Travel Journalism

Informing Tourists in the Digital Age

Bryan Pirolli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351616942
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

In the last decade, with the success of review sites and online commentaries and the increased accessibility of travel information online, the job of a traditional travel journalist is being challenged. Travel Journalism closely examines the impact of digital media and technology on this specialist area of journalism and how professionals working in travel media today are adapting to it.

Bryan Pirolli draws on a wealth of professional experience to present both practical guidance and a theoretical analysis of travel journalism. Through interviews with content providers – including journalists and bloggers – the book explores new ways of thinking about this profession. Looking at the relationship between travel journalists, social media and influencers, the book asks how travel journalists might rethink their work for more constructive purposes and how they should respond to innovations like the ever-growing sharing economy. The book also explores how journalistic ethics can be preserved as concerns around 'sponsored content' and 'paid influencers' remain widespread.

For students and professionals looking to better understand the role of the travel journalist in the digital age, this book is an invaluable resource. Pirolli comprehensively assesses the challenges and the opportunities for success that actors in travel media are now presented with and encourages readers to proactively embrace them.

PART II

Travel journalism as profession

1

A Travel Journalism History

Introduction

Two of humankind’s oldest pastimes – besides anything related to survival and propagation – are traveling and storytelling. Originally a nomadic species, we only settled down some 10,000 years ago – a mere blip in our history. Human travel has had direct impact on politics, trade, and religion long before the earliest recorded accounts, with archaeological excavations revealing how people and goods moved around the ancient world (Gosch and Stearns, 2007). The caves of Lascaux in southwestern France depict some of the earliest examples of storytelling with images dating possibly as far back as 20,000 years, but there’s no telling how far back oral storytelling reaches. What’s clear is that we’ve been moving and narrating for a long time and, despite a change in how we do it, these urges have not wavered throughout the millennia. In fact, today, more people are traveling than ever before, with over a billion international travelers each year and countless domestic travelers shuffling around for business and pleasure. At the heart of all of this movement is the information needed to perform it, which itself has transformed drastically from the days of troubadours and hand-crafted letters. Today’s holiday makers and nomads are better equipped with an overabundance of information at their fingertips from the stories of those who have already been there – but it wasn’t always the case, of course.

Travel journalism is just one of these many sources of information, and the one that, arguably, instils some notion of trust that others may not. Before leaping into a discussion about its virtues and pitfalls, it is important to understand how travel journalism fits historically into the greater media landscape. One of the major difficulties in situating it, however, is its complex, poorly defined history as a profession. No comprehensive work exists that traces the roots of professional travel journalism, for two concrete reasons. First, travel writing, as a genre, has existed for centuries in numerous iterations, including personal letters, ship logs, and longer works of prose. This doesn’t take into account the paintings, photography, and eventually video that also function to represent foreign people and places. Second, journalism, itself difficult to define, has only existed as a recognized profession for the past 100 or so years in much of the Western world, with social and legal definitions varying from country to country. This chapter seeks to trace the development of travel writing as an amateur pastime through its evolution as a professional activity, leading to a renaissance of amateurism in the twenty-first century with the proliferation of the internet. While it is impossible to pinpoint the moment when travel journalism was born, it will clarify how the genre developed with cultural and societal changes, reflecting transformations in travel habits through the centuries. This understanding, in turn, should help clarify the discussions to follow on the profession in a digital age, at least in the western world.

This chapter will offer just that, a look at the beginnings of travel narratives, tracing the relationship between writing styles and the tourism industry. It will arrive at the more recent development of journalism as a profession, considering links between travel writing and journalism, before moving on to more contemporary, twenty-first-century changes brought on by the internet, social media, and a continually changing economy. The goal is not to highlight every branch of travel writing that exists – that’s another book all to itself – but rather to understand how the very idea of travel journalism appeared in a historical context, and to grasp how the travel journalists of today and tomorrow are fitting into this narrative. It is a complex history with no real beginning and no end in sight, as an increasingly mobile population will no doubt make way for more tourism-related content and stories throughout the twenty-first century.

