Travelblather

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.)

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)

Interesting salvo of activity in the last couple of days. I got an email from Mark Hodson who knows a thing or two about travel SEO (there Mark you owe me a link) as well as being a respected travel writer. Along with another of the Sunday Times regular travel writers David Wickers, he set up 101holidays earlier this year.

It's a simple, clean site that aims to offer an easy to navigate list of carefully selected tour operators for people in the 'inspiration phase' of looking for a holiday. It's one of a new breed of websites that's evolving from the chaotic stew of on-line travel content sites that travel writers are creating or contributing to in the hope of somehow earning an income from their trade now that print is more or less dead. I reviewed 101holidays in an earlier post.

And it must be relatively successful as they've now launched companion site 101shortbreaks. (Bets on what will come next? Chaps I sincerely hope you have bought the domain names for... 101cruiseholidays, 101skiholidays etc.) Mark I think(?) would be the first to admit that the site makes money by charging the 101 operators an annual fee to be featured on the site. As I understand it this is the main way that Alastair Sawday makes his money - all the hotels featured in his guidebooks/website pay to be included. (If I'm wrong here, I'd be delighted to be corrected.)

At the same time, Matthew Teller posted on his blog about a way he is experimenting with to try and earn income as a travel writer. He suggested to two editors of online travel sections of newspapers that as they didn't have budget to pay him, he would ask the tourist board of the country he was travelling to if they would pay him instead. Both editors refused the idea, suggesting that it would undermine their credibility. I commented on Matthew's blog that I'd just do the deal with the tourist board and not tell the editor concerned. I fail to see the difference between the tourist board paying for a travel writer to stay in hotels, dine in restaurants (it often comes out of their marketing budget rather than the establishment absorbing the cost) and paying the writer some additional 'expenses' for his time. The editor remains totally free to edit and revise any copy submitted.

Interestingly the Federal Trade Commission in the USA has recently ruled that "bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service." (eg: you get a free night in a hotel, you need to make this clear if you then review it.) This has caused all sorts of debate in the blogosphere - both for and against. Does this suggest a future where every travel feature on-line requires a disclaimer at the end of it?

So - does the fact that content has been paid for by the company
featured mean that the integrity and credibility of that content is
compromised or not? 

And... are we so far down the line... with so much of travel sections these days being written off the back of press trips which are organised specifically to push a particular product from a particular company - that it really makes no difference anyway?

I don't do trips so much now I work for search and social media company iCrossing. But I'd got them to agree to give me a month off (unpaid) to coincide with my girlfriend's summer holidays (she's a teacher) and decided to try and pull in a commission that would allow me to go somewhere interesting without having to pay for it. We'd pay the extra for my girlfriend to accompany me and, in theory, everyone would be happy.

I've not done much of the Americas and so focussed on Central America. I found out quickly how the market has tightened. I pitched at most of the editors and found they weren't commissioning much. What they were, needed to be places that lots of readers would go to: France, Italy, Spain, Thailand, Australia.

But eventually I landed a commission to El Salvador. A new destination introduced by one of the larger Latin America specialist tour operators. It sounded seriously cool! The newspaper was a smaller UK daily national - I'm not naming it here - but it's one of four UK upmarket dailies with a circulation in the 250,000 mark.

For those of you reading this who don't know how abysmal pay is for freelance travel writers let me tell you up front. For 1500 words I was offered £250. The travel editor told me that he would welcome pictures but that he had no budget, so I'd have to give them for free. That's the going rate. (I know that to be the case). So I didn't negotiate.

I've taken my girlfriend on trips before. Usually it's easy to agree that, because she shares my room and my transfer taxi and my minibus if we're being driven around, there's no additional cost. We just pay for her extra meals. And of course for her flights.

As is often the case the tour operator couldn't help with flights. So I approached the airlines directly. In return for a free flight for me, they would get the mention in the 'getting there' part of the Fact Box at the end of the piece.

• BA and Iberia said 'not interested'
• KLM took 2 weeks to decide and then offered a 'media rate' of about £850(!)
• United Airlines wanted to know if I could guarantee them a mention in my copy as well as in the Fact Box. (Answer - not a hope. Even if I put it in there it would definitely get taken out by the sub-editor at the newspaper.) So they said No
• Continental Airlines offered a similar rate to KLM
• American Airlines offered $550 + taxes (total cost about £600)

At the same time, the tour operator came back to me and said I'd have to pay around £700 for my girlfriend to accompany me. The local operator in El Salvador decided that he could make a buck or two by effectively charging us pretty much full rate for her. I negotiated a bit. We reduced the length of the trip and cut out one long day trip to a temple outside El Salvador in Honduras. Managed to get the girlfriend's costs down to £400.

I then checked with American Airlines and found that they couldn't give
any reduction for my girlfriend. Her tickets would cost around £1000.

So... my 'cheap' adventure off the back of a commission was going to
cost me £600 with an income of £250 and my girlfriend £1400. (OK. I'm a
nice guy, I'd have picked up half the tab for her!)

Know what I did?

I canned the trip and booked two full fare tickets to Malaysia for a total cost of £1400.

When I emailed the tour op to tell them, they suddenly found an extra £350 in the budget to contribute towards my flight costs. But, by then, I'd had enough. Interestingly when I emailed the travel ed of the newspaper, he replied in a moment and was quite relaxed. 'No problem, completely understand. Feel free to pitch other ideas my way.' This sort of thing looks like it happens quite often.

