The freebie debate The debate about whether journalists and bloggers should accept freebies is so old and hoary that I’m reluctant to bring it up again. But my recent experience in Germany shed a bit of new light on it for me, so tough, back to the well-chewed territory… For those not in the know, [...]
Continue reading about Travel writing and freebies: The bias that matters
Close encounters of the guidebook kind This morning, I had what I thought was an extraordinarily encounter. Guide book writers may be more acquainted with it than I am. But, to me, it just didn’t make sense. I am currently in Bath, researching a city guide for a major Australian newspaper. As part of that, [...]
Continue reading about Lesson for hoteliers: How to disappear from the guidebooks and lose customers
As Jeremy Head rightly points out in his new post, there is so much destination guide content festering on the internet that much of it becomes interchangeable. Why, in essence, should you go to one site’s guides above another’s? Many websites – be they for hotel, airlines or generic travel companies trying to build their [...]
Continue reading about How to make destination guides distinctive
Old school feedback As any writer who has written something for an online publication will probably know, feedback isn’t always that much of a blessing. In the not so brave old world, you would write a piece for your newspaper, and unless it was controversial enough to spark hundreds of letters to the editor, you’d [...]
iPhones and iPads For someone who does most of his work for websites and is almost surgically attached to his laptop, I can be something of a technophobe at times. I don’t have an iPhone, and neither do I understand why I need one. I have a long-standing mistrust of Apple products (anyone bandying about [...]
Continue reading about Three reasons why printed guidebooks won’t die any time soon
A lesson learned Last November, I learned a valuable lesson. We were half-planning a Caribbean holiday, when we saw flights to the Seychelles for under £400. Figuring we’d never be able to get there as cheaply again, we snapped the tickets up and decided to take the opportunity to do a famous luxury destination on [...]
Continue reading about An important travel lesson: When good deals make for bad holidays
A PR’s job I am acutely aware that there is more to doing travel PR than forever leaping every time a journalist clicks their fingers. In fact, some PRs may argue that dealing with journalists only forms a small part of their job. But it is a part of the job nonetheless, and the whole [...]
Continue reading about One common mistake that PR companies make – and how to fix it
Writers and photographers are increasingly expected to be multi-skilled. But are the two crafts compatible? Photo obsessives For the last three weeks or so, I have been on the road. And from Vancouver to Viti Levu, I have been constantly staggered by the number of people I’ve encountered who will happily take photos of [...]
Continue reading about Good writing and good photography: An unnatural mix
Going AWOL Over the next couple of months, I may be a little quieter on this blog and Twitter than usual. That will be because I’m travelling around the world (Canada, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore) and won’t get back until the beginning of June. I’ll still pop up the odd post when something [...]
You’re currently reading the third draft of this post. It was initially designed as a name-and-shame hatchet job. I rewrote it once because I felt it may be a tad unfair, and I rewrote it a second time because I felt it may be a little hypocritical. In the process, I’ve become horribly confused about [...]
Continue reading about Sponsored posts: Where is the line between journalism and marketing?