Travel writing beginnings

According to Tim Youngs, ‘Travel writing consists of predominantly factual, first-person accounts of travels that have been undertaken by the author-narrator’ (Youngs, 2013, p. 3). This simple definition encompasses everything from a letter written by a medieval pilgrim to a more contemporary blog post written by a millennial to contemporary forms of what academics define as travel journalism. At its heart, most travel writing was, and perhaps still is, a personal, amateur affair, something destined only for the writer or a few acquaintances. Historically, there was no travel press in ancient Egypt or Greece to diffuse narratives to the masses. Youngs furthers this idea, saying that travel writing is a unique hybrid category, itself borrowing from different styles and genres, including scientific writing, autobiography, and diaries (2013, p. 6). Generally, tourists knew who they were writing for, and rarely was it for other anonymous tourists, since a complex commercial travel industry only developed relatively recently in human history.

The earliest travel writing, however, can be traced back to ancient cultures, including Egypt and Mesopotamia. While far from anything resembling modern journalism, these ancient texts, not unlike blog posts of the twenty-first century, have a common thread running through them, namely a basic human curiosity for the unknown (Blanton, 1997, p. 2). While some travel stories, including The Epic of Gilgamesh in Mesopotamia and Homer’s Odyssey in Greece, focus on the more fantastic or imagined notions of travel, not all texts were as fictional. Many voyages motivated by political and commercial interests are enshrined in several texts, including the journeys of an Egyptian general, Harkhuf, around 2300 BCE. His narrative detail his many months of journey through sub-Saharan Africa, with descriptions of the goods and gifts he returned to the pharaoh (Gosch and Stearns, 2007). Harkhuf is often identified as the first long-distance explorer in history through the record he left on his tomb (Weaver, 2015; Youngs, 2013).

It wasn’t until around 460 BCE that the Greek writer Herodotus emerged as a more modern recorder of history. Today, in his accounts, The Histories, readers receive a more narrative account of the writer’s travels around the Mediterranean, including his observations of the Persian Wars (Hartog, 1988). Interestingly, Gosch and Stearns note the lack of any practical information woven into Herodotus’ journeys, with no references to how he moved about or paid for his travel, which would frustrate today’s Lonely Planet reader (2007, p. 30). Still, moving slowly from fiction towards facts, the author and his reflections are markedly absent from the volumes, taking on a more objective role (Blanton, 1997, p. 6). The Romans continued keeping records of travels across their empire, while the excursions of Paul the Apostle are clearly documented in a secular reading of a little-recognized travel narrative, chapter 27 of Acts of the Apostles in the Bible (Gosch and Stearns, 2007). As Christian persecution eased up in the fourth century, pilgrimages to Jerusalem and the Holy Land led to other recorded accounts – 526 between 1100 and 1500 AD (Youngs, 2013, p. 24). One of the first female travel writers appeared around 400 AD when the nun Egeria completed a pilgrimage around the Holy Land, writing of her travels for women back home. In her letters, she introduces practices that form the basis for more modern travel writing: descriptions of the exotic as well as her own voice and reflections throughout the narration. As Blanton describes, she interacts with her environment, introducing individuals that she meets and asking questions about what she observes (Blanton, 1997, p. 7).

Throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, however, a thirst for exploration pushed humans further abroad and overseas in search of new lands and trade routes, and it wasn’t just Europeans who were setting sail. Spurred by new technology in shipbuilding, an end to Mongol rule, government-sponsored trips abroad, and mercantile endeavors, Russian, Chinese, and African explorers ventured further than ever before (Gosch and Stearns, 2007, p. 162). While research into non-Western travel journalism may very well yield a different tale, Europe’s story is a well-documented one. As diplomacy, empire, trade, and discovery lured people further away from their homes, western travel writing grew to encompass these new habits, as well as to address evolving readerships with the increase of literacy following the invention of the printing press. Journalism as we know it today, however, was still not on the radar by the Renaissance, with few early newspapers circulating at all through Europe until the onset of the Enlightenment.

