In mid-November, the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) – the United Nations agency responsible for promoting responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism – launched a 1 Billion Tourists 1 Billion Opportunities campaign. It asked us to consider the positive difference that only one conscientious tourist can make and then “imagine if every one of the one billion tourists did the same. One billion small actions, one very big impact.”

As part of the campaign, the UNWTO arbitrarily selected December 13 as the symbolic day on which this landmark number of potential do-gooders would be reached. On that day – tomorrow! – the UNWTO will launch a Thunderclap campaign to help spread the message that “one billion tourists mean one billion opportunities.”

With no time to lose, you are of course strongly encouraged to be part of the show of mindful force.

But then, on December 14, perhaps we need to take a hard look at whether it changed minds. And if it didn’t, we need to reflect on what that says about our travel industry priorities. Remember, we’re talking about the UNWTO, arguably one of the most high-profile and far-reaching global tourism bodies in existence. Faith might move mountains, but what if faith in the mountain itself is no longer enough?

Inspiration and Action

The genesis of the campaign is refreshingly simple. “It actually came in an internal discussion when we were talking about numbers and trends and statistics,” shared Sandra Carvao, UNWTO Chief of Communications. “We were saying that we’re going to reach this amazing number this year, and I said we can’t really escape this big opportunity to call people’s attention to what it means. And actually to reinforce our message of saying it’s not about 1 billion, of course, but it’s 1 billion we have on the ground and the possibility that if we can mobilise this 1 billion to change one of their actions, at least, how much that can impact.”

The campaign therefore encourages every supporter to do three stupendously easy things, all of them very much in keeping with the values promoted by proponents of responsible travel and local travel.

• First, everyone should ‘vote‘ by committing to one or more of a quintuple of the kinds of 21st-century actions that should be common practice but still aren’t: save energy, buy local, use public transport, protect heritage and respect local culture.

• Second, participants should ‘shout’ by lending their voice to the Thunderclap that will take place at 2pm GMT on December 13th. At precisely that moment, tweets and Facebook posts about #1billtourists (the hashtag to use) will simultaneously appear from all registered supporters.

• Third, travellers can ‘join’ the effort by sending in travel self-portraits (to comm@unwto.org), the best of which are uploaded to a special Faces of the One Billion Facebook album. (Be sure to include your name, place of origin and the place where the picture was taken.)

“Our idea is really to use this – of course this is until we reach the 13th – with a very specific objective: getting people engaged to vote, getting people to have on that day something on Facebook saying if there’s 1 billion people around the world, see why it matters and what difference we can make,” commented Carvao.

Is It Enough?

There’s one question asked several times about this campaign: Is the energy put into a one-off or one-sided campaign like this enough to make a difference? Or, after the great social-media clap of thunder on December 13th, will the brief focus on mainstreaming socially conscious travel behaviour again be eclipsed by other less high-minded mobilisation efforts, especially within UNWTO ranks?

“For us, more than a goal itself – saying, OK, in December, on the 13th, we will be reaching this landmark – this is connected to our long-term objective, which is to use tourism to promote economic growth, development and, in the end, to be a force that actually works more on the positives, and minimises the negative impacts. So, the communications goal is let’s take this forward to following years as well,” responded Carvao.

That’s very good to know, but remains to be seen. At the time of writing, just 18 hours before the Thunderclap, the response has hardly been staggering. Despite the UNWTO’s heft and influence, a mere 266 people have registered their support, for a combined social reach of not quite 300,000 digitally aware souls. A drop in the bucket compared to the 1 billion on the move.

Could It Ever Be Enough?

Rather than asking ‘Is the energy enough to make a difference?’ the question might more logically be ‘Was enough energy put into it?’ especially by a presumed juggernaut like the UNWTO. As we all now know, no matter how big the entity involved, it’s just no longer enough to launch a campaign and expect that it will instantly find legs and then build momentum. Time, energy and resources have to be arrayed behind it, to propel it for as long as it takes.

“We have coordinated within our networks, our outreach to people we are in contact with,” explained Carvao. “Being an organization working in several areas, our colleagues responsible for different areas as well have multiplied the call within their own networks. But as you know, we are probably one of the most fragmented sectors, so it’s really difficult to make sure that we reach everyone that we should be reaching.”

True. But for all the multiplications, the campaign may only have further exposed divisions. It has a few hundred supporters and very limited reach with travel writers and bloggers. It caught off guard so many people from the responsible, sustainable and local travel communities that a good lot remain unconvinced by it (perhaps to their own detriment). Just how deep and wide must the fragmenting fissures run for the uptake to have been so flaccid? I am as unwowed by the results of the campaign as I am embarrassed by the industry it seeks to rally.

Where Do We Go from Here?

How can we, including the UNWTO, not lose hope? “We have to make these people [supporters] count… always, not just on the 13th, not just this year. I think [the campaign]‘s more of a starting point than an end point,… something that we want to continue doing,” concluded Carvao. “This is something that takes time for people to realise, get engaged, spread the word. In the end, what we are aiming at is that everyone gets engaged and multiplies the same message.”

Notwithstanding all the other concerns, that’s a sentiment with which I couldn’t agree more.

With that in mind, given my long-standing commitment to responsible, sustainable and local travel, not to mention my belief that travel industry stakeholders, especially writers, need to be part of the solution, I’m one of the few hundred who have thrown their support behind #1billtourists.

In the very short amount of time remaining, will you too? For this campaign, it’s now or never.

Images: UNWTO

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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At the global launch of The Traveler’s Handbooks, Janice Waugh, the series founder and author of The Solo Traveler’s Handbook, was joined by fellow expert authors Jodi Ettenberg (The Food Traveler’s Handbook) and Shannon O’Donnell (The Volunteer Traveler’s Handbook) for a panel presentation and question-and-answer session about the inspiration behind the new series that claims to “offer a fresh take on travel with inspirational stories, hard-earned knowledge, practical advice, and surprising tips.”

Companion Guides

Although the survival, independence and even legitimacy of mainstream travel guidebooks have increasingly been called into question, The Traveler’s Handbooks series doesn’t set out to supplant them. Rather it is presented as a companion resource filling a gap in travel publishing.

“Traditional travel guides focus on a destination in terms of where to stay, how to get around. In contrast, The Traveler’s Handbooks focus on how you choose to experience the world and the merits of that choice,” commented Waugh, who is the presence behind the Solo Traveler blog as well.

“While traditional guidebooks provide a great overview for a specific destination and its history, as well as where to stay and what to do, the handbooks focus on the ‘how to’ of the experience itself,” agreed Ettenberg, the voice of Legal Nomads. “They are not destination-specific; they can be used the world over. They demystify travel and appease fears in ways that guidebooks cannot.”

Niche Experiences

The Traveler’s Handbooks series therefore banks a bit on the notion that niche now matters. After all, the number of travel niches seems to grow by the day, part of the slice-and-dice approach to tourism marketing that helps penchant-specific travelers find suitable destinations and experiences.

“The trend toward more niche trips such as culinary tours or volunteer trips speaks to a desire for people to connect through a specific travel style,” explained Ettenberg. “The Traveler’s Handbook series provides a framework to do so independently. The handbooks enable us to present our respective travel niches based on our own lessons learned, but also through the many interviews and tips from other experts that are included in each book.”

Thus the five handbooks currently available help travellers pursue specific types of immersive and experiential travel, from tracing a foodie path from plate to plate or exploring the world solo to finding international volunteer opportunities, taking a career breaking or travelling in luxury on a budget.

Expert Authors

Each handbook is written by a traveller who is an expert in his or her niche. Along with Waugh, Ettenberg and O’Donnell, the latter of whom founded A Little Adrift, are Jeffrey Jung (The Career Break Traveler’s Handbook), host of The Career Break Travel Show and the publisher of Career Break Secrets; and Sarah and Terry Lee (The Luxury Traveler’s Handbook), a journalist-editor-marketing team of long experience, including work on Sarah’s LiveShareTravel, a luxury travel blog.

The handbooks really are “written by people who have lived their lives by travelling in a unique way,” commented Ettenberg. “For example, Shannon (O’Donnell) has volunteered extensively in her many years of travel and I’ve eaten my way around the world for the last 4.5 years. As a result, the handbooks enable us to present our respective travel niches based on our own lessons learned, but also through the many interviews and tips from other experts that are included in each book.”

With five handbooks ready to be printed on demand, there’s certainly plenty from which readers can choose, but Waugh and her colleagues don’t plan on stopping there.

“We expect to roll out more Traveler’s Handbooks every year,” promised Waugh. “Think of the title, The ________ Traveler’s Handbook. It’s very adaptable. We are accepting suggestions from interested authors on our website.”

The Sky’s the Limit Traveler’s Handbook?

Published by Full Flight Press, which was was set up by Waugh for The Traveler’s Handbooks series, the current editions are available in paperback (US$16.99) and eBook (US$9.99) versions from online bookstores like Amazon and iTunes.

Bookstore browsers will therefore be stymied in their search, but “We’re working the channels where we will have the greatest opportunity for success first,” said Waugh. “All the authors have online communities and online colleagues. The books are available through many online outlets. A click to buy strategy makes most sense at this point. The bricks and mortar store may be in the future when the brand is more established.”

For determined shoppers, each book’s table of contents is available online, as are sample chapters. Given the pedigree and enthusiasm of the authors, you’re fairly certain to get what you pay for:

“You may want to see it as a volunteer, or through the local food, or solo. You may want to take a career break and need advice on how to negotiate, plan and return from one. Or you may want to plan luxury travel that you can afford. Each Traveler’s Handbooks offers advice and travel stories on unique ways of experiencing the world,” concluded Waugh.

If you will be in London on November 1, stop by the European launch of The Traveler’s Handbooks, in conjunction with London Travel Massive, co-hosted by Travelllll.com.

Featured Image: The Traveler’s Handbooks
The handbook author panelists (left to right): Jodi Ettenberg, Janice Waugh, Shannon O’Donnell: Ethan Gelber

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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Speculation about Google’s ambitions in travel first spiked in July 2010 when, for $700 million, it purchased ITA Software, a leading provider of air search technology.

It was piqued again when, in September 2011, Google bought Zagat, the well-known restaurant review company, which it then made a cornerstone of its Google+ Local service.

And then most recently when last month it took over the trademark of Frommer’s travel guides.

Where is This Leading?

Until Google’s plans are revealed, it’s safe to assume that Google’s ultimate goals in the travel space are a well-kept secret.

