Dear hotel chains,
While I completely understand your right to brand your hotels – after all, your guests will often choose to stay with you because they know what the brand name usually offers – you are starting to take the piss.
Let me explain something about names. My name is David Whitley. It is not David [...]
Continue reading about When hotel branding gets silly: An open letter
Going solo
When I was travelling down the Australian coast last year, I did so as a normal human being rather than a pampered travel journalist. One of the things that struck me was how difficult it can be to do anything when you’re on your own.
How many?
The classic example was in Mission Beach. I [...]
Continue reading about Solo travellers: Why tour companies are missing out on customers
On the tourist trail
Apologies for this blog being quiet of late – I am currently in the middle of a fairly exhausting jaunt through South Africa.
As part of this trip, I have been doing a lot of tours, and as a result, have come to a conclusion or two about how tour operators and tourism [...]
Continue reading about How tour operators should deal with journalists
Tourism potential of Samoa
As some of this blog’s readers will know, I spent a week in the Pacific nation of Samoa last May. It goes against the grain of this blog to say it, but I found it the most extraordinary place I’ve visited this, and possibly any other year.
When there, I thought it had [...]
Continue reading about How to bring tourists back after a disaster: Samoa’s big problem
Blogosphere debate
Jeremy Head has written a characteristically interesting post on whether travel content that has been paid for by a company can ever be objective.
As part of the debate, he references Matthew Teller’s proposal about PR agencies and tourist boards paying travel writers for articles rather than the publications they are published in.
How travel writers [...]
Continue reading about Who will pay for travel writing? A potential compromise
Information from hotel
This morning, I received a reply from a hotel. I’m currently researching a feature on getting away from the whole family Christmas thing and thought this resort might be a good possible inclusion. But I needed a bit of information on it first before I could assess.
The response
The response, pasted below, is a priceless example [...]
Continue reading about Hotels: How not to respond to information requests from journalists
Less coverage of green travel in travel media
You don’t hear quite so much about green travel these days, do you? For a good few years, it was the flavour of the month in the travel media. Far too much attention was devoted to travelling without flying, environmentally-friendly hotels, carbon off-setting and other ‘innovations’ that would [...]
Continue reading about Green travel: Did many travellers care in the first place?
If Iggy Pop can advertise car insurance, Johnny Rotten can plug butter and Bob Dylan can be the voice of a Sat-Nav, why can’t other music legends get in on the self-prostitution act? The travel industry is clearly missing a trick here – why not get a few rock icons in to boost visitor numbers? [...]
Continue reading about How the travel industry can become more rock ‘n’ roll
My little list of Top 15 Travel Twitterers seems to have got itself a fair bit of attention. Interestingly, a lot of comments have centred around my reasons for unfollowing someone.
To summarise, if I find a Twitterer dull, irrelevant or overly irritating, then I see no reason to keep following them. Nothing personal – it’s [...]
Continue reading about How to use Twitter effectively: Travel PR companies
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