The internet has completely changed the way we think about travel. No place is too obscure or too niche; we can access great quality writing about Guilin’s dragon-spined mountains or fashion tips from the Bolivian jungle in a matter of seconds. And crucially, the majority of this information is free. This of course has sparked a great debate within the industry, which has flared up again with Jeremy Head’s critique about the decline of good-quality travel writing.
Where’s the money coming from?
He puts forth the argument, quite rightly, that there is little money to properly pay travel writers; gone are the days of the all-expenses-paid trip around Cambodia. Writers have to rely increasingly on freebies and press nights, which in turn makes you wonder just how compromised their finished article is. And how exactly an aspiring travel writer can carve out a career in such an environment? In short, how is the expertise for tomorrow’s experts going to develop?
Step in the GrumpyTraveller, who this morning posted a reponse on his blog. He argues that yes, there is less money – but only because the system was unsustainable in the first place. There is money to be made from the web, it’s just that up until now that way has been to write SEO-focused content that is more functional than creative; the ‘art’ of travel writing has in some ways been compromised for pieces that will rank well with Google.
What next?
So where do we go from here? Well, we all have to realise that writing for web is changing, and there’s nothing we can do about that. That narrative style of travel writing does not suit the web and will most likely continue to decline. But the focus on mastery of web techniques has devalued content and ironically, it’s social media that’s changing this. Clever writing and sharp prose from millions of online users has brought writing style back into focus once more.
Everyone is realising that content as something that should not just be keyword populated and SEO’d (to the uninitiated: attempting to bend search engines to your will) to within an inch of its life. There’s a wealth of great travel writing going on out there that’s growing into a real force to be reckoned with. The lyrical prose we all grew up with in print is being replaced by a clear, concise style that’s informative rather than whimsical.
What’s the answer, then? Probably a mixture of free and paid-for content, available to download online. People will always look to travel experts to cut out the white noise of myriad reviews and opinions, it’s just that now those travel experts have to marry their love of words with the sometimes-unforgiving rules of writing for web. Which is precisely how it should be.
True, and I think most people would rely more on a well written and documented travel article than they would on the recommendation of the travel agent around the corner.
dirk
http://www.sabandari.com