Then again, perhaps Google was kind enough to lay it all out clearly for us. Google just might be working (successfully) toward one-stop-shop dominance at every one of the five stages of travel it put forward:

• At the dreaming stage, Google already owns YouTube and Picasa.
• At the planning stage, in addition to its search engine, Google now has the likes of Zagat and Frommer’s to help people make informed travel decisions.
• At the booking stage, Google’s Flight Search and Hotel Finder tools make securing some of one’s travel needs easy.
• Google apparently thinks of the experiencing stage as synonymous with mobile-readiness, something for which the company is amply prepared. Android™ anyone?
• Finally, at the sharing level, Google is still gambling on Google Plus, not to mention travellers’ penchant for posting videos and pictures on the same platforms that feed into the dreaming stage.

Seen through those goggles, Google’s got everything just about wrapped up, right?

You Mean There’s More?

You bet there is! Over at Travopia, I found a great graphic that lays clear just how busy Google has been at building a whole infrastructure (often referred to as the company’s online travel ecosystem) that satisfies online users’ needs at every stage of a travel experience.

Talk about comprehensive.

So What Does That Mean for us?

By us, I mean the people who aren’t attached to major multinationals – the independent travel content creators and curators, travel editors and publishers? Is a Google-squeezed travel market resilient enough to leave space for us?

I believe it is.

As pointed out by others, Google’s recent attention to content suggests that, like Yahoo, AOL, Amazon.com, Apple and Netflix before it, Google may be edging into the brambly thickets of media creation. Google may no longer be satisfied pointing users to the best content on the Web; now Google, as a media company, wants to have a hand at producing it.

On the one hand, this may seem like it will be harder to compete in search engine results pages. With its new Frommer’s-fed (and Zagat-enriched) data trove of destination-based information, Google can suddenly legitimately outrank a long list of arguably more popular competitors, like Lonely Planet and its media parents at BBC Worldwide. But this will take time and energy, as the Frommer’s content is in need of more timely and proficient updates.

On the other (and in my opinion, more important) hand, Google may have found a way to less destructively advance the process begun by some of its punishing algorithm shakedowns of the last couple of years: it’s working to elevate the importance of quality original content, or at least throw no weight behind content-production and -dissemination platforms that diminish the efforts and value of independent professionals with limited resources but a commitment to research, in-depth reports and thoughtful analysis. After all, Google bought Frommer’s, not Demand Media. Rather than shutting the door on quality, Google just may be finding new ways to frame it, which might begin to work to the advantage of all people who create it.

What do you think? Are Google’s intentions in the travel space honourable… to anyone?

Featured Image: Flickr/Marcin Wichary
Chart: Travopia

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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Now in its last week open to participation, a short (eight-question) online survey is endeavouring to understand just how well destination marketing organisations (DMOs) are doing at promoting their localities.

Here on Travelllll.com, we’ve devoted a fair bit of energy to helping travel bloggers and DMOs find common footing on shifty-as-quicksand ground. To bloggers we’ve suggested, among other things, how to pitch a private blog trip, why to have a blog marketing strategy and how to create a blog media kit.

Targeting destination marketers, we’ve weighed in on why they need to figure out travel blogger relationships, how they can understand a blogger’s influence, the value of having a DPO (Digital Press Officer) and how to run a group blog trip.

With information useful to both camps, we’ve also scrutinised travel bloggers and reviewed travel blogging practices.

But one thing we haven’t done is examine how successful DMOs are. Until now.

What’s at Stake?

The survey calls on participants to consider marketing practices, both in and of a locale and by their national, regional and local DMOs, convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs) and public-relations agencies. It asks “As a local, how engaged do you feel? Are you satisfied with the materials and information presented at local tourism kiosks and/or when you travel overseas and/or at trade shows? That kind of stuff.”

Travellers today have proven very quick to adopt new technologies and then tap into a vast digital ecosystem of data and services built for them. The survey therefore hopes to ascertain, in general terms, how effective DMO efforts have been: whether DMOs have been as quick as their consumers and whether they are an integral part of the travel ecosystem.

At a time when a growing number of industry stakeholders, including bloggers, are experimenting with new ways to increase their market reach and extend their brand visibility, the survey also aims to establish benchmarks for good practices and to advance ideas for improving tourism promotion.

Will There Be a Consensus?

I have a clear opinion about the views around which a strong majority of participants are likely to converge. DMOs are likely not to be pleased by the results, but I suspect they’ll agree with them.

Over a period of more than 10 years, I have worked directly with hundreds of industry stakeholders, including as a DMO employee. Throughout this time, I have queried everyone about their sense of how well the unique qualities of their destinations have been shared. Especially in light of my strong personal bias in favour of responsible travel and local travel, the outcomes are not surprising: people have not been satisfied.

Like everything, though, the shades of gray are telling and that is what I look forward to examining.

Share Your Thoughts

Check out the survey and have a say.

Online access will close at the end of the day on Friday, September 7. The findings will later be shared online, including here on Travelllll.com. All respondents’ identities and individual survey responses will be held in strict confidence, the data presented anonymously and/or in the aggregate.

The survey is a collaborative effort of the WHL Group, the largest local-travel company in the world; the Local Travel Movement, a not-for-profit platform founded by people with a passion for local travel and commitment to local travel values; and Planeta.com, a pioneering website focusing on responsible and conscious travel around the globe.

Featured Image: Flickr/albertogp123

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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With the recent purchase of Frommer’s by Google, travel guidebooks have been back in the news.

As is too often the case, and for all the wrong reasons, much of the commentary was negative. The inevitable gloomy pontifications about what Google might be planning to do in the travel space sat alongside questions about whether declining book sales portend the death of one or more travel-guide publishers. There was even the standard trough of conspiracy-theorist drivel, quickly and ably retorted.

As maligned and hotly debated as travel guidebooks may be, though, they remain critically important to modern-day journeyers. And the powerful project-management engines that drive the production of so much professional travel content are of more interest than ever, especially in the face of today’s crappy content mills and questionably reliable user-generated content.

Still Independent?

One concern frequently raised by (a few too) many readers has been whether the independent spirit that drove the establishment of the world’s most famous travel guidebook brands – Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Frommer’s, Fodor’s etc. – still governs the choices behind what goes into them. In other words, just how ‘independent’ are they still?

Well, in terms of ownership, not so much. Google may just have purchased the rights to Frommer’s, launched in 1957 when Arthur Frommer published his Europe on $5 a Day, but the Frommer’s trademark had already passed through the hands of Simon & Schuster (1977), Pearson (1998), IDG Books (1999) and John Wiley & Sons (2001).

The latest Frommer’s sale also follows on the highly publicised two-step purchase (in 2007 and 2011) of Lonely Planet by BBC Worldwide, the commercial subsidiary of the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation); the movement (in 2007) of Footprint Travel Guides, whose South American Handbook, now in its 86th edition, is “the longest established travel guide in the English language market,” under the umbrella of Morris Communications, a global media group; transfer of ownership of Rough Guides (in 2002) and DK Eyewitness Guides (in 2000) to Pearson, “the world’s leading learning company,” which distributes them through its Penguin Books; and the sale way back in 1986 of Fodor’s to Random House, Inc.

That places six seminal travel guide series – those founded by publishers who from the 1960s to the 1990s helped reshape global travel – in the hands of multinationals.

Does It Matter?

People’s penchant for told-ya-so doom predictions notwithstanding, the truth is that, to the casual traveller, the purpose served by travel guidebooks has not (yet) been lost to blind business avarice. On behalf of the many brands cited above and below, talented and tireless (but always weary) travel writers routinely sweep the globe and document a staggering amount of detail. This information is regularly collated and made available, now in a variety of formats, so that everyone else can get around without losing time on mundane logistics.

Other concerns, however, have achieved some level of resonance with a broader community. For example, will the spirited and opinionated cheekiness of guidebook authors still shine through? Travel guides once prided themselves on ‘telling it like it is’ but, under the scrutiny of their larger parent organisations, will they have the same freedoms? Will guides still allow for qualified conviction or instead be held to new levels of purely fact-based balance and objectivity? Which matters more to the readers – political correctness or informed opinion? At the moment, it’s still hard to tell.

Of course, arguably the biggest issue is how to contend with shrinking profits in print publishing, something to which travel guides are not immune. Across the board, sales have been dropping since 2006. According to one source, “By the end of this year, sales of printed travel guides will have fallen by around 40% in the UK and US since the 2005 peak. In 2005 the average unit sale of the top 100 international travel guides was 9,372; in 2011 it was 6,199. The best selling international guide from a major publisher sold 21,028 in 2005; 10,201 in 2011.”

Ouch. Will once-independent shops be held to new standards to prove their worth? Will they continue to be able to publish as many titles as they do, even when some are not (and may never have been) profitable?

Where Else to Turn?

In this new age of travel niches, some travellers will just never be content with the mainstream information covered by most of the leading travel guides. Anyone focused on, for example, local travel is likely to want, if anything at all, something that goes several levels deeper than usual.

Fortunately, there are plenty of other independent travel guide publishers, including clutches that pivot on special niche points of focus. For local travel, look at the likes of Not for Tourists and, online only, In Your Pocket City Guides and Spotted by Locals.

There are other mainstream guides that remain independent too, like Let’s Go, founded in 1960, which continues to be a subsidiary of Harvard Student Agencies; Moon Travel Guides, which first published in 1973; and Rick Steves’ guides, the first edition of which also dates from 1973. All three are published by Avalon Travel, the largest independent travel publisher in the US.

Yet other enduring independent standbys include Bradt Travel Guides, a self-described “pioneer in tackling ‘unusual’ destinations”; Hunter Publishing, founded in 1985; and Michelin, whose Green Guides for travel complement its famous red restaurant and hotel guides first launched in 1900.

Who Will Survive?

One thing’s certain: the social Web has changed the way people research and plan travel. Gone are the days when travel publishers were the best and most up-to-date sources of information about a destination. And now, with so many travel book publishers struggling to keep up with the fast pace of change in travel content management and delivery, it’s likely that some won’t survive.

Those that do will have to be the most nimble in terms of how well they refashion themselves as producers of quality digital content, available via tablets and smartphones, and as apps and e-books, as well as in print. Serious thought also needs to be given about how to deal with user-generated content behemoths like TripAdvisor and general leviathans like Google, perhaps the dominant travel publishers of tomorrow.

So what travel guidebooks do you use, if any? Do you like them today as much as you used to? Do you feel like they’ve changed?

