Jeremy Head's travelblather - a blog about online travel

How do you get mentions in travel features?

I got an interesting email yesterday. I really appreciated the honesty of it. And, clearly John who sent me the email 'get's what he is trying to do - that's demonstrated by the way that he includes some pertinent information about his business rather than just asking me 'how do you do it'?

I thought that rather than just replying with a few suggestions I'd share it here on Travelblather and see what other people think. Is it possible to get mentions independently these days despite the stranglehold of PR?

This is not a request for you to review or publish an article about our holiday business, but a request. Would you mind just briefly explaining how we can be mentioned or recommended either printed or online with national newspapers or magazines?

We send press releases but never have anything published, how do we break in?

What is galling is that guests have stayed with us and said how much better we are than some of our competitors who are always recommended. (No I don’t think they are just being polite).

Brief details about us: We are a small, family business based in the Lot and Dordogne region of France, offering cycling, walking and wine-tasting holidays. Our unique selling point is that customers stay at our very comfortable country home for the whole of their stay and enjoy gourmet-standard food and wine throughout their holiday. There is no need to pack a suitcase every day and move on to a new base – guests arrive and settle in to their light and airy en-suite room for the week and know that they will be returning to comfort and calm and enjoying a 4-course menu every evening. We are passionate about food and wine and we try to source all our ingredients locally, from markets, farms and vineyards, as well as our own garden and chickens, so guests get to experience the real taste of the terroir and French regional cuisine at its seasonal best.

We have received a great deal of positive feedback from guests which appears on our websites at www.lotcyclingholidays.com and www.winetoursfrance.net

How DO smaller tour companies who can't afford to pay a PR agency get mentions in national newspapers and magazines?

Making blogs better: categories and straplines

So... here I am sat in the pub (I am drinking coffee OK?!) I'm on the verge of relaunching Travelblather in a shiny new Wordpress skin and very excited about it. But before I do, I am rethinking the categories that I use for organising the posts on here. And I'm struggling to decide... Clearly once I make a decision I really need to stick with what I go with.

And then it occurred to me (duh!)  Why not ask the people who read Travelblather what they think? Typepad (the platform I use right now) offers some very broad categories and I've just been using them. Not much use really - you will see if you check out the 'Category cloud' down the left side of the blog that Travel gets a lot of use (no surprise) followed by Web/Tech, Journalism and Marketing. All rather meaningless.

I need to restrict myself to say 4 or 5 categories that are as distinct from each other as possible and as interesting as possible. Here are a few ideas:

• Travelwriting
• Social Media
• Marketing (or Strategy?)
• Innovation (or Ideas?)
• Monetization
• Guidebooks (Guidebook writing?)
• Opinion (or are all my posts opinionated?)
• Sponsors (do I add a category for sponsored posts? ie posts that are paid for/facilitated?) I still don't know if I want to go down this route at all... but if I do, by separating them like this it would at least make the distinction really clear. Just like a print ad in a magazine really(?)

What categories would be useful for you? What do you come to Travelblather for? What kind of stuff makes you want to read and comment? If you fancied a trawl back through the 160 or so posts on here, what categories would be handy?

I know the answer will differ for different people. I would be SO interested to know. And, by commenting you absolutely will shape the future direction too.

I have also been trying to come up with a strapline that summarises what this blog is all about too - so that new arrivals get the idea straight away (along with a page devoted to my most popular/most heartfelt posts)

• Travelblather - travel content that's connected
• Travelblather - travelwriting 2.0? (Whatever that means)
• Travelblather - working out the future of travelwriting
• Travelblather - banter between travelwriters, prs and travel cos
• Travelblather - the future of travelwriting is online
• Travelblather - apparently... it's Travel 2.0
• Travelblather - YOUR SUGGESTION HERE

(OK. I am no longer drinking coffee... I am now drinking beer.) Maybe if people do come up with some (doubtless) better ideas than mine I can select the top three and let people vote on it?

