I got an invite to a press trip to South Africa yesterday. It looked very tempting. Everything paid for. But as always with travel press trips the itinerary was jammed - Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa in the space of 3 days. How is anyone supposed to take away anything meaningful from such a whirlwind of experiences? As a freelance I need one or two strong themes and depth, not breadth.

As soon as you get on a plane on a press trip you are fair game to everyone who has had a role in hosting you - every restaurant who feeds you, each hotel that accommodates you, every ground handler that looks after you. A chaos of voices all trying to get your attention...

Maybe if you work on a travel desk at a newspaper you can crowbar lots of mentions for all these different people into a series of bits and pieces, but as a freelance it's hopeless. By about day 2 of one of these trips you are so overloaded with info you don't want to see another rep from somewhere else telling you about how great their product is... You also don't want any of the other journos on the trip too close to you in case they see the same angle you see and write about it too... You're gagging for a bit of free space with no one else around so you can get on with the job of watching and thinking and writing...

It's a shame as press trips are quite social and thus good fun... going solo as I tend to do is solitary and sometimes lonely. But to generate great copy that is unique and compelling press trips are a waste of time and that's just the way it goes...