AI, quite rightly, comes in for a lot of flak for taking work away from human writers. There’s a flip side to this. I see too many travel articles that deserve to have bots ploughing through them, waving toilet plunger arms while exclaiming, ‘Exterminate! Exterminate!’ (Dated reference, but that’s how it plays out in my head).
As a travel writer, it’s a slippery road to travel to criticise others in the same field. We all make mistakes, get things wrong occasionally. There’s always a danger of arrows coming flying back. I don’t like it when writers criticise the style of others, especially when the content is sound. And I don’t like it when a writer whose grammar is perfect, but who produces wafer-thin content, derides another who attempts to be original and post useful content just because their grammar isn’t polished. After all, the best stories were once passed on using the spoken word rather than the written one. Using grammar as a weapon is, in a way, another example of the more privileged in society erecting barriers around those things they want to keep for themselves. Good grammar is important but, as we’ve been hearing for years now, content is king, or whatever the gender-neutral version of that is. (Note: AI suggests a few alternatives, one of which is ‘supreme,’ which I quite like.)
It was because of good travel content I ended up at this spot.
It’s bad, and by that I mean lazy, content that has me mourning the slow death of the sort of travel writing that had the young me dreaming of far-off places. In the last few days, I’ve read three examples illustrating what I’m referring to.
Social and Mainstream Media Partnership
Any publication which cobbles together articles, travel or otherwise, from social media posts should not be treated as a reliable source of information for anything. Sadly, it is a practice which is commonplace in the UK. One which got my goat involved a travel blogger on Tik Tok who ‘discovered’ the ‘hidden’ Canary Island of La Gomera. That’s the La Gomera visible to the millions of people who travel to the south of Tenerife every year, and where there are coach excursions to daily.
San Sebastián on La Gomera, where ferries from Tenerife dock daily.
‘Discovering’ popular destinations isn’t just a social media trait. Years ago, I was involved in an online spat with the travel editor of a UK broadsheet who ‘discovered’ the most visited national park in Spain. Talking of national parks, the TikToker claimed La Gomera had multiple ones. It has one. It does have many protected natural spaces though, but that’s different. Another incorrect claim was that La Gomera at this time of year was the only place in Europe that was hot and still sunny. The latter is something it would be reasonable to expect someone dishing out travel advice to know. The former highlights a recurring problem with influencers of a similar ilk, a ‘can’t be arsed’ approach to research.
Using social media content to replace commissioned travel articles is cheap, lazy, and likely to result in the publication of misinformation.
Social and Mainstream Media Partnership Part 2
A smarter way to use social media content to fill travel pages is to scrape content from a ‘local.’ Their advice has got to be reliable. That depends on who the local is. To be fair, an article in the Metro about Tenerife included advice from someone who clearly knew their stuff. The tips lifted from her Tik Tok stream were good ones. But, and this highlights the dangers of cutting and pasting content without understanding the context in the way a travel writer might, how some information was presented was misleading.
Bajamar on Tenerife. Probably not the sort of beaches UK sunseekers are hoping for.
For example, the insider recommendation for a beach included Bajamar in Tenerife’s rugged northeast. The article stated ‘Tinerfeños flock there in the summer.’ That’s true. The track along the coast leading to the foothills of Anaga is rammed with camper vans throughout summer. However, there’s something the article doesn’t mention. What many UK tourists expect from a beach and what Canarios consider a good place to spread out the towels don’t necessarily match. Bajamar’s shoreline is predominantly rocky. Presenting it as a lovely beach isn’t the fault of the local blogger. That blame lies at the feet of the publication for publishing without having any grasp of cultural differences. Another lazy practice.
It’s not just the tabloids
Last week, Andy was working on a commission that involved writing about the ancient Italian city of Matera. At the weekend, a two-page article about Matera turned up in The Guardian’s Saturday magazine.
‘Bugger,’ Andy said when I told her. ‘Does it mention any of the tips I’ve written about?’
I shook my head. ‘Nah. There’s nothing here that a few seconds Googling couldn’t come up with.’
The article was competently written. The author had clearly visited Matera. My problem was that, over two pages, the bulk of the text was about hotel the writer stayed in. The next decent-sized chunk of text involved Matera’s history and a tour of main attractions with a guide.
If a travel writer can’t find inspiration in Matera…
In a twelve-hundred-word article, a measly sixty words were given over to the writer actually exploring Matera for themselves. Basically, they stayed in a hotel and wandered about with a guide. That’s great for a holiday, but not what I want or expect from insightful travel writing. Matera is an incredible and unique place. It deserves better.
What’s the point of writing this, apart from as a therapeutic way to have a moan and get it out of my system? The reason is, I don’t believe anyone who is seriously interested in travel wants articles cobbled together from social media posts or penned by writers who have a nice time at a hotel but don’t put in any effort to get to know where they are.
