Travelblather

I had an interesting conversation on email with Jo Tweedy who is the editor of Travelmail, the Daily Mail's travel website. Along with lots travel features and travel news on the site, they also run a blog. The contributors in the main are Travelmail's regular writers and editors.

She recently put up a post about a daytrip she did to Gibraltar whilst she was in Andalusia. It was a bit negative, contrasting the slightly down-at-heel feel of Gib's old town with traditional Andalusian tourist spots like the delightful scenery of the Pueblos Blancos and the atmosphere of Marbella's old town.

I agree, having visited it myself for a couple of days last month. I went whilst researching a guidebook to Andalusia for Frommer's so I saw all the places she compares it with too.

But that's not what I want to discuss. What was interesting was the avalanche of critical comments that the post attracted. 83 comments so far in total.

A few quick examples:

• This travel writer isn't very good.... As a travel writer you usually explore and sounds to me that she did very little and didn't travel around Gibraltar at all. (posted by neil)

• Jo Tweedy appears to have done no research on Gibraltar (did she actually go there) (posted by Roy)

• Very irresponsible way of writing - you should be sacked. (posted by Tommo)

Bit of a firestorm!

I must point out that there are plenty of comments agreeing completely too. It wasn't all one-sided. But it got me thinking about the difference between a blog post and a feature and the way people read them and react to them.

Blog posts are supposed to be opinionated. The accusation that as a ‘proper’ travel writer the author has done a bad job by just writing down their first impressions is just wrong. The fact that on first view Gibraltar seemed a bit shabby and expensive does matter. It’s actually very important. Sure, there may be great stuff going on elsewhere (like the impressive marina development) but Jo’s experience was no different to any other visitor's. Or to put it in the words of one commenter: Seems like Jo is just another day-tripper who spent their day treading the tarmac on a packed Main Street and eating tasteless grub in some tourist trap pub. (posted by Impartial)

Yes, she is. That’s absolutely the point.

Blog posts are more real. Travel writers often get the red carpet treatment. They get shown around by PR people and tourist board reps and everyone knows they will be coming so everything is nicely polished. And that's usually what you get in features as a result. Blog posts let you see behind the scenes. You get the bits around the edges like queuing to get across the border and getting stung for expensive fish and chips that you wouldn’t see in a ‘normal’ travel feature. That's good.

A good blog post gets debate going and sometimes it’s heated. That’s fine. Jo was I think a bit shocked by the depth of feeling and some of the comments (they were quite personal) and I got the feeling she wondered if she should have published the post. I’d say yes, absolutely. The comment and debate it threw up was both interesting and actually ought to be very thought-provoking reading for the Gibraltar Tourist Board.

In short blog posts and features are very different things. BUT readers don't appreciate the distinction. And this is important.

What would I do differently?

Make the blog space more distinctive from the main website. Help readers understand that this space is about opinion and debate, not researched journalism. Explain that too. Clearly.

Publish rules of engagement. Make it clear that overtly aggressive comments, particularly if they are personal in nature (eg you should be sacked) will be deleted.

Moderate the discussion. If you start a conversation you have to keep participating. I haven’t read all 83 comments, but I couldn’t see any comments from Jo in response. In fact a very quick glance at other posts on the blog suggests that the writers don’t respond to comments at all. Now, I know everyone is mega busy and that it’s difficult to know at what point to engage. But for it to be ‘real’ (and essentially to make it a 'proper' blog-space rather than just a bunch of opinion-pieces not dissimilar to a column on a magazine) there needs to be 2-way conversation taking place. Yep. That could be a pretty full-time job. Ultimately, they could do with someone as a fairly full-time moderator.

What do you think?

I've blogged in the past about a new model for online travel writers - working directly with a tour operator or travel agent to create genuinely compelling content for them. Perhaps the most groundbreaking example of this new model for travel writing is the very excellent Granturismo blog. Travel writers Lara Dunston and Terence Carter are working with HomeAway Holiday-Rentals. They are travelling the world for a whole year, staying in HomeAway rental properties in every location and writing, photographing, videoing and tweeting as they go.