Featured Image: Flickr/RachelH_

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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Words are not always faithful to those who command them. I enjoy sharing how the term ‘local travel’ isn’t presently polished to the point of unambiguity. For example, the first time I saw ‘local travel’ in print, I read ‘lo-cal’ travel (travel on a low-calorie diet). When I’ve used the term in the presence of green-leaning Baby Boomers, some are immediately reminded of the hippy travel notion of ‘going native.’ Many younger travellers simply assume that ‘local travel’ is sticking to places in the immediate vicinity of one’s home.

All three mistaken definitions could be alchemically treated to fit one true gold standard, but I think that would make Local Travel boring. That being said, for the sake of arguable clarity and discussion, here’s one catch-pot way of describing Local Travel, offered in last week’s article: Local Travel is travel like a local no matter where you are. It’s not about the destination as much as it is about balancing a visitor’s “discovery experience against the needs and interests of the host community by being sensitive to the local environment, the local heritage and culture, and the local economy.”

It’s about establishing and nurturing the kinds of relationships that used to be a routine part of travel but presently require a (richly rewarded) proactive readiness to seek out human conversation and direct engagement. It’s about immersion and experience, not checking off items on top-10 lists.

Local Travel Hints

If you’re not yet a practiced local traveller, or a travel writer able to spin a few local-knowledge yarns, here are six meaningful tips and practices that will help you get comfortable with your new orientation.

1. Play Local

Wherever you travel, do your best to meet and have fun with like-minded locals. If you don’t already have someone to turn to and don’t feel up to leveraging chance encounters, then take advantage of a variety of services that make it very easy to make connections, both before you leave home and once you are on the road.

These include Web-based friend-finding networks like Triptrotting and GuidedByALocal, or locals for hire (some are even professional guides) who can ease you into the local swing of things. These latter can be found through businesses like Cup of Local Sugar, LocalGuiding, Rent a Local Friend and ToursByLocals.

2. Tour Local

Choose unique ways to access a destination. Shoot for something that goes at least one layer deeper than the standard vanilla-flavoured best-hits tour. Although some people believe local travel is only possible if you slow down and extend your stay in a single destination, I don’t think that’s true, especially since there are options for travellers who don’t have a lot of time. They can still head out on a responsible tour of only a few hours, like those on offer from Urban Adventures. Of course, if you’ve got even more flexibility, then multi-day tour operators like the Ethical Travel Portal, Gunyah, Large Minority and SnoworSand always strive to keep it local.

3. Stay Local

Accommodation comes in all shapes, sizes, budgets… and degrees of connection to the local community. At a minimum, try to choose an overnight facility that is locally owned and not part of an offsite mega-company that siphons away profits. Homestays, ecolodges and family-run guesthouses usually qualify – check out SustainableTrip.org for some great examples. Also consider couchsurfing-style networks like AirBnB, My Friends Hotel, onefinestay and Tripping, or home-swap services like Knok.

For larger and more mainstream facilities, look at whether a hotel’s staff, guides, activity managers, crafts-makers and more are hired locally and fairly represent the local community. Think about what foods are served and where the food comes from. By researching and asking question about this, you are not only tapping into ethically appropriate tourism practices in a destination, you are also letting all accommodation owners and managers know what you think matters.

4. Buy Local

As I reported last week, US$80-90 of every $100 spent on travel in the developing world is usually “banked by deep pockets with little connection” to the land or country countries. That’s a staggering amount of money denied to the people who probably need it most. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to reverse that trend: shop in neighbourhood stores, eat at the restaurants locals patronise and select from services offered by locals.

These days, there’s absolutely no reason to buy and bring everything from home or to book everything in advance. What would happen if you embarked on an extended trip with only a day bag of things you might need for a day at work? You would probably be just fine, because every step of the way you could purchase and plan everything as you needed it, in local marts and through local operators.

5. Think Local

Don’t worry too much about details, definitions and morals. Just take a leap, be open to meeting people and trust your gut-guided instincts. Of course, you can (and probably should) seek a look local advice before you go. Fortunately, there are excellent services that put expert opinions at your fingertips and sometimes even encourage contact with the people behind them. For example, give Spotted by Locals, Tripbod and Trourist a spin.

The goal in all cases is to help you feel at ease in a foreign land. Clutching a list of quirky but revealing must-experiences, not the standard iconic must-sees, you can begin to find your way on your own, gain the kind of confidence that helps you tackle your travels by simply doing the things you would do at home every day: stay alert to new things, seek and trust others’ advice and not shy away from mystery.

6. Show Local

When it comes time to write about your experiences, give your readers something that they can’t get anywhere else, something that could genuinely add value to their experiences that would be in keeping with the normal flow of local activity. Don’t pen the umpteenth post about the Eiffel Tower or Bateaux Mouches, but share what you uncover about local patisseries.

Of course, this will mean choosing to indulge in the qualities of a destination that represent how people actually live, but with all the resources referenced above and elsewhere, you now can see just how easy it could be for you to abandon the mainstream and then challenge your readers to join you.

Why are you hesitating? Seriously, why? Tell us below.

Featured Image: Flickr/snowpea&bokchoi

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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A couple of months ago, Travelllll.com published an article asking if you would be inspired to travel like and with a local, even if it were for a fee. The responses somewhat predictably ran the gamut from “I prefer to walk around myself” and “you can [already] find people willing to give you a tour and show you the city on Couchsurfing… for free” to “this would be an awesome way to meet someone who can show you around.”

To me, however, the question itself misses the whole point of local travel. And, much more critically, the responses to it betray just how deeply self-centred travellers (and people who write about travel) often are, a mindset in grave need of a change.

You see, local travel isn’t only about how meaningful an ‘insider’ experience you can have. It’s not just about what you can take away with you – how unique your under-the-hood vacation was or how little (or much) you paid for it. Instead, it’s about balancing that discovery experience against the needs and interests of the host community by being sensitive to the local environment, the local heritage and culture, and the local economy. That’s what local travel is – give-and-take travel.

If you just rolled your eyes, then you must also enjoy feasting on endangered species and driving the kind of pointlessly expensive low-gas-mileage car that is accelerating global warming. It’s all part of the same short-sighted mindset.

Local Travel is a Return to Travel’s Roots

Starting about 175 years ago, the publication of travel guides helped turn travel into an industry. Before that – before early entrepreneurs launched into the world with the intention of penning primers designed to help smooth the way for others – there was rarely any timely and accurate travel detail available about faraway places. Thus all travel was necessarily local travel. The Magellans, Battutas, Polos and Ericsons plunged into the unknown and relied on local welcome and directions to find their way.

That being said, these trailblazers also struggled against mighty mindset headwinds. Although many cultures’ long-standing traditions of generosity and hospitality helped many travellers stay safe and kept their forward momentum going, both visitors and hosts were usually weighed down by deeply seated ignorance-fed suspicions and superstitions.

The echoes of their bias and fear still resound today, of course, but we’ve learned a lot from their mistakes. Generally speaking, few of the explorers of yore were as open-minded as the vast majority of travellers now are. However, for decades, and all in the supposed interest of security and comfort, we’ve been sliding further and further from the old-style person-to-person visitor-host direct interactions that used to be so fundamental to overcoming ignorance and apprehension. Many visitors to a country never really get to know a place because social and economic realities are hidden from them, and they aren’t incentivized to engage with locals passionate about how life really is. Instead, they’re encouraged to think that high-definition glossies and time-lapse videos are enough.

Until recently, that is. As the ubiquity of guidebooks and group tours made contemporary travel safer, it also became increasingly soulless. And, as a backlash, a new attention to ‘traditional’ travel – aka local travel, with a greater emphasis on making human connections – has risen from the ashes.

A Mindset, Not a Label

I sense a growing fatigue with labels in travel. I share it. But this isn’t about identifying a new slogan through which to market a rebranded vision of ecotourism or responsible travel. Although I see plenty of value in it, this isn’t a tisk-tisk rebuke about how to do things better or with respect for legally guided ethics. No, it’s a reminder that there are human qualities in us all that we somehow think are OK to set aside when we’re away from home.

When we’re at home, we’re taught to be upstanding members of our communities, gauging and respecting the social and cultural norms. So why shouldn’t we be just as civic-minded when we’re visitors to another community? We may not be as fluent in reading a foreign culture, but that’s why local instruction is so critical.

When we’re at home, we use our time to seek out special local experiences – quality alternative food, unique gatherings, recurring and/or transitory happenings – suited to our tastes. Why should we be any less inquisitive when we travel? Why is anyone ever content with bland tourist pap, plastic souvenirs and a seat in a cultural spectacle purged of real culture? We might not know where to hunt for something else, but that’s how meeting a local can help.

When we’re at home, we steer friends away from the worst of the invading hordes, counsel against the most egregious traps and do our best to share little slices of real life. Why when we travel would we not be just as vigilant for ourselves? Or identify a local who could point us the right direction?

I have a friend who recently spent a week in Saigon. Through an acquaintance he met someone local who, over the course of several days, introduced him to meals of snake, rat and dog. Did my friend visit the Reunification Palace, War Remnants Museum or Cu Chi Tunnels? I don’t know. I didn’t ask. He didn’t mention them. Because his local dining experiences – unusual fodder, consumed way off the beaten path and in the company of locals – were the highlights of his trip. His short experience in Vietnam is arguably richer than many longer ones I’ve read about, even if no one quite shares his gustatory inclinations. That’s what local travel is about.

Are You Part of the Local Wave?

When was the last time you did a Web search for local travel Albania? The results I get are an eclectic mix of information, opinion and service articles. Now contrast that with a search for the top 10 things to do in Albania. It’s filled with typical lists by TripAdvisor, Lonely Planet, VirtualTourist, tripwolf and Wikitravel. The contents of the articles are all remarkably similar.

But how many times can you read about the city of Gjirokastra? How much more about it could one 250-word snippet reveal than any other? Are any of them going to help you develop a more meaningful understanding of life in Gjirokastra?

In Gjirokastra and all over the world, revenue from tourism is not fairly distributed. By some UN World Tourism Organisation estimates, “economic leakage” sees as much as US$80-90 of every US$100 spent on travel in the developing world banked by deep pockets with little connection to those countries. So if you want to be of service both to your readers and to the destinations you’ve visited or in which you’ve lived, think like a local. Dig a layer deeper and offer something different. Just as all the big kids are clamouring for dominance in all things local, so too should travel writers be responding to growing consumer demand for something other than yet another top-10 list. These days, if you’re not local, you’re nowhere.