Time for a new kind of travel agent?

 A recent press release set me thinking. It was publicising a Chartered Institute of Marketing debate titled Travel Agents - Are They Past Their Sell-By Date? The debate is on Jan 25th in London. Click the link to find out more. I plan to go and assuming I do (they have kindly offered me a press pass) I will write up my thoughts. It's a very pertinent question in my opinion. 

Just as many commentators reckon the internet means the end for journalists (anyone can be a writer now there are no barriers to publication) others have painted a similarly bleak picture for high street travel agents. (Anyone can book a holiday now every travel brand known to mankind has a web page and a booking engine.) 

The net is indeed challenging a lot of old business models, but I remain convinced that many of the old basic rules for business success remain. If anything some of them are more important now than ever before. 

I’ve blathered plenty already about how hard it is to find the right holiday on-line. Right now hundreds of thousands of people are probably lost in the usual January maze of different travel websites promising similar things, user reviews providing hugely different opinions of the same properties and booking engines that are so slow by the time you come to check out and pay, your holiday has gone up in price. There’s still a huge and immediate need for trustworthy, appropriate advice. Let’s face it, we aren’t talking about blowing a few bucks on a £10 book from Amazon or a £2 download from iTunes. 

For Brits in particular the annual holiday is one of the year’s biggest expenses. Not something you want to take risks with. You want to be sure you’re getting the right holiday for you – at the right price. If, instead of spending literally days lost in the online holiday maze you could sit down with a travel professional who knew your budget and understood your needs – in particular the ‘softer’ stuff like who your neighbours might be if you book at a particular resort or whatever – wouldn’t you happily buy from them? And, if it saved you all that time and frustration... maybe pay a little more? 

So what impact has the net had on the high street travel agent? There’s been consolidation that’s for sure – big names like Lunn Poly and Going Places have disappeared. But where’s the innovation? It all feels incredibly entrenched and backward looking. (Very much like the financial services sector – as if rebranding all the Abbey, B&B and Alliance and Leicester branches as Santander will make a scrap of difference to customers?). 

Ironically, the web is driving a desire it can’t fulfil right now. The huge impact of social media has meant that customers are increasingly demanding ‘real person contact’, service that is customised to them as individuals, service that treats them as real people, not numbers on a spreadsheet. Of course, no travel website is anywhere near offering this kind of service, no matter how empowering this new technology is or how wholeheartedly a web-based travel company embraces it.

In the meantime I see opportunities on the high street. 

What would the ultimate travel agency look like? For me it would offer help with the complete experience. So many internet businesses now make as much of their profit selling the ancillary stuff alongside their main product – travel agents are completely missing the (clue)train here. 

So let’s focus our Travelstore 2.0 on people and activities NOT destinations! How about separate areas for Family Holidays, Student Holidays, Short Breaks, Adventure and Activity Holidays, Cruises and so on; with staff who are passionate about their market sector and really understand it. Make sure they sell a vast range of different brands of holiday – so it’s clear there’s no incentive to sell me one particular trip over another. And offer me all the other stuff that goes with holidays – guidebooks, travel magazines, backpacks, sunglasses, sunscreen, insect repellent, great books to read on the beach, music to drink my sundowner G&T to, travel insurance, airport parking, a funky bikini for my wife. And how about a playzone to keep the kids quiet whilst I’m chatting to an advisor? 

Guess what? You’ll get me coming in months before I buy a holiday... I’ll end up buying guidebooks and gear and who knows what else long before I book my break. And, suddenly buying a holiday will be fun... like browsing in other retail sectors... dreaming of awesome trips to amazing places. What could be better for brightening up a dull Saturday afternoon? Wouldn’t it be nice if buying a holiday could be inspiring? 

Would this idea work in practice? Well clearly there are risks, and it requires some serious investment... but stop a moment and think about the fact that it's already happening. 