That's a serious undertaking for both the writers and the operator - a big commitment from both parties. I'm fascinated by the idea. So I figured it was time to find out more. Here's a truly fascinating look at both sides of the relationship. The same questions answered by Lara and by Sarah Chambers who is the PR manager for Homeaway UK. Very interesting stuff!

How did the idea come about?
Lara Dunston: Terence and I were having coffee with my aunt in Australia, where we spend time writing each year. We were working on books and articles and whining about the downsides of guidebook writing (i.e. tedious tasks like checking bus times and dotting banks on maps) and magazine work (spending only a few days in places). We were also complaining about how some travellers travel: how they rush through places, only staying a day or two, seeing sights mainly, using guidebooks obsessively, and in the process miss out on amazing experiences.

Sarah Chambers: I was thinking about how best we could communicate not only the benefits of staying in a holiday home rental, but also the huge range available in terms of destinations and property types. Sending two journalists on an ‘around the world’ discovery-type trip seemed like an engaging and adventurous way to do this. Luckily, and coincidentally, Lara and Terry were already considering a similar idea.

Why did you do it?
LD: Selfish reasons and lofty goals: we wanted a more enriching project that would give us the best of both worlds, i.e. a month or so in a place as we have when we work on guidebooks, but to get to know the place deeply through its people, culture, food, music, etc, as we do researching magazine stories. Plus we sincerely want to see travellers overcome their shyness, not rely solely on guidebooks, connect more with locals, stay longer, do and learn things, travel more slowly and sustainably, and travel in more enriching ways. Although obviously we appreciate sometimes people just need to lie on a beach! Ah, that would be nice…

SC: We wanted to do something that would really inspire people to try this different way of travelling and show them that ‘holiday rentals’ = much more than just apartments and villas with pools. I love travelling myself and often stay in rentals now too, so I’m committed to spreading the word!

What have been the big successes so far?
LD: We’re halfway through the project so Terence and I have just been reflecting on these actually. We’ve concluded our experiment a success: this is definitely the best way to travel! We can now confidently say that staying in apartments and houses enables you to have so many more meaningful experiences and allows so many more opportunities to connect with locals in ways that staying in hotels do not. This has truly been the most memorable 6 months of travel of our lives. We’re also proud of the content we’re generating. We’re working hard to create compelling stories, do engaging interviews, and Terence in particular is making beautiful photos and videos.

SC: The blog is beautiful and really seems to have captured people’s imagination. They are getting great traffic and involvement via social media, plus we can see there is some good conversion in terms of visits and property enquiries on our site. For me, their writing also really captures and eloquently conveys the type of experience you can enjoy in a holiday home.

What have been the things that haven't worked so well?
LD: We don’t have enough time and we’re spending too much money! It’s always time and money, isn’t it? We compromised on two weeks per place, though we understand why HomeAwayUK needed us to do that. We’re working harder than ever: on top of connecting with locals, having experiences, writing, editing photos, and maintaining the site, we’re constantly planning ahead, running a monthly competition, doing social media, tweeting, and so on. It’s also been frustrating that we haven’t had as good Internet access as promised in many properties we’ve stayed at, as that’s crucial obviously – in one place the best access was from an olive grove! Not fun in the rain.

SC: We had hoped that other publishers and media would be interested in featuring content from Lara and Terry, as they have complete editorial control over everything they produce. However it seems that publications are still hesitant to engage with this kind of innovative hybrid projects presenting independent content sponsored by a brand. 'Though essentially this is no different to one very long press trip.'

Would you do it again?
LD: Absolutely! After a period of recovery of course! But in our original form, i.e. one month in each destination, so we could really get beneath the skin of places and do and learn more things. For instance, Terence is a brilliant musician as well as a great cook. Our original plan involved him learning instruments and working in kitchens. I’d hoped to take language lessons, other classes, and volunteer. We haven’t exploited as many opportunities as we could have, or slept as much as we’d like. If we did it again, we’d ask the partner company to handle more research and planning tasks, more social media, do more PR, and run any competitions they might want. Projects like this need in-house staff dedicated to it full-time for better results. My advice to writers embarking on similar projects would be to clarify the amount of resources being allocated to the project.

