Top Creators: Guest Interview with Chris Joondeph of Authentic Traveling from Denver, USA

Chris Joondeph, known as “Authentic Traveling”, is a travel content creator from the United States with a particular focus on food, culture, and unique storytelling. He is known for his fun, engaging videos that really make it feel like you’re traveling along with him.

This article is part of an interview series with Top Travel Massive Creators and is made possible with the support of Stay22. Thanks Chris for taking the time to share your story!

How did you get started as a travel creator?

Since I was young, I had an insatiable desire to see the world. But it wasn’t until I was around 21 years old that I began traveling by myself for the first time visiting Ecuador, Chile, and Argentina. This trip really inspired me to travel further eventually leading to my first job after college in Thailand as an English teacher.

I used this as an opportunity to start my travel blog, Authentic Traveling, which was initially focused on how-to guides for visiting off-the-beaten-path destinations in Thailand, including remote treehouses in the mountains or unique homestays with local hill tribe families.

As blogs moved to social media, I started creating short form videos which really took off. The idea was to just document my travel journey telling unique stories about the places I visited. I offered a fresh perspective which people really liked and now I have an audience of over 3M followers and create content full time.

How would you describe your content and your audience?

I focus on lesser-known destinations while showcasing how one can travel and visit those places. What makes my content unique is how I actually explain things from the logistics of travel to the culture and background history that make a place unique and worth visiting. I’m not just showing beautiful destinations and travel photos but rather giving the critical context behind each destination which you often do not see. People always tell me that my content inspires them to travel to the places I feature and shows them how to do it.

My audience is typically Millennial and Gen X frequent travelers primarily US-based but living and traveling abroad. They are usually looking for inspiration for their next trip. I often get recognized the most in airports and embassies.

What platforms do you create on, and which has been most important to your growth?

I primarily create short form videos that I post on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Facebook. I enjoy telling these short stories in an easily digestible format.

I also have a presence on YouTube with long-form travel vlogging. I want to focus more on this platform in the future.

What has been the biggest challenge you have faced as a travel creator?

My biggest challenge has been turning frequent attention and an engaged audience into actual money that can pay the bills at the end of the day. Initially my page was just a hobby and it blew up while I was still working full-time so I just enjoyed making the videos but generating an income was never my primary focus. Now that I do this full-time, I have made significant efforts in networking to ensure I am top of mind for brands and destination marketers.

I also launched my own travel business focused on group tours to Africa. So far, we have had over 100 clients in our first year and this is where I have been able to build a more sustainable income stream.

What does your content creation process look like?

I like to read a lot about the destinations I visit. I enjoy diving into the history and culture and make an effort to ask as many questions as possible while traveling there. I am looking for the story that is interesting and unique which will serve as the “hook” for my content. Once I have the inspiration, I will turn that into a script adding in interesting pieces of information that help build the story.

While traveling, I am capturing b-roll and filming anything that might be useful to help convey my message. Once I get home, I edit it all together with voiceover and music to put out the content that typically does so well on my pages. I will also occasionally do some live reaction videos while traveling as the inspiration comes. In these videos I talk directly to the camera and share my experience when the moment is right.

When ready I like to post everything as a “series” on a certain destination, think 5 videos on Oman, for example, featuring the logistics, the food, my reaction to something that happened, the cultural context, and a deep dive into a topic like their famous frankincense one can buy.

How do you work with travel brands and tourism boards?

I’ve worked with a number of tourism boards from Guatemala to Kazakhstan and Eswatini. I have always found tourism boards very easy to work with as they have all given me freedom to come and create content in my own style that will resonate with my audience.

Its all about trusting the creator to know what’s going to work best while providing a curated experience meant to highlight and reenforce areas of focus for the tourism board.

A great example is my recent collaboration with AirAsia. They let me set my own itinerary and travel around Asia and Australia visiting the places I knew would do best with my audience. We highlighted their airline as the best carrier to take you these places but otherwise the content felt organic and fun because I was allotted so much creative freedom rather than needing to focus exclusively on the product.

What do you think tourism boards most undervalue about working with creators like you?

When tourism boards work with me, they get access to my large audience of people that are actively looking for inspiration to book my next trip. This is a given. But what most miss is that my visit is going to continue to pay dividends well after the trip ends with the value of search. As I am a large established content creator, my videos are going to be the first to pop up when someone searches a destination on Google or within the social media platforms.

My informational videos are even appearing in AI overviews now. This is an opportunity for the tourism board to highlight new investments, specific hotels, or places they want to encourage people to visit. People are searching social media platforms now more than ever for travel itineraries and things to do, and this is highly undervalued by most tourism boards.

What are your top tips for being successful with affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing can be challenging with short-form video but not necessarily impossible. Affiliate marketing works best when people are ready to book. On social media they are often just looking for inspiration. Affiliate marketing tends to work best on blogs as someone might search “best hotels in X” before landing on a blog as they are actively looking to book the hotel now.

For social media, one needs to give the viewers a link they can come back to later, possibly months later, when they book the trip. The best way to do this is through a curated list of your recommendations always available in your bio and/or using services like ManyChat to send out links so it will be in people’s inbox for later.

People remember “that hotel you featured in that video” but the friction is in connecting them back when they are ready to book and that is why building the groundwork and having the links available is so important to start so they can easily go back to your profile and find it.

What advice would you give to someone starting out as a travel creator today?

Make as much content as you possibly can of all different styles and see what works. Do not be ashamed to copy other creators. Great painters started out copying other work for practice until they got their footing and built their own style. You need to get the reps in until you can formulate your own style and start to build your audience. Ideally find a style that is easy to produce so you can put out more content and get more data points. If you spend too much time working on one video, you will burn out before you get started. Start your travel in a more affordable place to live like Southeast Asia which will give you more runway as it will take some time before you start earning anything from you content.

My next suggestion is to network as much as possible. Attend the major travel conferences like Travel Massive, TBEX, ITB, Traverse, and WTM using these connections to land trips with tourism boards. Almost all of my press trips have come through networking. I literally DM’d the Minister of Tourism for Guatemala about one of his videos which led to my very first press trip ever.

Who inspires you — in travel, in content creation, or beyond?

My content has always had this educational angle so I enjoy creators that try explain the world whether travel, geography, history, or just excellent storytelling and incorporate a lot of that into my own content.

Some of my favorite creators: Surreal_Traveler, Geography Now, Tayo Aina and Colin Duthie.

What does the Travel Massive community mean to you?

Travel Massive has been a huge help in networking and meeting more people within the travel industry. The real value has been in-person meet ups that have allowed me to build my network and meet so many people.

As everything has gone online, there is now even more value in personal human to human connection and it is these events that have been a huge boost in my career.

All you need is to sow one seed by meeting the right person who can then introduce you to the next and on and on.

What’s next

At the moment, I have visited 171 countries and I am trying to do a “final run” to get almost all of them by early 2027. I will be visiting Nepal and Bhutan and a number of Pacific Islands later this year in an attempt to finish almost all the countries in Asia/Oceania leaving me with just a handful spread around the world to finish up.

I’m super excited that on this trip I will be working with the tourism boards for Bhutan and Solomon Islands and I’m hoping I might be able to land a couple more before the trip starts off later this year.

Aside from that, we are hosting a number of tours this year and next through Authentic Tours. We are launching more trips to Nigeria and Ethiopia next year and hope to add more African destinations as we continue to grow.