From exploration to experience

As explorers crossed the globe, they recorded their treks, and travel writing took on a more scientific approach, like the stories of explorer Marco Polo. In the widely popular book alleged to be the accounts of his travels, Polo spoke often of the Other, looking at indigenous people as objects of study. His stories circulated through Europe, introducing Westerners to foreign cultures in a way that objectified them as subjects of study. In one story, Polo was reported to describe local drink, breaking it down to basic elements, saying, ‘The greater part of the inhabitants of the province of Cathay drink a sort of wine made from rice mixed with a variety of spices and drugs. This beverage, or wine as it may be termed, is so good and well flavoured that they do not wish for better’ (Wright, 1899, p. 220). While more modern travel writers may actually ask the locals about the beverage, Polo keeps his distance, describing from afar. While previous writers also shared impressions of foreign people, these explorers discussed them in detail, albeit in a removed fashion (Blanton, 1997, p. 7). Moreover, Polo was one of the first writers to provide advice for future explorers, a practice that would become mainstream in the following centuries through commercial travel guides (Youngs, 2013, p. 29). Stories by Marco Polo in the fourteenth century and Christopher Columbus in the fifteenth century ushered in a wave of factual, almost disinterested reporting on their travels, bringing a more scientific view to exotic lands. As newspapers and gazettes began to appear throughout Europe in the seventeenth century, many travel logs and accounts found a place in their pages. Through the eighteenth century, these writings, at least in France, were destined even for literary journals, which also attracted a large readership, according to Yasmine Marcil. Such writings, she explains, illustrate to what point journalism about travel and discovery played a role in the literary press in France, suggesting an entertainment quality to these narratives that still exists today (Marcil, 2007).

Through the eighteenth century, however, travel writing took another step towards what we might consider travel journalism’s precursor. As individuals began to travel more for pleasure – think of the Grand Tour undertaken by young European men – writers who documented their travels began sharing more reflective writing than ever before. Blanton describes how the changing motivations for travel writers evolved over the centuries, and how it became ‘the kind of writing that foregrounds the narrator in an attempt to sentimentalize and/or glorify the narrator’s experiences in hostile environments. Here the inner world is stressed over the outer world. A traveler’s thoughts, reactions, and adventures are of paramount importance’ (1997, p. 13). While Harkhuf, Egeria, and even Marco Polo may have hinted at these ideas in their writing, by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries such travel writing became commonplace. A look at Gustave Flaubert’s letters and diaries from an 1849 trip to Egypt, published after his death, offers a glimpse into this type of writing. He wrote:

But the first days, by God, it is such a bewildering chaos of colours that your poor imagination is dazzled as though by continuous fireworks as you go about staring at minarets thick with white storks, at tired slaves stretched out in the sun on house terraces, at the patterns of sycamore branches against walls, with camel bells ringing in your ears and great herds of black goats bleating in the streets amid horses and the donkeys and the peddlers.

(Flaubert, 1972 [1849], p. 79)

The focus on the experience, on the differences, on the sensations, are all of primary importance in this description, which describes vividly how the author is bewildered and dazzled by the visit to Egypt. This more self-indulgent writing, however, blossomed as another type of travel text popularized itself through the middle of the nineteenth century: the travel guide.