SC: I’m not sure, but only as it seems a lot of other companies are jumping on the bandwagon now, doing similar things. So I think we have to set ourselves the challenge of finding a slightly different angle for our next project!

If you did, what would you change?
LD: We negotiated a fee based on industry rates, but agreed to part of it in bonuses attached to securing additional print coverage. We’re widely published so didn’t envisage that being a challenge, but we didn’t expect editors to see this as advertorial. We thought we’d negotiated things to circumvent that, like editorial control (HomeAwayUK doesn’t see our content until you do), only reviewing a property (critically and honestly!) every two weeks, and promoting the travel lifestyle rather than company. However, some editors still see it as advertorial because HomeAwayUK are paying us. That will be the main challenge for writers working directly with travel companies who want traditional media coverage in addition to social media content. My advice is to negotiate a fair and realistic fee and don’t agree to bonuses based on anything, because – just like travel – there are some things you just can’t predict.

SC: I imagine the answer is the same for lots of projects; Plan more in advance about how we could fully integrate our PR and marketing activities. I think this is an ongoing challenge for many companies. We are doing this, but we have also taken a lot of learnings from this project so I think we could do it a lot better next time.

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This idea was actually Lara's and a very good one at that! Thanks to both Lara and Sarah for contributing as I know both of you are very busy!

Lots to take away for travel writers and for PR people too. What's the single most useful insight here for you and why? I'd be interested to know.

Destination Guides - everyone does them. Airlines, tourist boards, airports, hotels. The web is awash with the things and I've even contributed quite a number of them for one of the UK's leading airlines.

For a while content solution companies like Whatsonwhen (now part of Frommer's of course) made a pretty good living providing travel sector companies with off-the-shelf blocks of content to populate their sites with 'useful content'. Then people got wise to the SEO potential of this kind of stuff and started adding keywords into the mix.

The end result nowadays is lots of very generic, sometimes ageing content which is often targetted at search engines and not particularly useful for the user.

• Here's an example of the pretty standard kind of thing from Manchester Airport.
• And another from Air France.
• Spot the keywords in KLM's destination guide to Amsterdam.
• And check out the incredible detail in this Sicily guide from Think Sicily. Amazing.

The content in the KLM guide is particularly interesting for me as a content person. It's very detailed and of a genuinely high quality. It's written by Whatsonwhen/Frommers. I particularly like the themed walking tours (which look like they might have been lifted from the Day By Day guides series that Frommer's publish).

But, does anybody find or read them?

I tried searching for keyword combinations like 'Amsterdam guide', 'destination guide to Amsterdam', 'things to do in Amsterdam', and two of the terms it looks like the page is targetting 'flights to Amsterdam' and 'Amsterdam holiday'. None of these pages show up on the first page. In fact I struggled to find them at all.

Guess what? I've been asked to come up with a format for some destination guides. And I want to create something that's a bit different and genuinely useful. (Particularly as the KLM example above suggests that going for the SEO/keyword approach isn't really worth the effort.)

I think  the KLM example is lovely from a content perspective, but probably a waste of money. Are people going to come to an airline for top things to do and places to go for a destination? Probably not I'd say. You'd go to a more well known and credible source like say Lonely Planet or for example in London, Time Out. So why spend all that money on destination guides that few people will read anyway?

So what do you need in a destination guide?

Minimum requirements I think are base-level facts. We're talking stuff like weather, visa requirements, getting around in relation to your physical property (the airport if you are an airline or airport, your hotel if you are a hotel etc) getting there, health and safety. I do wonder though if you could link to the right (ie most authoritative) places which offer really frequently updated information that is trustworthy, rather than having to maintain content of your own. So for Health and Safety link to the FCO website's travel advice pages or (if only the offered them) pull relevant info onto your page using their RSS feeds.

Going totally local could be a smart idea for a hotel chain. Get the guys on the concierge desk to recommend their top restaurants, shops, things to do and really focus on writing about the less-visited, genuinely cool recommendations rather than the usual old favourites.

