Here I ask Donald Strachan, travel journalist, guidebook writer and all around Twitter delight, some questions about the current state of tourism in the UK. (Be sure to check out my earlier Q&A on the state of tourism in Britain with Sally Shalam.)
Q: Donald Strachan, define your occupation.
A: I'm a travel journalist, an advice columnist for the Sunday Telegraph focusing on consumer travel technology, and a guidebook writer for Frommer's specializing in England, Wales, and Italy. I've also authored content for iPhone apps to Florence and Turin, and am working on some new self-published eBooks.
Q: As a travel writer, how did you come to specialize on the UK?
A: About eight years ago I decided that I didn't want to continue to fly, and I haven't been on an airplane since. That choice has narrowed the field down a little, obviously. I also think that there's so much within an hour's journey of anyone's home that they will never discover, even if they live to be 80. I think I made the right decision. I love the areas I know, and love having the time to explore them in more depth, without the lure of the next tropical island to distract me.
Q: How would you assess the state of tourism marketing in the UK - strengths, weaknesses?
A: To be honest, I pay very little attention to this. Marketing a destination is (necessarily, I guess) such a broad-brush activity, and yet what really interests people about a place is usually specific and fine-grained. I've always wanted to go to Buenos Aires, because I remember the tickertape raining down at the 1978 World Cup Final. It formed such a strong impression. How do you market to that?
The UK advertisements I have seen seem to stick to the clichés. There's nothing wrong with a cliché, in itself; so many of our travel goals, all this bucket-list stuff, it's basically a list of clichés. But as a specialist, I guess, it's my job to dig a bit deeper, to be respectful to those clichés a visitor wants to experience while gently nudging her or him toward something they haven't thought of. I rarely see anything that picks out the nuances of Britain, that really makes it obvious how different, say, Suffolk is from Somerset.Continue reading British Tourism Q&A: Travel Writer Donald StrachanBritish Tourism Q&A: Travel Writer Donald Strachan originally appeared on Gadling on Fri, 11 May 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments
hiking hiking holidays Finland hiking holidays Kuusamo hiking
No comments:
Post a Comment