So what does local travel mean to you?

Featured Image: Flickr/Stephan Ridgeway

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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Along with business cards, media kits are a critical part of any business’s marketing arsenal. If business cards are daggers (used in a pinch and for tight one-on-one engagement), then media kits are cannons, dangerously effective at making crushing impact even at long range. More benignly put, a media kit is to your blog what a business card is to you as an individual: a snapshot conveying essential details to anyone who might wish to (or you might wish to) consort with you, including editors and other writers, producers and publishers, PR agents, advertisers and sponsors.

So if you’re serious about wanting to turn blogging into a revenue-generating business practice and you don’t yet have a media kit, now’s the time to start building casts for a shiny new cannon.

To help you along, here are some vital considerations.

What’s in a Media Kit?

Although I sometimes hear to the contrary, there’s really no such thing as a standard media kit. I’ve received scores of them and written a dozen or so; no two are alike for the simple reason that no two businesses are (or should be) alike. Brand differentiation spurs creativity and distinctiveness, as well it should. That being said, there are a several things that no media kit should be without simply because they serve useful purposes and, more importantly, because people expect them.

Profile

For a large company, a profile can cover a lot of ground and fill several (but hopefully not too many) pages. For a small entity, though, it may be no more than a paragraph. Regardless, this a brief but detailed and necessarily interesting introduction answers all five Ws (who, what, where, when, why… and how too) by ushering readers through an institution’s history, heritage, mission, values, core staff, vital statistics, and major projects, partners and accomplishments. Profiles are sometimes written in a FAQ- or Q&A-style format, although, in my opinion, rarely to very good effect.

Most independent travel bloggers would do best to produce a not-overstuffed one-page profile that includes at least the following:

• blog ‘logo’ (actual art, or word art and/or tagline)
• Web address (the http:// is not necessary)
• primary contact’s full name, title and preferred means of communication
• blog description (try to hit as many of the five Ws as is reasonable) and short bios of key participants
• blog statistics and demographics

Fact Sheet

The people who receive media kits are usually just as overworked and time-poor as you are. They therefore have no patience for vagueness or confusion. They don’t want to hack through thick blocks of text (don’t write them), an overabundance of adjectives (leave them out), unctuous self-promotion (be professional) or a thicket of statistics (delete delete delete). So the best way to help them is to prepare a fact sheet, which is a bullet-point-driven one-page summary of everything else in the media kit. Nothing but the essentials.

To prepare a fact sheet, bloggers who pull together a one-page profile will probably need to reformat things a bit and pare back on the words to make room for other high-priority inclusions. If you haven’t made it prominent anywhere else in the media kit, the fact sheet is a good place to clearly state your disclosure practices.

Product Overview

This means different things to different companies. For retailers, there may be very short reviews of featured items; from service companies, count on prominent displays of credentials. Artists (including photographers and writers) may include clippings, prints or other samples of their work. In all cases, testimonials often make an appearance, the more notable the referee the better.

For bloggers, the product is the service you offer through your blog and the skills you bring to maintaining it. You may decide to include ad placement, paid links, sponsored posts, reviews, giveaways, brand partnerships and sponsorships. You may also express your readiness to participate in press trips.

How Should It Look and Read?

First and foremost, remember what a media kit is for: to render itself useless. It’s a disposable foot that’s quickly jettisoned once you get through a door. As such, it needs to look and function like the best of all possible foots, but there’s never a need to upgrade it into a hand.

Choose an Appropriate Feel

Be serious about how your media kit looks. If you’re a snarky blogger, don’t choose serious colours (unless you’re being snarky about them). If you’re all about responsible travel, then using industrial designs probably doesn’t suit. Adhering to your blog’s own colour palette usually makes the most sense. Whatever you settle on, be consistent with it, especially over time. Maintain style across all pages. Of course, if you’re lacking in artistic acumen, hire someone who isn’t.

Be Brief but Absorbing

Think of the words I used far above: crushing impact, snapshot. Your media kit needs to get down to business straight away and deliver key details without leaving time for distraction. It’s got to be short and easy. And honest. The best way to come up with the right kind of language is to think about a killer marketing strategy.

Don’t Glorify the Numbers

There’s growing uncertainty about what blog-traffic and social-media numbers really mean, especially in terms of whether big digits guarantee big return on investment. By all means, include statistics, but also try to contextualise them by sharing details about your target audience, demographics, reach and influence (read more about this here.

The most common hard-number statistics are: numbers of subscribers, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, Google+ friends and Pinterest followers; Alexa traffic rank and Google pagerank; and analytics like the number of monthly pageviews and unique monthly visitors. If you’ve got a good Klout score, that’s worth mentioning too.

Be Reachable

Make sure your contact information is included on every page, if necessary as a small inclusion in the header or footer. Also find ways to trumpet upcoming public appearances, especially speaking engagements at conferences.

Keep Things Fresh

Be vigilant about updating your media kit every three to six months. Make a note in your calendar so that you don’t forget. As you accomplish new things – develop partnerships with new companies, find new audiences and trip over new traffic thresholds – ensure that your media kit as up to date.

Anything Else?

Media kits never act alone. Like a résumé or CV, a media kit needs a cover letter. In this separate file, you treat potential business partners like royalty and give them precisely what they need. We all love it when our work gets done for us, so do just that for a prospective collaborator. Come up with brand-specific ideas (the more innovative the better) about how you can can turn your expertise and audience to their advantage. As I wrote in a previous post, “Make clear who you are, what you offer, why you are different and how you can be of (financial) value.” Present actionable reasons for people to call you! Even if they don’t like the specific ideas you propose, they may see in you a commitment to breathing life into their ideas.

Make a Media or Advertising Page on Your Blog

Having done all the work you have, why not create an online version using the same content? Set up a ‘media’ or ‘advertise‘ page and don’t be shy about pushing it.

Do you have a media kit? Any further hints you would like to share?

Featured Image: Flickr/Burgermac

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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I see the two sides of the how-to-make-blogging-profitable coin as follows: Heads is the much-discussed challenge of monetisation (the word we all love to hate). You know – how can you take your passions and turn them into a career that will pay for your first home? Tails, however, is the seemingly forgotten but truly critical complementary quotient: return on investment (aka ROI). No, not ROI on the time and money you put into your own blog (although that effort and expense is to be applauded), but ROI on you as a writer. If you want to earn a living as a blogger, someone’s got to pay you money, right? Which means that someone will want assurances that any cash outlays aren’t just going to your Mai Tai retreat in Papeete.

Of course, the coin I’m contemplating is not one to be flipped. It’s on unwieldy par with the world’s biggest and heaviest lucre, so there would be no value in attempting to get such a numismatic behemoth into the air. In any case, both heads and tails are equally treasured.

What we’re left with is the unfortunately frequent use of the word ‘monetisation,’ especially in contrast to the utterances of ‘ROI.’ Instead of contemplating excessive riches, bloggers are busy flipping little-money pennies, wondering idly when and how to, for example, implement AdWords, start Facebook campaigns or accept sponsored posts. You’re forgetting or disregarding far more critical considerations.

What Marketers Want

In recent weeks, I’ve been reading and writing a lot about better blogging, especially in terms of quality and ethics. Feeding my curiosity has been an active and growing cabal of travel writers and marketers pursuing the (utopian?) idea of an empirical and holistic methodology for assessing the value of a blog or publication as a way of predicting potential ROI from a marketing campaign.

In other words, they’re trying to figure out how both writers and bloggers can provide the same kind of quantifiable metrics that magazines traditionally always have, and not just the unrevealing and increasingly discounted numbers of a blog’s unique visitors per month, subscribers, Facebook fans or Twitter followers. A generic Klout score may be an interesting benchmark, but what the industry really needs is a measure of a writer’s influence with, say, male, married, middle-aged southern Europeans earning more than US$100,000 annually and travelling to a foreign land for pleasure at least once a year.

That level of detail is not likely to be achieved anytime soon (if ever), but its value to the travel-marketing purse-holders is undeniable. It would also go a long way toward levelling the travel bloggers’ opportunity playing field, allowing project funding to find the kind of niche experts and targeted authoritative voices that will really make a difference to any commercial effort, even if the chosen writers aren’t social-media celebrities.

What This Means to Bloggers

As made clear above, key to all of this is travel marketers’ appetite for understanding a writer’s or a blog’s influence and engagement across selected demographics. Marketers want this because it’s what they’ve always been able to get.

Bloggers should therefore do their best to offer something approximating it. After all, you aren’t really doing anything all that different from writing for any other publication.

“They’re simply trying to emulate the long-established model of traditional publishers: producing reliable output that consumers can trust, which is funded by a reliable commercial strategy and successfully marketed to attract new readers,” shared Hit Riddle’s Matthew Barker, who has lots to say on the subject. “Newspapers and magazines are considered influential and authoritative because they had this figured out. Readers trusted their output and therefore bought more of it, so advertisers trusted them to provide ROI. Bloggers are now trying to do the same, albeit in a new landscape.”

Despite the obstacles, though, bloggers who wish to pursue their trade as a business need to research, understand and then make presentable a clear picture of how you are best qualified to take a client’s money and then deliver ROI.

So How Do Bloggers Do That?

* Play by the rules: Develop a marketing strategy that clearly emphasises your strengths. Better yet, develop that strategy as part of a business plan.

* Get a better measure of your audience – desired target, known target, demographics, reach, influence etc. If possible, demonstrate that your audience is not limited to the echo chamber of travel-blogger friends tweeting/sharing/liking/pinning/plussing one another’s work.

* Along the way, read and then decide whether to heed the advice of older-paradigm pro bloggers. They offer incredibly meaningful been-there-done-that observations and are excellent examples of entrepreneurs who completely embraced blogging as a business – the pure pursuit of money, traffic and peer recognition.

* However, do not simply copy established bloggers… or anyone else. By using the same WordPress themes and succumbing to trendy practices, too many blogs end up with the same basic design, content and cliches. Establish a unique identity and exert it.

* Of course, write as well as you can – think of producing quality, not quantity – and be a content leader not a derivative follower.

What else would you suggest? And what do you think about empirical and holistic influence criteria for blogs? 

Featured Image: Flickr/JimReeves

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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What I find most fascinating when discussing ethics, especially as they pertain to travel writing and blogging, is that there are often real laws and established rules underpinning them, not just shifting social mores. Disagreements over ethics are therefore more likely to be about whether rule of law should be followed or broken, and not any shades of grey.