Targetting specific readers could be good for an airline or airport. Think about organising your things to do and so on around the differing needs of your distinct customer groups - families, couples, business people etc. I think Top 5 things to do for families, weekend breakers, business people could be much easier to digest and more useful than far more long and detailed offerings we tend to get at the moment that try to be all things to all  people. Keep it light, but make it much more focussed - easier for the reader to find the stuff that's appropriate to them.

Using expert opinion to add more credibility seems like a nice idea too. Who cares what Air France thinks are the top things to do in London? Paris maybe, but London? Why not find some people who live in London (maybe people with specific demographic profiles - a family, a businessman etc) and get their Top 5 ideas? I'm far more likely to believe them than a big brand that has no real association with the place. Here's a rather nice example from Red Visitor.

What would you put on a destination guide to make it genuinely useful and a bit different?

I’ve blogged a couple of times already about Simonseeks. I think it’s great to see innovation in the travel sector online. And I think there is a need for this kind of ‘inspirational’ content to help people research holiday ideas. But I also think they went about launching the site all the wrong way. It wasn’t remotely surprising that when they launched they attracted the ire of a lot of travel writers. The whole premise of the site is that anyone who can write a bit can be a travel writer now. Simon Nixon the guy with the cash behind the site (founder of Moneysupermarket.com so he has a few bob to spare) talked of a new ‘cottage industry of travel writers’. I still find it a bit amusing that there seemed to be such surprise that pro travel writers reacted the way they did.

Whether you can seriously earn revenue from writing for the site is - I think - decidedly unclear. In theory you earn 50% percent of any referral or booking fees that come to Simonseeks as a result of someone reading one of your pieces on the site.  At a blogger get-together at WTM last year the question was asked ‘has anyone earned anything from Simonseeks yet’ and I answered: "about £2.50". This was a little disingenuous as I only have a couple of features on the site – hardly enough to generate significant revenue. I did it to make a point and generate a laugh. Perhaps unsurprisingly Fiona Reece who handles the PR for Simonseeks who was also in the room was quick to counter my implied suggestion that you don’t earn much writing for the site, by saying that some people were starting to see earnings increase and that it was very early days so unfair to make these kinds of comments. Fair enough.

I was fascinated then to read an alert on Travmedia today from the editor of Simonseeks Nick Trend:

Editor's Alert: Simonseeks Seeks Destination Experts Sent at: 23rd Jul, 09:42
Simonseeks.com provides independent travel advice on destinations around the world. It is backed by Internet entrepreneur Simon Nixon, founder of leading price-comparison website Moneysupermarket.com.

We already have top-class travel writers in place as experts for some key destinations. We are now looking to rapidly expand our coverage to include the following cities and resort areas, and are seeking new experts for these destinations.

UK cities: Bath, Glasgow, Liverpool, Oxford, York. Overseas cities: Athens, Boston, Bruges, Brussels, Budapest, Cape Town, Copenhagen, Florence, Lisbon, Marrakesh, Milan, Naples, Prague, Seville, Vienna. Resort areas: Majorca, Ibiza, Menorca, Costa Brava, Costa Blanca, Costa del Sol, Lanzarote, Gran Canaria; Algarve; Sorrento/Amalfi Coast, Sardinia, Sicily; Corsica; Dubrovnik area; Malta; Cyprus; Sharm el Sheikh.

Experts need to have in-depth knowledge (including of hotels and restaurants) of the city or resort area they plan to write about. They should either live in the destination, or at least visit it regularly.

Being an expert for Simonseeks is a major commitment. Current experts are filing more than 20,000 words for most destinations, though some smaller cities and resorts may need somewhat less than this. As well as providing the initial material, experts are also expected to keep their pages up to date.

It’s a demanding role, but we hope the rewards will be substantial.

If you are interested in being a Simonseeks expert, send a brief CV outlining which destination you are interested in covering and your expertise and suitability, to experts@simonseeks.com.