There will be literally thousands of people visiting travel shows like Destinations and the Adventure Travel Show over the next month or so. (Not to mention the Ski Shows back in the autumn.) Here they will find all manner of brands offering all sorts of holidays, face to face advice, in-depth presentations, kit for sale, talks from travel presenters, gear demonstrations, photography competitions and more. 

And, get this... a significant number of these customers are paying to get in!

What would your ultimate travel agent store look like? And would this concept work in practice?

Romantic Londoners needed - cash paid for short interviews

A slightly offbeat post from the usual here on Travelblather - but heck, if you have a network... no harm in using it from time to time eh?

I'm looking for interviewees for a cool new project we’re doing for one of our clients at iCrossing.

I need to conduct short interviews with couples about romantic moments in London. Maybe you met in London in a really romantic way (the top of a double decker bus, bumped into each other at the British Museum)... or you got engaged in London (on the London Eye or in Kew Gardens) or you have a favourite place for romantic times together (walking along the Thames, that little restaurant tucked away down a side street somewhere).

I'd email you a series of short questions for you to answer. Reckon it would take no more than 20 minutes to complete. Feel free to stick a short summary in the comments below or suggest other places I might find interviewees.

I need to do these interviews this week or early next… Ideally couples need to be either empty nesters or young couples without kids yet…

I WILL BE HAPPY TO PAY FOR GOOD INTERVIEWS!

UPDATE - thanks for all the lovely people who have commented already - to make it easier for me could you include a couple of sentences about your romantic London moment. I'm particularly interested in experiences that link specifically to an activity or place in London itself. (like my examples above)

UPDATE 2 - the project is now live - it's for Visit London. If you'd like to add your Love in London story to the list of really delightful tales and enter the competition to win a 5 star romantic break for two in London here's the link: http://blog.visitlondon.com/2010/01/loveinlondon/ 

Please note that to enter the competition after you have left your story you need to click the enter the competition link within the description.

(Pic from: pedrosimoes7 on Flickr)

A new breed of travel writer?

2010 will I think be a pretty interesting year for travel writers. Printed travel media continues to decline but, slowly,the web is taking up some of the slack. A trend that has really struck me here in the UK is that major travel brands are finally getting serious about social media. (US readers we're most definitely behind you guys - some of this may seem a bit *obvious* - does it?)

I can't name names, but I've seen a really definite shift - from travel companies just talking about social media to actively looking to spend serious money doing it. And I mean big players - not small niche operators. These travel companies see an opportunity in social media to participate in the holiday-purchasing process far earlier than in the past and as a result to sell more holidays. Some of them have a far better handle on what they need to do than others - but that's a discussion I'll leave for another time.

What I wanted to highlight is that I think this is offering up opportunities for travel writers to carve themselves niches and maybe earn proper cash online(at last).

The problems for brands

1) Social media spaces are not big-brand friendly
Major travel brands might be looking to start really engaging with customers on a more personal level online, but customers for the most part won't relate to them in this way. People relate best to people (no real surprise there). What some brands are doing - with definite positive results - is allowing the people that work for them to step out from behind their corporate brand-speak and be real. To talk in their own voices. This has seen serious success for say Jetblue in the USA and easyJet in the UK who both use Twitter really effectively to help customers in far more personal and useful ways than of old.

2) Customers are looking for credible, trustworthy, unbaissed information
But worse still for brands, people want to deal with other people that they feel they can trust. In a direct customer services environment - like the twitter examples above - then direct contact with someone clearly working for the company works just fine. But for finding holiday ideas, getting inspiration for trips, any message that has a brand associated with it will tend to come across as a hardcore sales message. People will smell an ulterior motive and will lose interest. 

3) Brands are now publishers - but they don't know how to do it
Back in the old off-line era, travel companies might have published the odd customer magazine or whatever, but this kind of stuff was all very promotional. Generally people working in marketing departments don't really 'get' unbiassed content. Their job is to sell more product - so the messages they create usually feel very sales-like. Nowadays on the web - particularly the social web - people are looking for unbiassed, credible information to help them choose their holidays. And believe me they sure aren't finding much that's of any real use. Some commentators have gone so far to suggest that 'search is broken'.