Actually that’s not entirely true. Life rarely allows for the simplicity of do-or-don’t scenarios. Sometimes grey reigns. And sometimes the rules are based on outmoded assumptions or changed practices. They may even be so patently stupid that everyone’s happier ignoring them, opting instead for a kind of unspoken and confusing, head-in-the-sand don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy.

To illustrate this, let’s quickly examine two leading and somewhat divisive ethical sumps for travel bloggers.

Disclosure on Disclosure

Alarmingly few US-resident bloggers are aware that in late 2009 the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the revised guides governing public disclosure of any important connections between advertisers and endorsers. In one particular example, “bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service” or face a penalty.

Need it in even easier language? One possible application of the Federal Trade Commission Act requires all bloggers to publicly declare any and all freebies they receive. This is true of writers/bloggers being paid to post about something, receiving products and/or services (including press trips) to review in a post, and perhaps even for using affiliate links.

Arguments about the motivation and effectiveness of such a requirement notwithstanding, it is worth noting that the FTC guides are not binding law, but “administrative interpretations of the law intended to help advertisers comply with the Federal Trade Commission Act.” Nevertheless, my talked-to-a-lawyer layman’s understanding of this is that wilful disobedience and ignorance of the FTC requirement would be equally feeble defences should you ever be subject to an investigation of your disclosure practices.

How likely are such investigations? For most bloggers, not very. I have never heard of one and, after thoroughly superficial research, didn’t dredge up evidence of any. But in a discussion of travel blogging ethics, the low risk of being caught withholding required information is a side issue. More important is the question of whether you should do it anyway: whether your readers have a right to know or you fear such disclosure could, as has been argued, taint your honesty and integrity. Is don’t-ask-don’t-tell a reasonable strategy?

My feeling is you can’t be hurt by the truth and that your readers deserve it. If you’re a good writer and have proven the reliability of your information and your character, maintaining reader trust should matter to you. You should have nothing to lose about openly declaring who paid for what.

If you disagree, I am eager to understand why.

To learn about crafting a useful disclosure statement and where to place it (at the end of individual blog posts or on a general disclosure page), visit DisclosurePolicy.org and check out A Screamingly Effective Blog Disclosure Policy: How (and Why) To Get One, especially the links to examples.

Pressing Press Trips

While we’re on the subject of freebies, let’s take a quick look at press trips. If you’ve never worked at a major American mainstream newspaper, you may not know that most officially do not allow their staff to take part in press trips and will not accept freelancer articles made possible by one. ‘Officially’ is an important word here, since what used to be a hardline policy has been so thoroughly ignored of late, its validity hardly seems worth defending.

Faced with increased competition and dropping pay rates, most freelance travel writers are simply not able to cover the costs of a journey. As a consequence, they increasingly rely on the generosity of PR firms and tourist boards for access. And then just don’t tell anyone about it when it comes time to shop the results.

Is there anything wrong with that? Some think no; others say yes (see “Press trips aren’t for the press”). Yet others simply question the merits of all press trips.

Turning back to ethics: Just because a writer can’t afford to make a trip, does that justify travelling on another’s dime but not declaring it, either to an editor (who might refuse it) or to the reading public (who won’t get the benefit of full disclosure)? Is widespread ignorance better bliss for all?

This is a dilemma most bloggers don’t confront. In the absence of any policy expressly forbidding press-trip content, there’s nothing to restrain bloggers from going on and benefitting from as many press trips as possible. As asserted in one blog post: “Bloggers often have different goals and abide by different rules than journalists. (If only the public knew the difference.)” If there’s full disclosure (as there should be), the public will know the difference. And if the content is balanced and objective, then all the better, right?

What do you think about press trips? And have you visited our press trip Departures board?

Feature Image: Flickr/Andreas Surya

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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Oft quoted, Gary Arndt trumpeted TBEX 2012 as “probably the best conference I’ve ever attended…. In terms of a straight return on investment, it was easily the most productive conference I’ve ever attended. It was also one of the most fun.” Mighty high and well-earned praise.

A Chink in the Armour

Declared with no less aplomb, however, was earnest disquiet about the lack of attention to, among other things, quality content creation.

In a comment following Arndt’s enthusiastic report, Spud Hilton, Travel Editor at the San Francisco Chronicle and blogger at Bad Latitude on SFGate, was forthright in his concern about “what appeared to be making content creation (specifically, writing) an ugly red-headed stepchild at a conference that touted itself as being where ‘travel writers’ connect.” Hilton led a breakout session called 10 Steps to Writing that Better Engages (and Keeps) Your Readers, the only one at TBEX to focus on gooder righting. (He has since been reassured that “going forward, content creation (again, including writing) will play a larger role in the professional development.”)

Hilton’s reservations continued to resonate elsewhere, though. “We need bloggers with large online presence, reach and influence. But we also need them to be good writers too. If bloggers want to take their rightful place in the marketing mix they need to upgrade the professionalism of their output,” wrote Matthew Barker in a piece also published on tnooz that triggered a firestorm of comments, some of them furiously ego-driven.

At the heart of the debate is how, as Bruce Rosard, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at PhoCusWright, commented, “bloggers need to think and act like the professionals or they won’t be relevant. If you are a relevant journalist, photographer, videographer, you’re relevant to the marketplace, and you’ll be treated as such.”

For Travelllll.com, I’ve already waded into this wrangle with my assertion that you should be a travel writer, not a travel blogger. Now I would like to get a bit more practical and, borrowing copiously from the tips and hints that came tumbling out of the TBEX-tonicked Rockies, serve up a trio of broad considerations for your review. Each offers advice about how to step up your game and become a better writer… and more influential blogger.

Quality over Quantity

Care with fewer and better words, and attention to a comprehensive but eclectic base of social-media influencers are better for everyone than a burgeoning of bunk and the excessive tweeting of twaddle. Alas, care and attention seem to be losing ground to bunk and excess.

Like a growing group of outspoken others baffled by any defence of slack craft, I find much wanting of travel bloggers. Far too often their output is amateurish and undisciplined, a pipeline powered by low pay rates, low expectations and slavish attention to social standing.

That being said, there is arguably a broad consensus that sloppiness truly is undesirable. So I’m going to bank on the notion that the vast majority of bloggers really would like to write well, and that quality is something worth striving for, especially if it results in a passionate and influential following of both readers and industry professionals.

In pursuit of those goals, I think there are two key areas in which quality must begin to outweigh quantity: writing and social media.

On writing, if you haven’t already read any of the world’s leading writing guides, start right now with The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White, a simple, slim, but seminal and utterly indispensable English style manual. Other highly recommended readings include Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott and On Writing Well by William Zinsser (thanks to Spud Hilton for this one). Another cantankerous but superb essay is ‘Politics and the English Language‘ by the one and only George Orwell.

Thorough review of these resources would help raise the writing bar, but also put to rest any broad disagreements about how to be a judge of good writing (the difference between good and bad is usually pretty obvious) and whether it is even a contributing factor in the success (or failure) of a blog or its writer.

In social media, more and more knowledgeable marketing and PR professionals now recognise that vast numbers of social-media followers don’t automatically translate into meaningful return on investment. Some go so far as to say that quantity is no measure of social media punch. Everyone’s more interested in meaningful engagement. But what constitutes quality if sheer volume can’t be expected to carry the day? Unfortunately, no one seems to know conclusively.

There are, however, analytical tools that can help you understand who your followers are and how best to position yourself with them. For Twitter, services like TweetReach and Edelman’s TweetLevel will help you get a sense of what’s what. You can then work to optimise your outreach with a SocialBro account, which will analyse when your followers are online and active. Use it in conjunction with Buffer App, a simple tool that pushes out tweets at predefined times. Don’t forget to structure your tweet the right way.

Of course, on Facebook, page insights provide reasonable data. Serious bloggers should parse this for a better understanding of their demographic.

Meaning over Mass Appeal

You’ve heard this many times: Choose novelty over pulp, exhibit expertise over expediency. Sadly, in pursuit of broad distribution, most of us are guilty of giving in to popular demand, especially in the form of top-five or top-10 lists. Many of us have also succumbed (or been pressured to adapt) to the kind of formulaic written pabulum that robs travel (or any) writing of its soul. I used to think that the travel sections of major metropolitan-area newspapers were the worst offenders (and they’re still often excruciating), but now blogs have definitely pulled rank. Worse yet, bloggers are not under the thumb of antiquated style guides, reined-in editors or systemic atrophy; instead they choose what they want to to produce, but are not making wise choices.

As I argued in Why Aren’t More Bloggers Writing About Responsible Travel, bloggers should be in the vanguard when it comes to content creation: “Why aren’t more of you – buttressed by blogging skills and vocal in your frustrated desire to be recognised for your craft – helping to drive the kind of change that positions you as leaders? More nimble, more imaginative, more bold and less reliant on traditional revenue sources, you have little stopping you.”

And yet, it appears that you do. For a whole bunch of reasons. Many of these reasons were addressed at TBEX (and other conferences), so it’s high time to do some analysis – of yourself, your blog and your audience. Invest some real time in it, if not also some money.

For insight into the kind of impact you make, set yourself up on Klout (we’ve got a glimpse of it here) or Kred (see what we wrote here) for a debatably relevant look at your influence. Klout and Kred are free and entertaining, if nothing else.

To study the kind of audience your blog has, wade into the thickets of date available for free on Alexa and/or Quantcast. Don’t just look at results for your own blog or site. See how your published material compares with that of other blogs, especially those that are most similar to yours.

Once you’ve completed your analysis, set your creative juices agurgle and think about your own voice, its relevance to the market and reader engagement. Identify what makes you and your blog distinct, when and how you were most successful reaching out to readers, and then assemble proof of your authority. Of course, think beyond blogging to the multiple platforms on which you can showcase your work and your personality. The result, combined with quality output, just might help you get where you want to go.

Real People over Robots

Lastly, it’s been said a lot, but I don’t think it’s sinking in: Writing for SEO is not good writing. Actually, it’s downright bad writing. So write for human readers. If you use WordPress and haven’t already installed an SEO plugin, then something like Yoast or All in One SEO Pack will help you tweak what you’ve done to suit your SEO overlords. But the foundation should be optimised for eyes not Web crawlers.

Feature Image: Bigstock/Gunnar3000
Woman writer: Bigstock/Olly2

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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TBEX is practically upon us. The coffee’s been stockpiled, the banners are strung and the chairs waiting in pretty rows at the Keystone Resort & Convention Center in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. It’s all so close we can practically taste it, even if the sponsorship changes sadly put an end to the free lunches (but who’s going to TBEX for the grub anyway?).

