Travel articles - common mistakes

Like sports writing, travel writing is one of the areas of the business which many newbies and students dream of specialising in. People dream of spending their lives jet setting from one country to another, living a glamorous life. So in this post I will dispel a few of the travel myths.

1.       When people think of travel writing they think of people like Michael Palin. They think that there is plenty of work out there and that there is no end to the exotic locations editors want you to write about. The reality is that nowadays many travel pieces are written by staff journalists who are given ‘free holidays’ on condition that they write about it afterwards. This isn’t to say that you should not try travel writing, but it is important for you to know about this as it may be your main competition depending on the publication.

2.       Publications don’t pay for you to go. This is a mistaken assumption many people make. If you are lucky a PR will organise the trip from start to finish but more often you will need to spend a bit of time phoning the press office of airlines and hotel chains negotiating flights and hotels etc.

3.       It is worth remembering that the article doesn’t have to be about somewhere foreign. What about your own home town? I often advise students to start there and to think about how they could write about the area where they live. This is so obvious that people don’t even consider it.

And here is some advice on how to write a good travel article:

1.     Think like a reader and include details you as a reader would like to know. You should be trying to paint a picture of the place. It is about the difference between the reader thinking ‘that sounds nice’ and her thinking ‘I really must go there’. Bring the place alive so that she feels as if she is there with you.

2.       Add in lots of details and observations. But don’t go into too much detail on the irrelevant. You may have met a couple you got on great with but how interesting is this to the reader?

3.       Yes your family can feature in the article but apart from brief mentions really they should only be used to make a point. So if you are writing about a tourist attraction that is aimed at kids it is useful for the reader to read about what the children thought of it.

4.       What is new or unusual about the place? What is the news hook?  If the attraction is not new then you have to find a new slant? A visit to Lapland in the summer perhaps, or visiting Disneyland Paris and using a special guidebook.

1.       Finally the holiday account versus the travel article. Many newbies confuse the two. Over the past few years I have noticed that some of the women’s weeklies have started asking for holiday accounts, but on the whole most places are wanting travel accounts. The two are very different – both in the way they are written and in the types of destinations covered.