A solution

It's obvious really. Why not use credible, experienced writers to write content for you for anything related to the inspiration phase of holiday booking? In particular content that sits in a more social media style environment? Using an expert travel writer offers the following advantages:

1) Credibility
If I'm reading stuff on a blog hosted by a travel company about say, great ideas for family holidays in Spain I'm highly unlikely to take much notice of recommendations that seem to come directly from the company itself - these messages will feel like someone is trying to sell me something. If however there's a family travel expert offering ideas and advice - with a profile that I can read and links to other stuff they have written about family travel elsewhere - then the content immediately feels more genuine. And by association the company wins too. They've taken the trouble to pay for someone who really knows their stuff to write about it to help me choose the right holiday for me.

2) Personality
People relate to people - I'm far more likely to engage with content (and potentially go on and make a purchase at some point) if I can get a feel for a real person writing it. Someone a bit like me; someone who clearly understands my needs and concerns

3) Great ideas
It's a bit of a scary uncharted place for marketers this online publishing world. But for journalists, it's home. A great travel writer can work with a marketer to come up with great ideas that will really work for their users. Great ideas that are developed primarily with the user in mind rather than a sales target.

Want to see an example of this in practice? Have a look at the way VisitFlorida uses expert writers. I love it! http://www.visitflorida.com/all_experts

How do travel writers make the best of these new opportunities? (I have a few ideas of my own which I will share in a follow-up post.)

A free holiday... or a job with no salary?

Welcome Tom Power for a guest blog post. Tom runs a rather nice boutique tour company called Pura Aventura which specialises in tours to Latin America and Spain. It's on a theme I've touched on before... but, coming from an operator rather than a journalist the perspective is different. Would anyone take him up on his offer? I know he'd love to know your thoughts and, of course, so would I...

What if, rather than asking travel journalists to take a trip with us, commission a story and write about it, we simply offered free holidays to travel bloggers?

I’m polling opinion here and would really appreciate your thoughts. I can’t help thinking that there’s a potentially great idea here with potentially great vulnerabilities. Where do you think it falls?

This is where I’ve got to:

1) Selective: we’d have to be picky about the blogs we select, that’s hardly controversial. We would want to associate ourselves with blogs that have decent reputations and rankings.

2) Prescriptive: we would want to define the number of posts and links back to our site. Probably in the order of 4 posts pre-trip, 1 per day on the trip and another 4 on return. Presumably it is reasonable that we expect an output in return for our investment. Anyone see any issues with this?

3) Controlling: what are the acceptable limits of editorial control? What if the blogger just hates the trip and is relentlessly nasty? (I should say that I have full faith in what we do and I can’t think of a time that it has happened to a customer so am not by nature worried.) However, what if a blogger is the only one in a group to dislike the trip? Do we retain editorial control? What would be the acceptable limits and lines?

4) Profiling: our holidays are generally taken by people later in life, median would be in the 50s I guess. If we were to send a blogger on this walking holiday to Chile for instance, would that work? Are there bloggers who would broadly match the profile of our existing customers? Does it matter? Are travel bloggers generally outdoors types or do they sit in still rooms lit only by the glow of computer screens?

5) Boring: is this an offer which regularly drops into the laps of travel bloggers? This isn’t my idea, I’ve nicked it from a Springwise newsletter (cool business ideas from around the world), I think they saw it being done in New Zealand. Is anyone else offering similar here?

6) Toe treading: and this is one for the TravelBlather and Travel Lists and many, many others I’m sure. Professional travel writers. How does this idea sit with you guys?

7) Fine print: the trip would usually not be 100% free as we don’t tend to include international flights. If you had to buy a flight to, say, South America, in order to claim/earn your trip, would it still appeal?