In anticipation of the start of activities, Travelllll.com – the headline TBEX media sponsor – will be live-blogging the event (more on that soon), and thought it might help to share tips about how to make the most of “the world’s largest gathering of travel bloggers, writers and new media content creators.” There’s so much packed into one short weekend that some TBEX-targeted advice might make all the difference to you, especially if this is your first TBEX. Actually, the hints explored here are applicable to pretty much any conference, but we’ve TBEX-tailored them to keep them relevant.

We’ve also gone to the experts for their input. Look below for thoughts from Kim Mance, the founder of TBEX, and Mary Jo Manzanares, the TBEX Conference Director.

1. Connect with the Travelllll.com staff

Yeah, we think it’s important to put this first. Two of us will be at TBEX: John O’Nolan (@johnonolan), the site’s founder, and Ethan Gelber (@thetravelword), a staff writer Ethan had a medical emergency just before he was supposed to leave for TBEX, he’s ok, but he can’t make it (-John). When we’re not focusing on live coverage, we want to meet you, learn about your interests, hear what you think Travelllll.com should cover and why you should be the focus of a lengthy, in-depth, tear-jerking and inspirational interview. We’ll also have exceptionally cool stickers.

2. Bring your business cards

Some people hate them, many people aren’t all that suave with them, but they do have a place at big events where you shake a lot of hands and will want to follow up with the some of the faces connected to them. That being said, if your anti-card passion runs deep, use smartphone apps for collecting contact information.

3. Have a plan

Don’t arrive without at least a few clear objectives. Says Mary Jo: “Make a list of who you’d like to meet, what you’d like to learn, etc. For me, time at a conference is time taken away from income-producing activity. It needs to count for something, and the way I make sure it does is to have a plan.”

The TBEX team have put a lot in place to help you accomplish this, especially the organised network opportunities. The most heavily touted of these is Sunday’s speed-dating event of preset, eight-minute, one-on-one meetings.

Why give time to speed dating? Kim thinks that “It’s fine to come and ‘network,’ but I find that business cards are far less important than having a real, down-to-earth conversation with someone. If you truly connect in person, it won’t be hard to get in touch later.”

TBEX-registered attendees should not delay in using the online Presdo Match tool to set up speed-dating sessions.

4. Be social, even if you’re not

“Introverts often struggle with crowds at conference and it can be painful to put yourself in a room with a few hundred people,” comments Mary Jo. “But networking opportunities occur at the parties and meals, so showing up and meeting people is important.”

Even people who are fairly extroverted, like Kim, need a push sometimes, too. “Don’t let that aspect take you by surprise,” she adds. “Really leave your wallflower tendencies at home to make the most of these real-life connections, which can be powerful.

Just think of it as making new friends. Tempting though it might be to powwow with your pals, this is an opportunity to take a few chances and put yourself out there. You never know what could happen.

5. Leave your ego at home

As important as it is to be bold, it’s just as critical to know when to take a step back.

Sure, says Kim, “If you’re interested in monetising and making professional contacts with potential sponsors, etc., be sure to have a succinct description about your work ready for anyone who asks. Also note, however, I said ‘anyone who ASKS.’ This is an important part of making a good impression: networking etiquette. Blabbing about yourself as if you’re the only one in the room who’s ever conceived of changing the online world of travel is misguided. I’ve really seen many well-intentioned people shoot themselves in the foot by going on and on about their website during after parties and such… when all the guy from the Big Company wanted to talk about was indie rock bands. Be yourself, be real, be confident and be passionate. But know when to quiet down. That’s the best way to get sponsors interested in you when meeting in person.”

6. Learn something

At conferences, just as it’s easy to rely too heavily on one’s friends, so too can one place too much of an emphasis on networking at the expense of education.

Mary Jo and her team have “worked hard to provide a variety of sessions to appeal to the diversity in the TBEX audience. If you can’t find a session you can learn from, you’re probably not trying. Some of our speakers are providing value added learning opportunities like this one from Spud Hilton.”

7. Have fun

“Sure, it’s business, but it should be fun too,” reminds Mary Jo. “At TBEX we’ve got two great evening events (this one and this one) that will let attendees kick back over beverages and a meal. I know it’s tempting to go back to the room and order room service, but come have fun!” (See item #4.)

8. Pace yourself, especially at high elevations

Conferences are not holidays. They’re often much more exhausting than you expect.

“It’s easy to get caught up in too much food, too much drink, too hectic a schedule and too little sleep,” recalls Mary Jo. “I get it, you want to do it all. But know your limits. You can have lots of fun without being remembered as the person who couldn’t handle himself or herself.”

Kim agrees: “I’d also say that going to a conference is a little more work than it seems at first glance. It takes a lot of energy since you’re ‘on’ all the time.”

This year, with TBEX taking place up in the mountains, the high elevation is a very important consideration. Drink LOTS of water if you’re not accustomed to being more than a mile high. Also don’t overexert yourself. In places like Keystone, you can tire quickly, easily find yourself short of breath.

“Don’t let mother nature thwart your learning, connecting, and fun!” advises Kim. Check out the good tips here.

9. Follow up

No matter how exhausted you are when you reach your next destination (home or somewhere else) after a conference, you will need time to recover. Use that time to get the real value out of your trip: Enter new contacts in your database and then reach out to the people you met and with whom you would like to stay in touch. A quick email note can be as simple as a thank you, a gesture that will stick in people’s minds.

10. Get to know Colorado

“I’d also encourage using spare time in Colorado to collect content for your blog, instead of blogging about the conference itself,” observes Kim. “Readers looking for destination information aren’t going to need or want a detailed report of everything you learned at a blogging conference. Save that for the TBEX Community site, Twitter or other outlets where people will appreciate it more.”

If you weren’t able to partake in any of the pre-event activities, while you’re at TBEX, reach out to some of the local destination sponsors, like Keystone, Vail Resorts, Visit Denver and Colorado Tourism.

10+1. Stalk the #TBEX Twitter hashtag

Whether or not you’re at TBEX, #TBEX will be a valuable source of information. Use it with abandon.

Got more? Let us know your top tips for attending travel conferences in the comments section below! What did we miss?

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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The same day I got the pictogram, a work colleague from a remote office asked me if I spend only part-time at my full-time job of, among other things, managing (editing and writing) a busy blog. And that was just before one friend corrected another’s misconception of what I do: “He’s a blogger, not a writer,” she told him. Sigh.

Perceptions are always hard to influence, especially when there are broadly accepted mis-generalisations about one’s calling. For example, on the one hand, being a ‘medical professional’ seems always to earn everyone’s instant respect, even without any further information. On the other hand, in many parts of the US, a waiter just won’t be able to finesse the job description. If you’re young and fit, most people will assume you’re a wannabe actor.

So it is with most bloggers. Unless the people you’re dealing with have had direct experience with the substantial challenges of maintaining a blog (whether or not you’re trying to make a living from it), the assumption will always be that you’re a wannabe writer. Not a ‘real’ writer, just someone still learning how not to leave ink blots from a dipped quill. Someone trying to build a following bigger than just your mom.

But it shouldn’t have to be that way. While much of what I write here will certainly be rudimentary to many of you, perhaps even sound silly to others, I can’t say how often I’ve had to remind bloggers to be a bit more earnest and aggressive in establishing their credentials as meaningful contributors to society. Just because blogging has barrel-bottom low barriers to entry (dropping lower by the day) doesn’t mean it’s a sphere of bottom feeders. There are things we can and should all do to help ourselves – and one another – out. Here are the four most I consider to be most fundamental.

1. Think and speak of yourself as a professional

You may have a day job. You may have several of them. Most or all of them might be bread-winning engagements. You may even be earning a living through your words, some of them made public on a regular basis. Or you may be pumping out parables on your own time at lunch, after the kids are at school or during the late-night 30-minute buzz after Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert set the news neurons spinning. It really doesn’t matter.

As far as I’m concerned, if you self-identify as a writer, then say it loudly and proudly. I don’t know many companies that will hire anyone who’s ‘sort of’ a specialist in anything or simply does it in his or her spare time. They want confident practitioners. So don’t cut yourself short. Even if you get by on bravado, as long as you can do what you say you do, no one will complain. Well, you better be able to do what you claim, because if you don’t you’re muddying the waters for those of us who are. And we will complain. Loudly.

2. Broadcast what you do

Regular and reality TV have done wonders for a growing number of featured careers. No one questions the workplace intensity in a hospital, law firm, or police or fire station. No one laughs at the perseverance of garage-based craftsmen churning out art on wheels. But no one yet really gets what writers do, something that doesn’t quite lend itself to action-based serial broadcasts with no voiceovers. How many times (and for how long) can you watch someone sitting at a desk researching arcana and then weaving it into a gripping narrative?

Yes yes, we all know that there’s a lot more to writing than the time spent actually writing. Someday a scribe with the right television credentials will devise a Smash  that glamorises the novel-writing process, but until then, we’re left to own devices. Which means you need to talk (nay, boast) about how you fill the hours of your day. An article or self-imposed deadline may not put lives on the line, but I still think of myself as part doctor, part lawyer, part cop, part fireman and even part artisanal mechanic and I routinely try to communicate the intensity and discipline required to write something meaningful. Now if only my work colleagues were listening…

3. Bury your doubts

Think carefully about how you and your blogging buddies answer the question “So what do you do?” Even if someone coughs out the words “I’m a writer” or “I’m a blogger,” four times out of five it will be with a question mark at the end. “I’m a blogger?” Is it that there’s a chance no one will know what a writer or blogger is? That’s not usually it. Really, there’s a deeper and darker skepticism that you need to stifle. It means you’re not sure that blogging measures up well against whatever social and career standards have tortured you since youth.

It’s time to close the huge gaping opening for doubt. If you’ve done any public speaking, or, better yet, standup comedy, you know that your listeners’ confidence in you can be easily and quickly undermined by as little as a faint or tremulous voice, unsteady stance, agitated hands or poor eye contact. In conversation, answering a question with an end-inflected assertion is pretty much the same thing. It’s like when an insulted Mr Somebody Famous aggressively asks “Do you know who I am?” as a way imposing his ego, only to have Mr Unimpressed say “Quick, call the hospital! We’ve got another one who’s forgotten who he is.” Pie. Face.