Industrialization and modern tourism

Through the nineteenth century, the Grand Tour slowly gave way to increasingly commercialized travel, requiring a more mainstream form of communications for a new class of tourists. This industrialization of tourism came about thanks to technological advancements, notably the steam engine and railroad, culminating with commercial air transport in the mid-twentieth century. As railroads and steam boats became commonplace, more individuals could travel easily and comfortably, giving rise to a larger leisure class. Socio-political changes also help explain the shift towards mass travel. For example, after the Napoleonic wars in the early nineteenth century, the English began to visit continental Europe en masse again. Entrepreneurs like Thomas Cook in England exploited these new trends, opening travel agencies during the second half of the nineteenth century (Buzard, 1993, p. 46). This innovation arguably marked the beginning of mass tourism that would expand throughout Europe through the rest of the century. At the same time, more and more travel stories appeared in publications by both American and European writers exploring Europe, including Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Frances Trollope (Buzard, 1993; Bertho-Lavenir, 1999). While they mostly provided entertaining or reflective accounts of their own travel, these authors contributed more to literature than to any form of journalism, but their potential to inform readers about faraway places maintained a link between the genres. Slowly, however, travel and informative writing began to intersect more formally for mass audiences during the 1800s as a new industry of travel handbooks took root.

While European and American newspapers were still developing, the idea of a travel section had not solidified fully by the nineteenth century. Papers did, however, focus on travel issues more and more by the late nineteenth century. The American newspaper of reference, the New York Times, for example, began publication in 1851. From its first issue it covered travel-related issues, including the arrival and departure of steam boats. It wasn’t until 1896, however, that editors began publishing a Sunday magazine, including articles dedicated to consumer travel, which planted seeds for the popular Sunday travel section (archives, the New York Times). Newspapers weren’t necessarily interested in catering to leisure travelers prior to mass tourism, when marketing campaigns became more interested in reaching audiences.

Before the press invested in tourism-related topics on a consumer level, the guidebook industry set the tone for a growing travel media industry. In order to respond to the growing hordes of tourists, the late nineteenth century saw the advent of the modern travel guide. Travel manuals existed before the nineteenth century, like the Conseil aux Touristes (Advice to Tourists) written in 1793 by Hans Ottokar Reichard. Whereas this early book catered to a certain kind of upper-class traveler, educating more on etiquette and decorum than on what to experience, the new travel guide industry focused on specific locations and what to do there. These guides also helped users navigate the commercial offers advertised by the growing railways (Bertho-Lavenir, 1999). Travel agencies also offered their own publications. Thomas Cook, for example published a magazine entitled The Excursionist in the UK beginning in 1851 (archives, Thomas Cook). The idea of a specialized travel press began to develop at this time, embracing the commercial aspect of an adolescent tourism industry going through a growth spurt.

Travel guides were, arguably, the most fundamental ancestors of modern journalism. They have continued to exist throughout the evolution of travel media, adapting to the new environment as needed. They have introduced much of the format for travel websites today, which fundamentally offer similar information aimed at tourists organizing their trips. While the styles and platforms have changed, the goals are largely the same. By the nineteenth century, steam engines and boats made commercial tourism possible for a larger segment of the population, though it remained largely an elite activity. Automobiles and aviation would eventually open the world up to even more people, creating truly international commercial tourists, and these consumers were thirsty for information on how to reach their destination and what to do once there. European authors began to adapt their travel writing through the innovation of the commercial guidebook. Whereas before, much of their writing focused on personal letters and recommendations rarely destined to be read by the public, a new class of writers spearheaded by John Murray sought to standardize travel writing for the masses. By the mid-1800s, the guidebook had developed not only to share stories and anecdotes, but to assist individuals engaged in a whole new world of travel. As Catherine Bertho-Lavenir points out, these books and guides taught tourists what to admire while traveling, but also how to get themselves there (1999, p. 41). Whereas narrative writing may have entertained and inspired, these guides rose to inform and educate.

Murray called his publications ‘handbooks’, which reflected their pocket-size format and utility, and they were quickly adopted by other publishers. Most famously, Karl Baedeker in Germany printed his own books inspired largely by Murray’s, cre...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I: Travel journalism as profession
• PART II: Travel journalism in practice: challenges and changes
• PART III: New interpretations and opportunities
• Conclusion
• Index