Is Web 2.0 killing travel brands?

I've been doing quite a lot of research around social media in the last few weeks - in particular because I was presenting at WTM. If you're interested, my presentation Social Media for Travel Marketers: Unpicking the 2.0 hype is available to view on Slideshare with detailed notes too.

One of the issues that I find particularly interesting is the way that whilst brands are desparate to engage with social media - social media is making brands increasingly redundant.

Marketers see social media as the next great opportunity to grow their businesses. And it's not hard to see why when you consider that Facebook now has 350 million accounts worldwide and Twitter is growing exponentially too. Some 40% of online sales are influenced by social media already (McKinsey stats -  more of this kind of stuff in the presentation).

But these very tools that travel marketers want to embrace are in some ways killing the brands they sought to build up - with vast expenditure and effort - over previous decades. Back in the old days pre the social web, big companies couldn't communicate with all their customers on an individual basis. So they sought to create 'personalities' - to put a friendly face on the front of their products and companies so people could 'relate' to them. Sounds weirdly ridiculous doesn't it? But it kind of worked. The whole discipline of brand marketing was born - humanising a faceless company. Often they'd use 'brand personalities' - so Michael Jackson endorsed Pepsi, Rutger Hauer came to personify Guinness and Nicole Kidman is the face of Channel No.5. Here were real people - people like us (remember the Bisto family?) or else people we'd like to be like. Absolutely tons of cash was pumped into this kind of marketing. (Interestingly I can think of no examples of travel brands that did this. Can you?)

But it was all broadcast. "This is what we want you to believe about our company and its products" was the message. And your could control the medium so it was no problem - TV, print ads, advertising billboards. But social media isn't one-way... customers can talk back, customers can broadcast for themselves. It's a multi-channel conversation and anyone can join in.

I often think of social media (blogs, Facebook, Twitter) as being a bit like the pub. There's chat going on about all kinds of stuff. It's between like minded people and friends usually, it's relaxed and informal. They could well be discussing how cheap their new mortgage deal is or where the best resort for family holidays in Spain is. But can you imagine some bloke in a suit from say Halifax suddenly intervening with a sales pitch for his mortgages or a travel agent jumping into the conversation to suggest their latest deals for family holidays to Mallorca? (Despite the fact that the information they have to offer could actually be of genuine interest.)

Absolutely not. And that's the problem.

The old days of broadcast marketing, building a brand and pumping out your message could well be over.

So how does say First Choice or Thomas Cook get themselves into that chat in the pub about everyone's next family holiday? Could you ever see a place for a big travel brand to engage in these far more conversational and personal on-line environments?

(I have a few ideas which I'll share... but I'd be fascinated to hear what other people think!)

72% of Press Releases are made up crXp!

NB: Clarification from Ash Communications follows this post (comment number 3)

Gah! Time for an anti-PR rant. I've already blathered about it... but I have to do it again. Today I received 2 press releases from Ash communications (take your place in my hall of shame - the PR Waffle catergory) splattered with useless percentages.

Take this fine piece or meaningless waffle created for their client Skiingholidays.com

Confidence is returning to the ski industry with 80 per cent of skiers who did not ski last year planning to return to the slopes this season. Skiers are becoming savvier in finding ways to cut costs to stay on the slopes, with 40 per cent of holidaymakers looking to book late, a third choosing to build their own skiing holidays using low cost flights, and 75 per cent of independent skiers investigating car hire as a cheaper alternative to often expensive transfers.

How many was your sample size? Who were you asking? How did you conduct your survey? Was there any sort of control group?

There was no detail whatsoever about where these percentages came from. RIDICULOUS.

What do you think we are? Stupid?? For goodness sake people...  you are communicating with journalists here. Most of us have an obligation to check the veracity of facts before we publish things.

Is the one remaining difference between PR and journalism that journalists have a true obligation to their audience - not to some client that they commit to pump out meaningless tripe for once a week in return for cash?