4. You are a writer who blogs

In our age of specialisation, going granular can be important. All those expensive grad-school career tracks insist on it. However the environment in which a work focus is practiced is more or less immaterial. An obstetrician is still an obstetrician whether in a hospital, a private clinic, the back of a taxi or a refugee camp. Lawyers skilfully bill for time no matter where they are.

So why does it matter where writers are published? That’s the immaterial environment. We should happily explain the subject areas in which we have a depth of experience – in my case travel and culture – but who cares whether I publish in print or online? I do both. And who cares whether I get paid for my byline, I volunteer a guest post or I self-publish? I do all three. After all, I’m a writer. I’ll turn my words to any service and on any platform. Am I blogger? Yes, because I’m a writer. Do I like macaroni? Yes, because I love pasta.

How do you label yourself? Do you make pick a well-defined small niche, or do you go straight for the core principle behind who you are?

Image via BudgetAir

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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While some modern-day nomads may still be grappling with the emotionally charged distinctions between “travellers” and “tourists,” others now go a level (or two or three) deeper, parsing motivations and definitions to determine if they are eco- or geotourists, responsible or sustainable travellers, and whether they feel at ease with labels like local travel, agritourism, jungle tourism, rural tourism, village tourism, community-based tourism, pro-poor tourism, wildlife tourism and more.

But Does It Matter or Help?

There is perhaps some logic behind this degree of niche diversification. Generally speaking, commercial cycles often include periods of rapid expansion, usually in anticipation of consolidation. More specifically, today, for marketing and branding purposes, the multiplicity of labels gives both travel purveyors and procurers a quick way of finding one another in a particularly cluttered landscape. Gourmets need search no further than operators specialising in culinary tourism.

Of course, making connections is now easier than ever through social media. On Twitter, hashtags like #ecotourism and #responsibletravel, and experts like @gstcouncil (read more about this here) and @localtravels deliver a steady stream of curated and qualified niche-specific travel inspiration. On Facebook, many groups, like Responsible Tourism Networking help make important connections.

And yet, as has frequently been asserted, might these labels not be as limiting as they are enabling? Are “ordinary” tourists, even those with a particular fondness for good food, avoiding culinary tours for fear of ending up with a bunch of provender snobs? As has been asserted in the comments on hotly debated topics like why bloggers aren’t writing more about responsible travel, is too strong an emphasis on a travel product’s ethical qualities turning off travellers with more conventional tastes?

How Finely Do We Need to Split Hairs?

In business, there is always value in preaching to the choir. It guarantees sales. But just how narrowly do the sermons have to be pitched in order to appeal? Before we actually get to a time of greater consolidation in the non-mainstream travel space, do we really need to dissect the whole travel industry to shine a light on its less obvious parts, even if those parts are central to the industry’s (and planet’s) long-term survival?

Is something like the video below, while relevant in an academic sort of way, of any value to the traveller or to most local travel providers? Is it anything more than proof of discouraging infighting?

Click here to view the embedded video.

I do believe in labels. And I believe in reinforcing the values of a business’s chosen demographic. I even believe in diversification as a means of achieving market distinction. Most importantly, I believe in the almost everything that the non-mainstream travel space promotes. But I’m now more and more convinced that we need to recognise when too much is too much. And eco-responsible-sustainable-local-slow-rural-community-village-propoor-cultural-heritage-religious-geo-culinary-wine-agri-adventure-extreme-sports-jungle-wildlife-water-mindful-ethical-conscious-good tourism might just be too much.

What do you believe?

Image: Chris Shoenbohm – WanderingtheWorld.com

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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Last week, the global initiative known as the United Nations Foundation’s Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) – a coalition dedicated to promoting sustainable tourism practices around the world – made a vital commitment to leveraging its growing momentum as the leader of an international alliance of tourism industry stakeholders engaged in and striving to achieve best practices in sustainable tourism.

It retained Audrey Scott and Daniel Noll, the husband-and-wife blogging and photography team behind Uncornered Market, to develop and execute its social media strategy.

Curious to hear what Audrey and Dan aim to do and how they propose to go about doing it, I asked them a few key questions about their upcoming challenges.

First, a Background Reality Check

According to the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), there were approximately 980 million international tourists on the road in 2011, a figure projected to climb to 1.8 billion by 2030. Collectively, those eager vagabonds now spend well above US$900 billion per year, which amounts to nearly 5% of global GDP and underpins hundreds of millions of jobs worldwide.

Most travellers, however, are not particularly mindful of the impact they make on the world-as individuals, let alone in aggregate. They don’t think all that carefully about how or with whom they spend their money and they are often oblivious to how their actions affect the host communities they visit. An oft-used statistic, the source of which remains unconfirmed, states that for every $1 spent on travel, only 5-10 cents (less than 10%!) actually reaches the visited destination. It’s not hard to imagine the imbalances, inequities and indignation that ensue.

In light of this, many industry actors have for years been impelled to ask how tourists can be turned to more responsible and conscientious ways to travel, ways that, to use the UNWTO’s definition of sustainable travel, take “full account of… current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities.” (The question of why more bloggers aren’t writing about responsible travel is something we recently asked here too.)

Enter the GSTC. With a wide-ranging global membership, the GSTC is a new international body “for promoting the increased knowledge, understanding and adoption of sustainable tourism practices.” It accomplishes this “through the adoption of universal sustainable tourism principles” – its Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria – “compiling, adapting and creating the tools and training to engage in sustainable tourism practices; and increasing the demand for sustainable tourism products and services.”

[You can read more about the GSTC and sustainable tourism here: Global Sustainable Tourism Standards Set at ITB Berlin and The Future of Sustainable Tourism: Q&A with Erika Harms of GSTC.]

Cornering the Uncornered Market

Here then, are Audrey and Dan’s answers to my questions on their vision of the social media road ahead for the GSTC, and how you can get involved…

In the announcement of your new GSTC challenges you wrote “Until now, we just never labeled those values or the behaviors attached to them as ‘sustainable.’ ” Why not? What do you think that adding the label now might do?

To not use the term ‘sustainable’ up until now wasn’t really a conscious decision on our part. We travelled, engaged and told stories in ways that made sense to us and felt true to our values and to the experience. As it turns out, a lot of what we’ve done and how we’ve chosen to do it reflects the spirit and behaviours underlying the term “sustainable tourism.”

Adding the label now just provides a recognisable term or hook so that we can begin to connect our relevant content and stories to an existing stream of content from folks who already use the term, thereby raising more awareness of it.

You also wrote about “evolving the discourse from the theoretical to the applied,” but there’s a whole segment of the travel industry – companies and the people who write about them – that’s been working the applied end of the stick for a good long time. There’s nothing theoretical about what they do. Do you see any issues with stepping into an already active space?

Our work in helping to evolve the sustainable tourism discourse does not and should not preclude the fact that a lot of work, much of it good, is already being done and will continue. For companies who are still discussing whether taking the path of sustainable tourism, we hope that highlighting examples of companies active in sustainable tourism-as well as successful – may encourage them to make the leap.

For example, G Adventures promotes sustainable tourism activities in its tours as well as on its social media channels. For them and for many of their clients, this value is not only a feature, but also a differentiator. So it is entirely possible to be innovative and cutting edge while promoting sustainable tourism causes that are meaningful to you – and to be profitable.

What do you think other bloggers should do?

We believe, as we always have, that bloggers should do whatever aligns with their core values. The rest follows from there. We advocate travelling on the basis of respect and a general sense of stewardship. For some, this approach fits and resonates, just as for some, it may not. In an ideal world, influential bloggers with broad audiences would advocate on behalf of all the things that they believe to be important. We’re aware that’s not the way things always work, but it’s something to work towards.

Also, we’ve heard some bloggers say that sustainable tourism stories or experiences aren’t popular or ‘sexy,’ but we believe that it is possible to incorporate personal stories and add emotion to these stories in a way that grabs attention and motivates readers to learn more and take action. We might suggest moving towards a storytelling-based advocacy which will help readers and potential consumers understand what ‘sustainable tourism’ really is. It will also help them to appreciate the human and economic impacts, in addition to the environmental dimension.

What specifically can travel bloggers do to take advantage of the “stream of high-quality content on the topic of sustainable tourism that further encourages discourse, awareness and action” that you plan to build?

Our goal is to curate high-quality content that demonstrates the potential of travel’s positive impact on local communities. Much of the content we’ve seen thus far skews towards the environment, so we are hoping to raise awareness especially to the human/cultural and economic aspects of sustainable tourism.

We are also looking for content that is experience-based and personal in nature (which fits in perfectly with what travel bloggers do naturally), that really gets to the heart of who and what sustainable tourism projects affect.

Also, we encourage bloggers to focus content on both their personal experience as well as the bigger story. This gets readers engaged in the experience while bringing awareness to the bigger environmental, cultural or economic issues at play, all while rewarding quality travel companies and organizations who incorporate the values of sustainable tourism into their products, services and behaviours.

If you have got high-quality sustainable tourism content to share on the Global Sustainable Tourism Council’s social media networks, submit it to Audrey & Dan here.

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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While progress had certainly been made since then – bloggers’ profiles have been raised and their websites are no longer easily dismissed – pulled along in part by the broad acceptance and better integration of social media as critical sales and marketing tools, ITB Berlin 2012 will probably be remembered as the year when everything changed.

“Comparing travel blogger involvement between ITB 2011 and 2012, it feels like 10 years have passed instead of only one,” commented Matthias Scheffelmeier, Cofounder and Communication Director of pocketvillage, this year’s ITB partner for bloggers. “We believe ITB Berlin made a huge leap in exactly the right direction in such a short time.”

Recommended for Bloggers

From a Travel Massive gathering on the eve of the first day of the travel show through to its closing moments, bloggers’ concerns and contributions were an integral part of the program. Seminars, speeches and major presentations of relevance to bloggers carried a special ‘FOR BLOGGERS’ label and a Recommended for Bloggers page on the ITB Berlin website helped digital nomads plan their days.

Instrumental to this process was pocketvillage, a meta-search engine that aggregates travel experiences, activities and tours. As this year’s ITB Berlin partner for bloggers, pocketvillage helped the ITB Berlin team brainstorm how to include bloggers, come to grips with the travel blogosphere, identify speakers, invite to Berlin as many bloggers as possible and organize the Travel Massive.

“In our opinion, bloggers are like a powerful glue connecting destinations, travellers, travel startups and brands in an emotional, authentic, personal, visual, informative and engaging way,” said Scheffelmeier. “To us there was never any question as to whether or not we should be engaged with the travel blogosphere.”

