Travel bloggers who charge for their service ‘have lost touch with the true spirit of travel blogging‘.
While blogging is a noble form of recording one’s experiences, it should at all times be honest and reflect the full travel experience, good and bad. Bloggers receiving payment gush about the beautiful scenery, and their experiences, and never criticise. In addition, they rarely declare receiving a gift or an experience for free, let alone being paid for writing about the experiences.
‘However, I fear that as tourist boards and travel principles have shifted some of their emphasis from traditional media reviews to blogger press trips, and blog posts about their products, the spirit of blogging has disappeared. At travel seminars we are increasingly told how influential travel bloggers are, how they “move bookings through the sales funnel” and how they get destinations and experiences on to the travel consumer’s agenda. I don’t doubt it. But if consumers get wind of the fact that some (not all, I stress) of these blog posts are being paid for by the tourist board or tour operator, then the credibility of travel blogging will nosedive. And this would be a disaster for the art, as travel blogging is currently viewed as the purest form of third-party endorsement – with openness, honesty and transparency ruling the discipline. I fear that if this emerging trend for travel bloggers to charge tourist boards and travel principals for reviews continues, it could kill off one of the biggest phenomena of travel marketing in the 21st century – and that would be a crying shame‘.
Locally we have observed local and international travel bloggers being sent here, there, and everywhere, including to Stellenbosch, to Reunion, to Mauritius, and to Johannesburg. ‘Destineer’ Mariette du Toit-Helmbold has become a real brand tart, in promoting the new town she has created called ‘Stellenblog‘, the Overberg, and Reunion, to mention some, at times simultaneously, and being paid for it. She has no credibility for any of her travel recommendations, as she ‘loves‘ everything she gets paid for or receives for free! Franschhoek and Wellington are coming up too, in competition with her client Stellenbosch, which is a conflict of interest!
We saw Helmbold in action whilst she was CEO of Cape Town Tourism, when she invited international bloggers, who are full-time paid bloggers flitting from one destination to another. They mislead the tourism boards they are paid by when they generate statistics that are meant to impress their clients as to the millions of impressions they have achieved, but are presenting misleading information. Such performance evaluation should be done by independent third parties anyway.
While we understand that travel bloggers’ expenses to get to and be in a destination should be paid for, their time should not be compensated. No noble journalist would be seen dead in accepting payment for any story they write about a travel destination. In fact this applies to all bloggers – freebies compromise the writer, and should be declared, but bloggers should not be paid to write. Increasingly we hear about bloggers demanding free meals and free products to try out, without the guarantee that the marketer of the brand will see a return on the freebie. These demands reflect bad manners, and are a poor reflection on all of us in the blogging community.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Tel (021) 433-2100, Twitter:@WhaleCottage Facebook: click here
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