And then there was this story on Travelmole (it's password protected - so here's an extract too)

The use of micro blogging site Twitter is gaining rapid penetration within the travel industry, according to a new study. It revealed that more than half of users (52%) tweeted between four and 10 times a day, with over a quarter sending more than 10 Twitter updates daily....

The survey of 90 Twitter users who tweet on travel matters was conducted by Andy Jarosz, writer and owner of travel blog 501 Places.

I am sure this piece was lifted straight from a press release - it certainly feels like it.

We actually got a sample size here. It was 90 people. 90 people for heaven's sake! That's about as statistically valid as asking my mum and the postman! 

So... there you go... PR people writing tosh backed up by pseudo science and journalists who should know better printing it verbatim. No wonder the media industry is in crisis!

Shall we go for comments/examples of the stupidest press release you ever received? Feel free - if you can be bothered...

Social media for travel marketers - unpicking the 2.0 hype

I’m speaking at WTM (World Travel Market in London) on Wednesday 11th November.

If you’re there... drop by! Whether you’ll be there or not... how about participating now?

The seminar is called Social Media for Marketers: Unpicking the 2.0 hype. Seeing as it’s all about social networks, why not share my thoughts ahead of the seminar with my own network (ie you guys!) and see what people have to say...

I’ve got some basic ideas... but stuff people say here can and almost certainly will influence what I present. (Of course I will attribute where necessary!) Speaking with me will be Jane Nicholson one of the PR people who ran the ‘Best Job In The World’ campaign (BJitW) for Visit Queensland – a competition which went viral and was much talked about. I’ve not seen her deck yet, buy I imagine she will discuss how they went about organising the campaign and why it worked. (Feel free to let me know what you thought about it – but for my bit I will focus on other examples.)

A few thoughts - this is probably the way I will structure the presentation too:

1) Hype (or brands that maybe get it wrong?)
I didn’t choose the title. But clearly those who did, feel that there is ‘hype’ here. Is there? And if so, what forms does it take? Any examples of travel sector (or other) brands that have engaged in hype-ish activity and been caught out?

2) Brands that get it right (at least most of the time)
Look at examples of travel sector brands that use social media really well to drive marketing campaigns and/or to interact with customers. Any suggestions?

3) People are still people
A pause for breath before we get theoretical... It’s fine to get excited about ‘the power of social media’ but making a big noise doesn’t necessarily bring you more business. Most of the old principles of marketing absolutely still apply on-line (don’t they?). People still make purchasing decisions about flights and holidays according to similar principles. (Or do they?)

4) Some suggested ‘rules’ of social media
Taken from the great work the social media team at iCrossing has been doing.
- Be useful – the most important point. No one will be interested unless what you are offering is valuable to them – ie it fulfils a need. (This might be something quite trivial like make them laugh when they are bored at work.)
- Be findable – no point doing stuff if no-one knows you are doing it. SEO needs to be in the mix (along with some careful promotion?)
- Be live – the whole point of social media is that it allows 2-way interaction. You need to respond in a timely and useful manner to comments and requests. And that takes commitment.
- Be real – you simply can’t afford to try and game the sysyem. (cf 1) above and ‘hype’) You will be found out and then the network will eat you up and spit you out!

5) It’s about networks and communities
Fine to make a big noise about a campaign... but what happens next? Is ‘little and often’ a better strategy? Can you ‘build’ communities on-line? If so what do you need to do? Been reading Rachel Happe’s fascinating posts on the social organisation.

6) The importance of reputation
Participants in communities – whether on or off-line – are not all equal. Key people influence and drive them. Will the influencers in these communities ultimately mean PR is a dead profession? As communities become more and more transparent, trying to influence opinion (ie push products) within them will become impossible.

