Travelblather

Regular readers (hello and thank you!) will I hope remember a recent post about how I see travel writing changing. (And I think it's happening increasingly quickly.)

As I explained, I see an opportunity for travel writers to associate themselves with a brand and get paid for doing so.

In return the brand gets credibility and quality content on their website/blog (or even out there elsewhere on the net.)

Here are a couple of interesting live examples:

• Fiona Hilliard writing the Glove Box blog for Argus Car Hire
• Lara Dunston and Terence Carter, writing the Gran Turismo blog for HomeAway Holiday-Rentals (screen shot above)

Anyone found any others?

So - what are the new skillsets that a travel writer in the web-age needs?

Here are a few that I can think of:

A blog and a twitter feed - you need to demonstrate that you 'get' web. That you are live in your network.You need to demonstrate too that you get CMS systems like Wordpress and would be comfortable writing posts directly into a CMS platform yourself

Comments and followers - you need to demonstrate that the web gets you. People online are following your tweets, commenting on your posts, interacting with you. This is actually quite subtle in my opinion. Or to put it another way... how do you get comments and followers and what does that show about you as a writer? You need to know how to write posts that are opinionated, thoughtful, and encourage others to respond. You need to know how to nurture that discussion by moderating the comments and responding. You need to tweet usefully (an obvious example, don't tweet that you've just eaten a donut or someone on the bus is annoying you if your twitter feed is supposed to be about you as a travel writer. Set up a separate personal twitter feed for personal stuff!).

Connections in the right networks - marketing bods are all about audiences and customer groups. So instead of profiling yourself as say an expert on six different destinations that you've written Lonely Planet guides to or whatever, profile yourself as someone who can interact successfully - with real credibility - with backpackers and independent travellers. Pick an audience and focus on that. I don't know how crucial this one is... but it's certainly interesting. Editors like to be able to think of their freelance writers as having a particular skill or specialism. If someone has a ready made network that targets a particular demographic, wow, that's a powerful thing.

I guess I'd summarise the above points in one phrase: Social Influence

And then as a counterpoint - Search Influence

Page Rank - If you haven't downloaded and installed the Google toolbar - try it! It has a particularly handy Page Rank indicator that gives a rough and ready idea of the relative authority and hence link-value of any website you are looking at. It's a mark out of 10 (Travelblather is currently Page Rank 4). So... a link from Travelblather to your website is worth 4 out of 10 in Google's eyes. Not great, but not too bad either! The higher a site's page rank the more authority the links from it have. If you know a bit about SEO you'll know that links to a site have a huge impact upon its position in search rankings. (Another post on this sometime, but enough for now to say that if your blog has a decent page rank people who know their stuff will want to get you to link to them and this could be a revenue opportunity for you.)

So... if you're a travel writer (be that an old pro or a complete newbie) and you've set up a blog and maybe posted a few times and are now wondering 'why am I doing this?' the answer could be because in another year or two's time it could be your most valuable asset. Print sure isn't dead and it will always be there, but as opportunities for publication in print decline, the alternative will be on-line and in my opinion the winners will be those who demonstrate the qualities and skills I've blathered about on this post.

What do you think? Does this give you hope or fill you with despair?

(Another post you might want to read: The Future for Travel Editors)

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?

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.)

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?

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)