Getting more internet bookings to your website can be a challenge. Especially when you are juggling the day-to-day tasks for your small tourism business and working with limited resources. Often during the busy summer months you just don’t have the time to sit down and work out the nitty gritty of how to market your bed and breakfast. However, there are a few things I would recommend for you to consider if you want to increase online bookings.
Airbnb Guinness Guestroom
The good thing about returning home after extensive travelling and not having a 9-5 job is that you have lots of free time to explore your own city. A lot has changed in the 2 years I’ve been away from Dublin and I’m enjoying getting to know her again. Continue reading
Temurun Waterfall, Langkawi, Malaysia
Langkawi is pretty well endowed when it comes to waterfalls. The Seven Wells is one of the big ones everybody notices. However, there are a few less prominent falls that are still quite impressive such as the Temurun Waterfalls but they just don’t get the same attention. Continue reading
Toots and the Maytals
Backstage at the Reggae Geel festival in Belgium Frederick “Toots’’ Hibbert removed his rock-star shades. He leaned forward intensely and said, in a husky Jamaican accent “I was the one who coined the word Reggae, I was the one who invented the word reggae”.
He took ‘Streggae’, a Jamaican slang word for someone “who dosn’t dress nicely” and repurposed it for the song titled ‘Do the Reggay’ in 1968. It is not often that you come across a musician so genuine and humble that has also named a genre of music and has accomplished so much in their career. He is a Grammy award winner, was voted by Rolling Stone Magazine as one of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time, has had 31 number 1 hit songs in Jamaica, reputedly more than any recording artist and is still working as hard as ever. Continue reading
Clare Kleinedler is a freelance food and travel writer living in Los Angeles. She is a regular contributor to Intermezzo Magazine, for which she has written destination food pieces on Mexico, New Zealand, Tahiti and Japan, among others. Her work has also been published in Virtuoso Life, Los Angeles Times and People magazine. She also publishes her own food blog, Rainy Days and Sundays.
Every Wednesday I will be publishing an interview with a budding travel writer. To launch this series I am both honoured and delighted to have had the opportunity to interview the talented Lauren Quinn. This tattooed Californian prodigy has a BA in Creative writing and when not detained at Venezuelan police stations enjoys a good old cup of coffee on her back porch in Oakland.
This post was written on another blog sometime ago but I have decided to re-post it here. I received some excellent feedback from people so I want to slowly re-publish my interview series with these travel writers. Hopefully, I can follow up with some of them to see how they are doing now.
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I will be launching a new series of interviews with fellow, up and coming travel writers. My first interview which I will publish here next Wednesday will be with Lauren Quinn from lonelygirltravels.com. So remember to stay tuned!
Lauren’s work has recently appeared on Matador, BootsnAll, SoSauce, Pology and NileGuide. She also holds a BA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. So I am really interested to hear her story.
Recently, I have started to wonder about what the real motivator is behind my need to travel. Sometimes it feels more like a physical addiction. I can feel the effects of my dependence if I am unable to travel and have to stay static in one place for too long. Soon after this severe listlessness occurs I usually just blow my budget and book flights.
I have also questioned my sanity in trying to become an accomplished travel writer. It is one of the most competitive and niche areas to get into, with little or sometimes even no monetary reward. So why do I bother investing hours of my time with this ludicrous ambition. Surely it is easier and more profitable just to work in an office, settle down in a nice house in suburbia and live out my days?
All this questioning has triggered an interest in what other travel writers go through. I am curious to uncover why others have chosen this relatively unusual career option. Detailing their motivation behind their decision in my series of interviews. I will also focus on what struggles and success they have encountered along the way so others may learn from them.
Maybe there are other similarly neurotic folk out there that I can relate my experiences with? Does anyone else find themselves constantly refreshing email to see if an editor has answered your query? Or maybe you day dream about seeing your name written on the by-line of a top notch publication?
If you have started travel writing recently and have been published and would like to be interviewed please let me know by leaving a comment below with your blog details or contacting me on twitter. By the way you don’t necessarily have to be neurotic but it helps!
Image by swimparallel