7) Privacy – and Facebook connect
I’m fascinated and terrified by Facebook Connect – and the idea of portable personal data (people talk about portable social graphs... but I find that a bit of an odd name). Basically, FB Connect (and other similar concepts like Google Friend Connect) allows you to log in to any site that adopts it using your FB login and password. How convenient! No more forgetting which password you used for what site. What it also does is carry all your personal data along too and feeds back your activity on the participating website to your status/wall updates on your Facebook profile. What FB Connect also does is share your Facebook data with that website and Facebook also gets to learn about all your activity there as well as on Facebook itself. A phenomenally powerful tool for marketers - a whole feast of rich user data - but it's shot through with privacy issues for the individual in my opinion. The link above shows some ways FB Connect could be used in the future - potentially very very interesting.

I increasingly feel the days of the big bang PR campaign like Best Job in the World could be pretty numbered. Do you?

The cake and the cockroach

I'm in the stunning city of Seville updating my Frommer’s Day by Day guide to the city. As you know, this is the first time I’ve updated a guidebook, so there’s a bit of a learning curve. But something happened yesterday I hadn’t expected.

On one of my Seville walking tours I've included a traditional coffee shop called La Campana. All my walking tours need to include at least one spot to take the weight off your feet and have a drink and a bite. This place is Seville’s oldest coffee and cake shop, full of ornate chiller cabinets filled with beautifully arranged rows of colourful cakes and sugary sweets. It trades on its reputation a bit and is pricey compared to several other places, but the location is picture perfect – on a bustling street corner in the shade. You can sit at your table on the pavement and watch the world go by as waistcoated waiters pour you a coffee or a fresh juice and bring you your yummy cake. And it’s exactly halfway round my walking tour too. So... a bit touristy, but actually pretty perfect for what I need.

Except, I and my wife (who has been here with me for a couple of days) bought some cakes there yesterday. We brought them back to my apartment. And Karen found a COCKROACH! in her cake. (‘Look on the bright side’ I told her – ‘at least it wasn’t half a cockroach!’)

But joking aside it presents me with serious issues. What should I do?

1) Drop the place completely?
As a rule with a guidebook where space is at an absolute premium, you don’t give a place a bad review. If it’s not good, you just don’t include it – there’s simply not room to write about the bad places.

2) Mention it, but give it a bad review
Despite this, it is Seville’s most famous coffee shop – it will be in every other guidebook to the city. Leaving it out could look like a glaring omission. I absolutely can’t keep it in my walking tour as a recommended refreshment stop if I am not 100% sure it’s good. These stops are supposed to be places I have carefully selected as special. An added problem is that, due to the way the format of the guidebook works, the only place I can easily include a coffee shop in the book is as a walking tour refreshment stop. There are listings chapters for Bars, Restaurants, Shops and Hotels, but this place doesn’t really fit into any of these sections very easily. (Perhaps I could put it in 'Shops'? That might work.)

3) Mention it without discussing the cockroach
Maybe this was just a one-off? After all, they have been making and serving cakes here for literally centuries. Plenty of other satisfied customers - many of them regular locals. Perhaps I should give them the benefit of the doubt? Keep it in the walking tour.

4) Mention it but say something opaque
So, they were having an off day maybe – perhaps I mention La Campana but make it clear I’m not mad keen on the place. Say something about ‘lovely location, but the cakes are a bit sweet and overpriced in my opinion’ or similar. But can I keep it in the walking tour if I do this? I’m not at all sure.

5) Give them a chance to resolve the problem
You might well be saying I should tell the manager of the place about the problem and give him an opportunity to resolve it. I probably would do in the UK – but my Spanish is awful and (more important) there is no proof the cockroach came from their cake. I could just be saying this to make life difficult for them. (It’s a big shame we didn’t eat the cake at the shop!) I have plenty of friends here who are Spanish, so I could get them to help me explain the problem. And I might.

So – what would you do? How do you strike a balance between a one-off unfortunate experience and needing a certain type of place to fit a particular kind of guidebook format?

Scroll down to comment #21 to see my update on what happened when I went to confront the manager - cockroach in hand (well in a bag actually)