The truth has to be told. It’s not easy having a travel blogger as your travel companion. I would know. I am one.
Moreover, I spent a whole weekend with a bunch of them lately, as some blogger friends and I got out into the countryside to work on our blogs and chat about everything travel blogging. In between writing articles and discussing things like keyword research and SEO, we did enter upon the topic of what behaviours our poor co-travellers have to put up with.
You may think that you would profit from the experience travel bloggers bring along. Because they know how to get along on the road. But they also have a lot of needs an average traveller will not have – and those can easily drive you crazy.
Maybe you know a travel blogger that you’re considering travelling with. Or maybe you run into one on the road and be tempted to spent some time together. Either way, here is what you’ll have to look out for when travelling with a travel blogger.
Our little travel-blogger getaway for the weekend
They need photos of everything. And I mean everything.
If you ever do a road trip with a travel blogger, be prepared for them to shout out at the most inappropriate moments: „Stop! I need a photo of this!”
And if a travel blogger takes a photo, we’re not talking about a quick shot with their mobile phone. Nope, no way. We’re talking fancy cameras with manual settings which will have to be adjusted, different perspectives that will have to be tried, the right light conditions that need to be caught. Overall, getting the perfect shot can take a long time. I hope you brought something to read.
I admit, personally I’m still learning in the take-better-photos department. But I’m getting closer to move away from automatic settings and thus take so much longer for every shot…
If you want to be a blogger’s favourite travel companion, offer to take photos of them. Plenty of photos, with the patience of a saint and the eye of a critic. They will love you for it.
They need to put everything online. Asap.
A travel blogger doesn’t just need to feed his blog, but his social media channels too. Preferably every day. All the time.
While you are getting ready to relax in the evening with a glass of wine, the travel bloggers will be on their smart phone – or laptop if they brought it along – and post to their social media channels. During our weekend getaway it was the rule to have all nine of us sitting on the breakfast / lunch / dinner table immersed into our phones.
Those pictures taken earlier? Instagram them. Or do a Facebook album. Or better, do both. Oh, and I still need a clever idea for a tweet. You wouldn’t have a proposition, by any chance?
It’s hard to keep up with all that social media on the best of days, and even more so on the road. So be forgiving if your travel blogger quickly checks Facebook during dinner or has to send out a tweet before you can leave. We don’t mean to be rude or ignore you. It’s just that we don’t know when else to squeeze it into the day.
They have to write everything down
They want to know everything there is to know about their location, because they never know when they will come upon that little tidbit that will turn their next post from good to fabulous.
So they have to find out everything, and then they have to put it down by taking notes, writing a journal, or whatever other method they have to store information.
The more out-of-the-way the given information is, the more excited your travel blogger will be. Like, when we spotted emus in the fields near our weekend getaway spot. Trust our group of travel bloggers to get to the bottom of this mystery! Turns out they’re actually South American rhea, and they ran away from a breeding farm in the nineties. You didn’t think you would find that in Northern Germany, did you?
We travel bloggers are a weird bunch, and the more serious we are about this business the more impact it has on how we travel. But every travel companion who has the patience and grace to put up with us on the road will be rewarded with our gratefulness – and, of course, with plenty of amazing pictures and stories that will make this trip unforgettable.
And on this note, thanks to my fellow travel bloggers from Ria on Tour, Travelinspired, SPANESS, MS WellTravel, Crappy Radio Stations and Candy Bars, North Star Chronicles and Weltreize for the wonderful weekend. Let’s do it again some time!
Do you have any experiences being on the road with travel bloggers? Anything else you’ve noticed about them? Or if you are one yourself, be honest: what else do your travel companions have to put up with?
Hi Nele,
Thanks for the great article. You totally nailed it and in it was so much fun to read it
Cheers,
Claudia
Thank you, Claudia! It was a lot of fun to write, too!
Hi Nele,
what a fun and lovely article to read! You totally nailed it. I have friends who travel a lot with me and they would agree to all of your points
And of course, we have to do this weekend getaway again!
Ria
Thanks Ria! I admit our talk about this on the weekend provided a lot of the inspiration for writing this article.
And yes, we have to repeat our getaway some time!