Read the second part of this post here.
In the 21st Century virtually all travel planning begins with an online search. Whether that search takes you to Conde Nast, Skyscanner, or Expedia each single resource is good but incomplete. The independent travel blog remains one of the few niches that continues to flourish long after social media ended the Blog Era.
After becoming familiar with a long list of travel blogs, including the ones often cited as best there’s only one conclusion at which a reader can arrive: They’re nearly all terrible.
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Night of the Living Influencers
When typing “travel blog” into Google one thing stands out. A large share of results are the work of young, attractive women with large social followings. So be it. That’s been discussed at length and we’re at the backlash to the backlash portion of that phenomenon. The Post-Influencer Era will come by and by. In the meantime it is always weird to see someone wearing an evening gown on top of mountain. I like pretty girls as much as the next guy but that kind of content doesn’t tell me the first thing about what to expect when I visit Denver.
The guys in this space aren’t much better, even if they are less ostentatious. Any Gen Z jerk with a Mac and a GoPro can jet over to the Sierras and make himself look like Jack London online. It helps quite a bit if you went to a private college and can easily transition back to an emails job if the blog life gets old. Perhaps the worst of all are the couples blogging together. “We went on a yearlong honeymoon and we never wanted it to end!”
The typical blogger is starting from a very different place than the average vacationer pricing out flights and hotels. If your entree into travel writing was as a digital nomad you should at least enjoy the advantage of gathering thorough knowledge and insights. If you’re writing list posts every day shame on you.
The Problem of Professionalization
The path to creating a successful blog is as timeworn, crowded, and sleazy as the alleys of De Wallen. The amateur blogger who writes out of passion for a hobby is free to post only what stirs their inspiration. They can add liberal doses of insight and personality to the work. Anyone who relies on producing web content for their sole income is forced to Feed the Beast.
Feeding the Beast means being forced to post too often because you’re relying on daily clicks. It means admitting that the SEO algorithm is your most important audience. The Beast demands shoving so many internal links into a paragraph that it becomes unreadable. And perhaps worst of all, Feeding the Beast is recycling content and posting about places you’ve never visited.
Just yesterday I read a list post about things to do in Rome. It was unbelievably bad. Trevi Fountain. The Coliseum. The Spanish Steps. The Vatican. As if I had never heard of the Sistine Chapel. Another successful site, based in the UK, was full of articles like “11 Best Beaches in Virginia” and “11 Best Cities in South Carolina.” As if any reader ever said “You know I was on the fence about Spartanburg and Bluffton but this really makes me want to take a trip to Greenville!”
Never Trust an Armchair Traveler
The more you look for this, the more you see it. A lot of people produce travel content about places they’ve never visited. If it’s full of google-able facts with no subjective experience and relying only on stock or promotional photos it’s a safe bet the author has never set foot in the place they’re describing.
So much of travel writing is powered by posts about sponsored trips, which can be even worse. If a PR shop is paying you to write about your visit to Honduras, you’re going to have no choice but to post palm trees, tropical drinks, and dinner at sunset. And nothing else.
What if the hotel was full of prostitutes and there were kids begging everywhere? Maybe your friend got robbed. You’re not free to say people should go to Costa Rica instead. It gives the reader a false impression. That’s not to say all sponsored content is bad, but both blogger and reader need to be judicious. The PR firms working with bloggers aren’t in the business of truth and objectivity. If a city sucks, I’ll tell you it sucks.
The free trips aren’t half as creepy as the direct cash grabs on travel blogs. There’s nothing that makes me want to close a website quicker than seeing a popup for some “resource” or course the owner is selling. After you’ve read enough of the top blogs you realize they all know each other and attend the same conferences. It all starts to feel like one big MLM scheme. Gross.
So How’s This Travel Blog Different?
I’ve been shipping out as a merchant marine for nearly 20 years, so I know a few things about going around the world. But most importantly I have no intention of trying to convert this site into my only job. I decided to write because I want to do the traveling anyway and I like to connect with readers.
You probably found this site because you’ve already decided to go somewhere. If I’ve been there it’s my goal to convey an impression of the place that’s as accurate as possible. The first time visitor should know what to expect when they arrive.
I won’t be a front-and-center brand in the content on this site. My patience is thin with blogs like Wandering Willie or The Globetrotting Girlie. It’s about the destinations. No drone shots of me standing alone in a desert or on the side of a mountain. Sharing fermented rice with the Bolongo people of Cuva Cuva is not how folks really travel. The reality of life on the road is booking a hotel in your price range and watching Shark Tank in your underwear.
