As for travel-writing publicists, I personally think there is an ethics issue for anyone who uses their client media contacts for placing their own travel stories.

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The “Icon Collector.” This is the travel writer who has suggested outlines for “day trips” that include only places or things you can brag about to other people, and in such a short period of time there is no actual way for a tourist to visit the sites. The Icon’s ‘one day tour’ of Paris includes the Arc de Triomphe, the Musée du Louvre, Notre Dame Cathedral, and the Eiffel Tower, followed by a trip down the Seine and maybe an evening trip to the Opéra de la Bastille or the Moulin Rouge. The only way a traveler could possibly visit all of these places is by hiring a car to drive them from place to place, and having their picture taken in front of the “icon,” and then moving along. (Notre Dame? Check! Eiffel Tower? Check!)

There’s also the “Specialist.” The specialist usually either collects something (Buddha, t-shirts, etc.) or likes a particular food and looks for it everywhere. A very good traveler friend of mine plans his every trip around pizza. His travel writing includes descriptions of the places that are next to or near the pizza restaurants he’s visited in that particular country, or the adventures he has had trying to get to the pizza restaurant, and of course. lengthy description of pizza, pizza ingredients, pizza preparation, and pictures of pizza… you get the idea. Another friend of mine collects frogs. Even in countries where no frog has ever laid a flipper, (oddly, they are almost everywhere except Antarctica) you will find my buddy hunting for frogs. Many a fruitless evening has been spent at a local bazaar in search of amphibians, and if he doesn’t find one that “calls” to him, his trip is ruined.

I also like the “Service” writer. This type of travel writer is concerned with cleanliness and making sure that certain hotel or attraction “standards” are met. I find this type of writer does best with Automobile Association guides and working as a private hospitality industry auditor. The “Service” writer spends most of their time in the hotel room looking for any sort of error, omission, speck of dust or stain. They also perform various service tests (ordering room service and timing delivery, using the laundry service and seeing if the hotel gets the stains out or sews on a button, etc.) In their heads are the checklists of dozens of clients and their expectations for a hotel room. They freely admit to crawling under beds to looks for panties, rubbing tissues on picture frames to see if they have been recently cleaned, and never sleeping with the bedcover (germs!) They check the expiration dates on the back of the mini-bar chips, and never use the miniature bars of soap or shampoo. (They bring their own!) While this type of travel isn’t always the most exciting style of writing, I have come to appreciate it more in my old age. I have learned to heed the warning of the “Service” writer. In one suburban hotel that had been panned by a “Service” writer, I found an old dried-out spaghetti noodle underneath the chair cushion. That night I dreamt I was being chased by a meatball. If I’d only listened! I am myself a service writer, and quite boring, but I always keep a little diary of the odd things that happened to me. The client doesn’t care what happens to the Service writer on the way to a dull report, but maybe a mainstream reader will have some laughs about the vent check gone awry, where one misstep on the top of a large camel backed couch has you literally clinging to a (dusty!) tapestry and trying not to fall out of a window…

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The Fool was a self-portrait.

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Very entertaining. Thank you for the post. I’m sure it will be the topic of many future research trips. I think it is hard to put oneself in a category, because as writers of travel, we never think we are THAT writer.

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aloha,
bren

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