Blog Relations
Cheap travel for bloggers
Well here’s a nice idea – travel companies could provide discount holidays for bloggers. Put me down for a cheap get-away!
If you’ve ever wondered why the travel pages are so dreadfully dull, it’s because of the currupt relationship between journalists and the travel companies who pay for them to go on free trips which they then write up. If, as a freelance writer, you try to get in with an interesting travel piece, there’s no chance. The pages are booked up for the next year with nice trips that the editor has been on.
Of course hardly anyone reads the resulting drivel, which is why travel companies are at last wondering whether it’s worth forking out the cost.
Travel purchases are migrating to the net. I haven’t been inside a travel agency for years. All my journies begin online. I’m sure it’s the same for most people now. So travel blogs are a big and obvious target for blog relations campaigns. Forget the press. Woo the bloggers.
Just in case my trackbacks aren’t working:
From:
http://www.reputationplus.com/2006/01/hugh_over_at_bl.html
Hugh over at Blog Relations takes up the theme and explains why a lot of travel coverage is flawed.
If you’ve ever wondered why the travel pages are so dreadfully dull, it’s because of the corrupt relationship between journalists and the travel companies who pay for them to go on free trips which they then write up. If, as a freelance writer, you try to get in with an interesting travel piece, there’s no chance. The pages are booked up for the next year with nice trips that the editor has been on.
Not just the editor. Let me tell you about a common situation where trips are allocated according to whose turn it is. It could be a sports writer or a fashion sub editor or – and I have seen this on three occasions – it could be the travel editor’s personal assistant.
It doesn’t matter whether they can write travel copy or not. And believe me, writing a good travel piece is very different from preparing a fashion spread.
They are happy enough to go on the trip but typically the newspaper requires them to deduct those days in Hawaii or Rome from their annual leave.
In other words, they are on vacation and often they would much rather be lying on the beach than working hard to discover unheralded new galleries or budget restaurants or simply attempting to distil the essence of a new destination for the travel section.
What sort of service is that to offer your readers? How is that going to help them decide whether or not to spend their hard-earned savings on a week in Lombardy or Boca Raton?
Hugh says “Forget the press. Woo the bloggers.” But I don’t see it as a straight swap and I am not proposing travel companies drop the mainstream press entirely.
Here is where I think some sort of blogger incentive – discount, upgrade or free excursion – makes sense:
The trip should be a niche product and buzz-worthy. I can’t see this working for typical sun, sea and sand breaks in over-crowded resorts. For example, some of my best trips have included husky sledging in Greenland, llama packing in Northern California and renting a lighthouse in Norway – all great blogging fodder.
I still wrote about my high season trip to Benidorm but I don’t think the PR company was thrilled.
It probably also helps if your bloggers can have easy access to wifi for their laptops while away or at least a machine in the lobby where they can write regular posts. Not so easy when you are camping on Mount Shasta with a llama.
I am reluctant to bring up the whole A-list versus the rest debate but the quality of your readership (not necessarily quantity) probably matters a lot. A travel PR should not just consider a blogger’s Google ranking or number of page views but also think about demographics, the blogger’s regular network of readers, specialist subject etc. However they do have to justify ever blogging incentive.
What do you think? What other requirements or preconditions should be met before a travel company splashes out and sponsors a blogger?
What makes you so sure bloggers won’t behave in the same way and just write nice things so they get invited again?
I have to concede that David has a good point. Free or cheap travel might corrupt bloggers in the end.
All the same, I do think that travel blogs can become influentual because people research their trips online these days.