New Kids on the Blog

Although the blogger agenda at ITB Berlin was full and the topics far-reaching – covering everything from customer loyalty and reputation management to blogtrips, mobile trends and TripAdvisor via every shade of social media – two events stood out from the rest.

‘New Kids on the Blog’ united Keith Jenkins (velvetescapes.com) and Katja Hentschel (travelettes.net) with Reine Gammoh (Visit Jordan) and Daniella Dear (Visit Florida) to talk about how destinations can succeed in the blogosphere. Although the conclusions drawn were hardly earth-shattering – destination managers should think seriously about outsourcing great content creation to established bloggers – the free exchange between bloggers, PR agents and destination managers was the kind that should be far more mainstream.

The ITB Media Summit 2012 was the biggest blogger event, filling a large hall of several hundred seats, a turnout unthinkable not too long ago. Jenkins again took to the stage with an excellent introduction that gave full-voiced endorsement to how, for many, “Travel blogging has evolved from a hobby to a full-time profession.” Hentschel then shared the spotlight with Alex Bainbridge (Tour CMS), Sebastian Heinzel (tripwolf.com) and Angelika Schwaff (Germanwings) to discuss how travel, corporate and travel-technology bloggers have changed the classic media landscape.

“The feedback we got from many bloggers as well as PR folks, travel brands and other industry experts was amazing,” concluded pocketvillage’s Scheffelmeier. “They loved it! The bloggers present at ITB definitely made their marks and we’re super excited to see where it’ll all go.”

Images: Author

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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ITB Berlin bills itself as the world’s leading travel show. It’s a behemoth of an event, jaw-dropping in its scope of more than 100,000 visitors to more than 10,000 exhibitors’ stands over the course of five days (March 7-11). True to something so generously expansive, and given the assembled brain trust, in parallel with the displays ITB Berlin packs in an impressive three-day program of convention seminars covering major cross-cutting qualities of the industry.

Two key subject areas this year were sustainability and responsibility in tourism.

Lest you think my responsible-travel appeal from earlier this month was a fringe consideration, ITB Berlin went so far as to recognise “responsible trade, sustainability and environmental awareness” as more than just trendy topics. Acknowledging them as “social imperatives and pre-conditions for long-term economic success and competitive ability,” ITB actually devoted 18 of the official program’s 52 pages to its CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) Event, and for the fourth year in a row brought together representatives from business and politics to discuss best practices in and the economic prospects for sustainable tourism.

One of the CSR Day sessions that drew a very large crowd examined whether there are too many sustainable tourism certification programs. (Without wading too far into the debate, the outcome seemed to be that yes, the jungle of labels is thick, but that’s not the problem; what’s really at issue is whether anyone understands the labels and whether they advance the sustainable tourism cause.)

“Eighty-six percent of consumers do not believe in self-claims” about sustainabilityOne key takeaway was information shared by Ms Erika Harms, Executive Director of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council, about the United Nations–affiliated Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria – “an effort to come to a common understanding of sustainable tourism.”

“Eighty-six percent of consumers do not believe in self-claims” about sustainability (hotels that claim they’re green), remarked Ms Harms, so third-party labels are needed to confirm it. And now, faced with the proliferation of standards, one has usefully emerged against which all others can be measured.

Why should this be important to you?

Chris Doyle, Executive Director (Europe) of the Adventure Travel Trade Association, Editor of AdventureTravelNews™ and host of ITB CSR Day, told me:

No matter how many certification schemes there are in the world, they are rendered useless unless the traveller understands what they are. What we hope for is that travel journalists will seek to understand what it all means and then be the front line of communication to the traveller. I think that travel journalists who don’t invest time and energy into understanding the principles of responsible travel are irresponsible. The media ought to step up a level to where responsible travel is central to the way in which they communicate to their readers.

Although you wouldn’t necessarily know it from the excessive under representation of responsible and sustainable in the exhibitors’ stands at ITB Berlin, “Sustainability has become mainstream,” says the introduction to the certification programs session.

Now, if scores of the industry’s leading practitioners have taken it so much to heart, and there’s a global effort to strive for transparency in green certification in tourism, isn’t it time you took interest too?

Feature Image: Gap089

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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I begin with this – something unimpeachably wise from someone irreproachably sagacious – in an attempt to ground what follows. You see, over many moons I have read and pondered your (my fellow travel scribes’) articles, blog posts and comments. Sadly, with each passing day, I shake my head and wonder how you’ve not read the writing on the wall: the travel terrain has changed, so why haven’t you?

Vision is not seeing things as they are, but as they will be

Most mainstream newspapers and magazines today give periodic lip service to the evolution of travel, acknowledging that more and more travellers consider themselves ‘ecotourists,’ but not really giving their readers enough to feed their ethical penchants. Hamstrung by shrinking budgets, market-deaf advertisers and cumbersome bureaucracy, major travel media look like they’re being outpaced by the industry they’re supposed to support.

So why aren’t you, the new generation of penmen and -women, stepping into an expanding vacuum? Why aren’t more of you – buttressed by blogging skills and vocal in your frustrated desire to be recognised for your craft – helping to drive the kind of change that positions you as leaders? More nimble, more imaginative, more bold and less reliant on traditional revenue sources, you have little stopping you.

As one of the rank and file, I wouldn’t dare to guess at or pass judgment on your individual motivations as writers. And yet, banking on substantial personal experience, I feel justified in a Lincolnesque examination of the evil-good balance of advocating for the fastest-growing but most rough-trod parcel of the travel terrain and of wondering aloud why so many of you (travel writers in general, but bloggers in particular) appear to be shrinking from a perfect storm of a challenge.

What we see is mainly what we look for

Here’s what I see: an alternative marketplace that’s got many niche names: ecotourism, responsible travel, sustainable travel, local travel, slow travel, community-based tourism, geotourism, green travel, pro-poor tourism, conscious travel, ethical travel etc.

This travel space continues to be alternative to the mainstream traffic of consumers who plan and shop for holidays guided principally by bucket lists and budget. That being said, high-minded considerations – worries about carbon emissions, ‘economic leakage,’ ‘cultural flattening’ and the like – are now increasingly asserting themselves as powerful motivators too. As early as 2007, Condé Nast Traveler’s “The Power of Travel” focus on “the impact of tourism on communities and the planet” revealed a whopping 74% of respondents who thought “that hotels should be responsible for helping alleviate poverty in their own communities.” This is just a small fraction of the 7% of the international travel market in 2007 that the UN World Tourism Organisation attributed to ecotourism, a number that has increased significantly since then. We’re beholding the mainstreaming of the fringe.

What we fight against defines us as clearly as all we embrace

As I consider shifting travel trends, though, what has surprised me most is the lacklustre endorsement for change from travel media. Catherine Mack wrote meaningfully about this last month. “After a plethora of responsible tourism conferences, conventions and codes of practice, so many travel writers, not just travellers, still think it is amusing that our industry is ‘responsible’ for so much damage,” she lamented. So do I. I also wonder why.

Now, I’m sure the proliferation of travel monikers has lent to confusion about what it all means. It may even have lent to some degree of exhaustion. There’s already a small but important weight of accountability (and sometimes culpability) associated with the cluttered mix of mindful compound-noun travel styles, but does “The lack of a precise, commonly agreed definition of ‘ecotourism’… cause… misunderstanding, argument and debate,” as Ron Mader asks in an essay about tourism definitions? Why else would each new entrant into the space feel compelled to come up with a new banner, right?

I nevertheless keep coming back to the same thought. Does the majority of travel writers and editors just not get it? Or not care? In a LinkedIn comment left in response to Catherine Mack’s post, one reader is understanding about the mix of priorities that influence travellers and travel providers, but he has no sympathy for the media. “They would only be interested in the reality TV show ‘I’m a Responsible Celebrity on Holiday, Get me out of here.’” Another reader derides “smug media apathy.”

“We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like” – Dave Ramsey

Not surprisingly, the circle-jerk of blame in the travel media space can be impressive. I try to avoid it, which means I am ignorant both of what powers it and of how to neuter it when it grows too rabid. Looking in from the outsider ranks, I see writers criticising editors criticising advertisers criticising PR firms criticising travel suppliers criticising tourist boards criticising what writers write. Working in such conditions, the pool of writers – a glowing (and growing!) cadre of exceptions notwithstanding – seems fundamentally ill-equipped to drive change.

Far too many of them behave like angry miners clawing at a passing flash of blood diamond. Do they not care about morality or changing consumer interests? Perhaps not. A writer I won’t embarrass by name once told me “I write for today’s traveler, not tomorrow’s,” which struck me as fundamentally wrong-footed. Everyone’s stuck in an engine coughing on dirty oil that soils the clean whenever it’s added.

We only grow when we step outside our comfort zone

If your comfort zone is exclusively surf, sand and sun in an air-conditioned, gated, foreign-owned resort that imports the foods you eat at home and staff who look like you, it’s time to expand your horizons. At a time of global warming, widespread economic and political upheaval, and irremediable cultural extinction, should you really be devoting energy to the promotion of bad practices and sorry stereotypes? Why do I even have to ask that question?

I’ve never yet heard a legitimate argument against being responsible when you travel. Burlap sheets and grass dinners are no more likely with ethical operators than they are with any others. And objecting to the sustainable use of resources or equitable sharing of profits with local providers would be like lobbying against kindness. By Lincoln’s standards, then, responsible travel is more of good than of evil, something to be embraced. Dipping your quill in support of it should also be a no-brainer.

“We must hang together, gentlemen…else, we shall most assuredly hang separately” – Benjamin Franklin

If ever there was a man who was unafraid to try something new, it was Franklin. However, while he was always ready to go out on a limb by himself, he was also a convinced collaborator, banking (sometimes literally) on the shared wisdom and foresight of his colleagues.

Now, I’m no Franklin, but I do believe that travel writers (especially bloggers) are in a unique position today:

We could add oomph to the fair travel crusade by giving consumers what they want and, just as critically, rejecting what is wrong with irresponsible travel.

We could join forces with the mass of industry stakeholders who are making meaningful decisions about where they work and how best to present it to visitors.

We could stabilise the unsteady responsible travel stool by adding media – the missing third leg – to those above and finally propelling the travel industry into the next generation.

What do you think?

Images: Contrails (Feature)  - Francesco Proceda, Camera women - Johnnie Utah, Farmer – Anne Wangalachi/CIMMYT, Girl – McKay Savage

This post was authored exclusively for Travelllll.com by Ethan Gelber.

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