva.
Our global candidate pool of 50,300+ professionals means you can get the right candidate for your family usually within six weeks.
Travel doesn’t put the best candidates off. Our nanny searches for families in the US with travel received 54 applicants on average, compared to 45 for those without, and the ones with trips abroad had 58.
“The families we work with often have properties in different countries and need to move quickly. Because we’re a global agency, we can find the right candidate faster, and they get one point of contact for everything,” says Morgan Richez.
The last thing you need is running into legal trouble during your trip. Things can go south if not caught early on. Maybe your nanny is not authorized to work abroad or your insurance refuses to cover any damage.
That’s why, when you reach out to us, we connect you with advisors for drafting documents like
- the employment contract,
- tax,
- and insurance.
You can read more about how we started and how we work on our about page.
Source: Morgan & Mallet job ads and applicants, US nanny, governess and nanny-housekeeper searches, August 2022 to June 2026; and our candidate database. How we count
Other types of nanny
A traveling nanny can also have other skills and could potentially do any of these roles:
Live-in nanny→ A travel nanny could also be live-in. It’s just that they live in with you when you are traveling.
Bilingual nanny→ Many families hire nannies who can speak other languages. This is obviously very useful when traveling abroad too.
Rota nanny→ A rota nanny does shift work, but could potentially travel with a family on short trips, although this would be more unusual.
Night nurse→ A night nurse does the overnight feeds. On a trip across time zones, a travel nanny who has done night work is worth a lot while the children adjust.
Norland trained nanny→ Norland trained nannies can also work as travel nannies. They are educated at the Norland College in England.
Special needs nanny→ This is a nanny that cares for a child who has special needs. They are experienced and qualified in the role.
Frequently asked questions
Call us on +1 (646) 965-2308 or tell us about your trips and a recruiter will get back to you.
What is a travel nanny?
A travel nanny is a nanny who travels with your family and cares for your children throughout the trip, keeping their routine steady in each new place.
What's the difference between a permanent travel nanny and a vacation nanny?
A permanent travel nanny works with your family ongoing and travels whenever you do. A vacation nanny is hired for a single trip and finishes when the trip ends.
How much does a traveling nanny earn in the US?
According to Morgan & Mallet’s 2025/26 salary data, the salary range for a traveling nanny is $70,000 to $150,000 in the US. For more information on the salary data for various nanny roles, visit our main nanny hiring page.
Who pays for the nanny's travel and expenses?
The family does. Flights, accommodation, meals, and travel costs while the nanny is working are covered by the employer, on top of salary. We’ll help you set clear terms before the placement starts.
The briefs we have from clients say this: every brief of ours in the US that mentions travel costs says the family covers them, from flights to housing while away.
Do travel nannies need a passport and visas?
Yes. A travel nanny needs a current passport, and for international trips they may need the right visas for your destinations. We check passport and visa readiness before we shortlist anyone.
Requirements vary by country, so it’s worth reviewing official US State Department travel guidance for the places you visit most.
Around one in four of the nanny searches we’ve done for families in the United States (24%) asked for a valid passport or visa from the beginning.
Start early. “You need to prepare this in advance, because you can’t play with the visa. You are not the one who decide[s],” says co-founder Morgan Richez, who has moved household staff from the UK to New York for families.
Do you place travel nannies for international trips?
Yes. International travel and relocations are a core part of what we do, and our offices across the US, Europe, and the Middle East let us support placements worldwide.
How quickly can you place a travel nanny?
It depends on how specific your needs are, but our global candidate network means we can usually move fast. Once we know about your travel brief on the first call, we can tell you a realistic timeline.
Source: Morgan & Mallet job briefs, US nanny, governess and nanny-housekeeper searches, August 2022 to June 2026; salaries from our 2025/26 Household Staff Salaries Annual Report. How we count
Call us on +1 (646) 965-2308 or tell us about your trips and a recruiter will get back to you.
New York
office address
260 Madison Avenue, 8th floor, 10016, New York, NY - United States
phone
+1 (646) 965-2308
opening hours
Monday - Thursday : 9AM - 6PM
Friday : 9AM - 5PM
Saturday & Sunday : Closed
Miami
office address
1555 NE 121st Street, Suite 104, North Miami, FL 33161, United States
phone
+1 305 710 3380
opening hours
Monday - Thursday : 9AM - 6PM
Friday : 9AM - 5PM
Saturday & Sunday : Closed
Los Angeles
office address
895 Dove St, Newport Beach, CA 92660, United States
phone
+1 305 710 3380
opening hours
Monday - Thursday : 9AM - 6PM
Friday : 9AM - 5PM
Saturday & Sunday : Closed