It’s remarkable for a number of reasons:

1) They are now actively targeting pro travel writers (only pro travel writers can register for Travmedia alerts). This suggests that perhaps Simon’s ‘cottage industry’ isn’t delivering the real depth of knowledge and perspective that people looking for travel inspiration really need. Sure, anyone who can write a bit can turn out a feature on the highlights of their trip to Seville or wherever, but even if you get say 10 different people writing stuff about the place, is that enough? And is it on context? And is it totally objective and trustworthy. I’d suggest the answer is no. And this is why this role of ‘expert’ has presumably been created.

2) There isn’t the slightest hint of what potential earnings could be. Just the statement that it’s a serious undertaking to be an expert and that 20,000 words or so is the likely requirement. I just think it’s ridiculous that there is an expectation that a pro travel-writer will write 20,000 words in the ‘hope’ that they might make some money out of it. Most freelancers are struggling to make ends meet as it is. Additionally, the site has been up and running a good while now. In fact it launched just over a year ago. At the outset I can accept that it’s impossible to know how a project like this will work, but not now, surely? They ought to have at least some idea of what people can earn from an average feature on there. Frankly this is just arrogant. I’ve also seen no promotion of Simonseeks at all anywhere so far. Where’s the support? Where’s the commitment to the writers? Where’s the drive to get more traffic to the site? Maybe there’s been some, but I’ve not seen it.

It just feels like the writer is expected to take a huge risk with no idea of the reward.

To put it another way. It feels like Simon has invested in the premises, kitted out the shop, got the staff in to stack the shelves... and then just asked anyone who fancies to dust off their second-hand stuff or knock something homemade up in the garage and bring that along to sell it in the hope that people might buy it.

I’ve responded to the Travmedia ad and offered to be the expert for Seville – as author of a guidebook to Seville I know the place very very well. I’ve asked for them to give me some idea of what I could expect to earn from writing them 20,000 words. So far I just got an automated response (not particularly impressive) thanking me for applying. If they can prove to me what the earnings could be and they want me... I’ll happily do it and blog about the experience too. And let’s remember here that About.com has been doing something very similar for several years now and they offer detailed explanations of earnings and support the writer with direct fees to begin with.

So... Is anyone earning anything decent from Simonseeks?

The front page headline today in UK tabloid newspaper the Daily Express screams: "Stand Up and Fly for a Fiver!" Just to reiterate: this is the newspaper's front page story. What it views as the most important story of the day.

It's Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary throwing silly scraps to the media as usual. It just mystifies me how this tripe can make front page news. Fair play to the guy (as long as he didn't pay to be there on the front page and I don't think we have reached that stage in the game... yet). But honestly has journalism stooped this low now?

In theory O'Leary reckons he will take out the rear rows of seats and some of the loos to have a standing/perching area at the back of the plane. Yes, that's correct, people travelling on planes, standing up - all the time. No seats - just a stool or something to lean on. Total and utter nonsense. The minute the plane hits serious turbulence the idea becomes completely ridiculous. For heaven's sake even the crew sit down during serious turbulence. And if you've been in a plane in proper, hardcore turbulence you will know what I mean. You need to be seated to be safe.

This idea will never ever get off the ground. Ever. But wow it makes a great headline doesn't it?

And... people already do 'fly for a fiver' sitting down on Ryanair (assuming that they will add all the additional charges like airport tax and baggage on top which of course they will). It's not even amazingly cheap! This bunch of baloney has also been around for months and months too. It was first reported a year ago (!).

Why is the Express running it now? Because there's a TV programme about budget airlines on ITV tonight. That's the reason. Nothing else.

This is such lazy journalism. Are we really saying that some half-baked old story from a year ago that O'Leary chooses to trot out again for a half hour TV show is the most important thing happening in the world today? It probably took the writer 20 minutes to write. (Nice work Donna Bowater.) It was almost certainly generated by an ITV press release. It really gets to me the way that journalists treat their readers with such contempt and disinterest - feeding them whatever tripe a PR chooses to pump at them. And being so gullible to believe it in the first place.

Arrogant, lazy, cheap.

If you wanted a clear sign of where the industry is headed at the moment - due in part to the plummeting ad revenue and declining readerships as a result of the internet - here it is. I'm no fan of Rupert Murdoch, but if this is the kind of junk 'news' has become I'll pay for something better.

What do you think?