WHAT DID I LEARN?

Combining a press trip with a holiday, rarely works. Shame, because it's really good to have a second opinion sometimes. No justification for a second free ticket, but reason enough to have someone along for the ride who pays for any additional costs incurred.

Airlines just aren't interested in mentions. More interesting was the discussion I had with one American carrier. They said they'd more likely give away a free seat for Fact Box plus a copy mention in a smaller regional paper (where the editorial guidelines about mentioning sponsors in the body copy are often more relaxed) than for a single Fact Box mention in a National. Indeed 'National's are often happy to pay a media rate for flights' I was told. (Presumably for staffers. I can't think they'd pay for a freelancer?)

Central America will remain off the beaten track for Europeans because there's not enough competition on the air routes. Fares out there are at least 50% more than to SE Asia. Such a shame as it's culturally fascinating.

Travel Editors aren't that bothered about losing a feature. Let's face it, they probably have piles of others knocking about.

Travel Editors would rather commission a mainstream destination (presumably because more readers might go there and more companies would be interested to buy an ad next to that feature). Travel supplements will become increasingly homogenous. Sad for the traveller looking for inspiration, sad for the more adventurous tour ops, sad for the developing countries like say El Salvador that would dearly love some tourist cash.

Making money as a freelance travel writer is virtually impossible - unless you have a regular gig with a big circulation National or an upmarket magazine (I reckon that's probably about 20 or so people in the UK - so if you are an aspiring travel writer reading this be very aware of how incredibly competitive it is).For most of us in the trade, long haul trips are about
getting a reduced price holiday or seeing some place we really want to
see. Not about making money.

Or is there a way to do press trips to obscure places and make them work that I don't know about?

Tomorrow (Thursday 18th June) a new travel content website launches. Simonseeks.com is a new travel website, backed by Simon Nixon, the founder of moneysupermarket.com and
travelsupermarket.com.

There's a hole in the market for quality travel content that works for people who are in the research phase of holiday booking and tour operators have been way too slow to fill it. Simon Nixon reckons he can fill that gap and has deep pockets too. Some say he's worth £295 million.

 Similar in approach to thetraveleditor.com, Simonseeks will offer writers who contribute to the site a share of advertising revenue. I was quite involved in thetraveleditor but decided to not participate in the end, feeling that the revenue share wasn't sufficient and that they really didn't know too much about SEO - which is pretty crucial.

I think this is where simonseeks could be different. I've contributed a few articles for the launch and they are using a formatted template that requires writers to add meta-data and makes them tag their features too. Unsurprisingly the team at simonseeks know a thing or two about how to make websites work. They've also signed up Nick Trend, who has a lot of travel writing and editing experience for the likes of Which?, The Telegraph and Conde Nast traveller, to be editor.

The press release talks about a 'new cottage industry' of travel writers working from home earning money by creating content and taking their share of the ad revenue - which as I understand it will be a fairly decent 50%. I've just discovered from Fiona Reece who is doing PR for the launch (and sent me the press release) that 300 writers have contributed 1000 articles already.

Part of me hopes they are successful and that maybe I get to share in that success... but there's concern too. I don't like the idea of being part of a 'cottage industry'. I have a writer profile on the site which has a mark on it saying 'Travel Professional' but the strap line for the site is Travel Guides for you, by you. That for me speaks volumes. Professional travel journalism as those of us in the profession know it is pretty much finished now. Here's some more detail from the 'about' page.

Anyone can do it, and make money out of it. You write your own
articles, or guides, post them up on the site, and we will do the rest.
Although we will always check that any guides submitted are up to our
high standards of accuracy before we publish them, the site is open to
all - whether you are a professional journalist, an expert in a
particular field of travel, a student, publisher, or simply someone who
loves travelling and wants to share your experiences with others.

Let's face it, I'm a bit of a snob. I don't know that I want my writing alongside that of wannabetravelwriterbackpacker or whoever. This is the market at its most aggressive and brutal and its scary. I know a thing or two about SEO so maybe I can manipulate features that I contribute to be more visible and hence attract more ad revenue? But there's a limit to the number of features they'll need on Seville for example - I wrote a guidebook to the city so I know it well - but there are 10 features on the site already about Seville that are written by other people.

I wonder too if there's a finite number of features that you can have about a place before there are just too many? Will there come a point where there are too many features about Seville and the mass of information becomes a bit overwhelming?

One thing that I'm not so sure about is the fact that along with all the other UGC sites like TripAdvisor etc there's no attempt at niche here. The intention is to cover the complete universe of travel opportunities. How doable is that? I'd love to know how many days a week Nick Trend is working on the project... it could be a 24 hour editing job. I'd also love to know more about his web experience... I don't know if he has that much of it... I can't find a personal website or a blog for him. But does that matter? (Maybe not.)

So.. do I throw my lot in with them and hope that my years of experience will mean I become one of their most read and valuable travel writers or do I create a small niche site of my own about stuff I'm a real expert on and try and build something myself... and keep all the ad revenue for myself too? I don't know that much yet about monetization, but if Simonseeks has thousands and thousands of pages the value of the ads on each page will be very small I'd imagine, so to make it work it will be a volume game.

What would you do?