Over the past year, the global travel industry has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, with widespread travel restrictions and a decrease in consumer demand leading to a significant drop in tourism. This has also had a major impact on the world of travel blogging, with many bloggers finding it difficult to continue their travels and document their experiences for their followers. Before the pandemic, travel blogging was a popular and lucrative activity for many people. Bloggers would travel to different destinations, document their experiences through writing, photography, and video, and share their content on social media and their own websites. Some bloggers even turned their passion for travel into a full-time career, working with travel brands and creating sponsored content. However, with the onset of the pandemic and the resulting travel restrictions, many bloggers found themselves unable to continue their travels as they had before. Many were forced to cancel their plans...

I tried www.copy.ai today — an artificial intelligence content generator. I've been sceptical about such tools and this is the first time I've tried one out. I was shocked at how good the results were! It was almost impossible to think that the content was created in just 10 seconds by an AI tool. And it made me think what does this mean for the travel writing industry... 🤖 Do you think AI-based content generators are going to replace travel writers and storytellers? Curious to see what you think. Do you use an AI writing tool in your content creation process? Or are you completely against them?

Hello, let me introduce myself, the names Emmanuel (Eman for short). I joined this space to discuss how to become a travel writer as a complete beginner with little writing experience? I just want to dip my feet in the water so to say but I don't know where to start, I am passionate about traveling, I've lived in Ohio for most of my life and recently moved to Massachusetts, it was my first time living away from home and it changed my life, right now I just want to do more of that and be able to make a living traveling full time, is this possible or just a dream? Looking forward to your tips. Let me know!

The consensus on the question I posted before seems to be that it's okay to encourage travel, but that we need to encourage traveling BETTER, whether that means encouraging choosing trains over planes, taking longer trips, seeing things in a different way, etc. My question now is HOW? How do I as a content creator do that? I mean, just lecturing people about sustainability or whatever isn't going to help. I'd love some PRACTICAL ideas on how to encourage better travel. So far I'm trying - not always succeeding - to avoid writing about the places that are very popular and instead focusing on lesser-traveled places. I'm avoiding big general listicles and instead trying to write about much narrower topics. As much as possible, I'm traveling by train or bus rather than plane and that'll come through when I write about a place. Any other suggestions?

Even last year, I didn't consider artificial intelligence (AI) a threat to a travel journalist. Artificial intelligence applications seemed clumsy, and open-source language models primarily silly. I have made an effort to research and follow the development. Although I see a lot of opportunities, I also see threats that the price of billable work will collapse either directly when artificial intelligence replaces a human as a writer or when artificial intelligence makes it possible for people who previously could not write publishable articles. Have you noticed that the number of articles produced directly with artificial intelligence has increased? Or that there has been a significant decrease in writing fees? An example of an artificial intelligence (AI) application that already creates publishable articles for some uses is, for instance, Surfer. What worries me the most is the pace of development. When the content it writes is already so good, how good will it be next year? I...

How do you quantify the value derived from exchanging unsold travel & tourism inventory for media exposure? The concept of converting unsold inventory into marketing assets is equally relevant when applied to hosting travel writers (or any media specialist, for that matter). Unsold bed-nights or packaged tour itinerary tickets, empty seats in restaurants, on tour coaches, and on airlines are very much like perishable products in the FMCG sector – if they're not sold by the due date, they’re gone forever. Historical data, however, should provide an indication of average unsold inventory. In the accommodation sector, for example, global average occupancy rates for hotels can range anywhere between 60% to 80%. In South Africa, the occupancy rate of hotels and similar establishments in 2021 amounted to just 23%. (Statista, Nov 8, 2022). In financial terms, this means that hospitality establishments are losing between 20% to 80% of their inventory. Inventory that could easily be con...