Hi everyone,
When we organize trips, we see on the internet which are the most important things. What happens is that you end up doing the typical touristy and you realize that nothing is like what you saw on the internet.
Today I am going to share with you the faults that travel blogs have because it will surely help you not to get upset in future adventures.
Just show the good
In all travel blogs I find a sticky and honeyed optimism that is unbearable. If you already read The Traveler, each article is like getting into a fairy tale that is happy from the beginning to the end.
The people who write these posts seem to be incredibly lucky that everything turns out well, they are not even bitten by a mosquito. Obviously, many of these articles (or all) are made by people who went to the place for free; so, it is advertising disguised as a blog article.
Then I arrive, a critical person with a bit of criteria, and what was a wonderful place, sucks.
It is not because I am a pessimistic person, but you must be realistic and objective. On trips you will find good and bad things. Maybe the place is beautiful, but the hotel is dirty, and the internet does not work. Those things happen and quite a bit.
You also must tell me the bad things and as a “journalist” that you are, you should feel the obligation to tell me about them. Above all, because with your blog you will help future travelers not to make the same mistakes. Please be sincere.
But no, most bloggers are sold, and they are only going to tell you about the good things.
Be a “tourist”
All blogs have the same story, do the same journey and visit the same things.
When I traveled with my dad, he used to bring the folder with a thousand things printed of “the most typical” things to do in the place we went. Then it turned out that most of the sites were unremarkable. Also, it was where all the tourists were.
If you read 20 blogs, they will all tell you to go to the same places. You can already see that on the map they give you at the airport.
I’d like to see what weird thing you did, what new place you discovered and things like that. But nobody does that. I had started reading Atlas Obscura because they supposedly write about places that weren’t in the guidebooks and it turned out to be more of the same.
“Like a local”
This is the most common cliché of blogging. “Eat like a local”, “Drink like a local” and so on. If you go on tourism, you are not going to do anything like a local because while you go from restaurant to restaurant, the local is working and eating from Tupperware in his company. Or perhaps most of the locals do not have the salary to eat as you are eating. For that reason, being advised to do things like a local, seems ridiculous to me.
I also have to say that when a blog tells you to eat or drink like a local, it is because there is little else to do in the place.
Be a poet
This is another one that kills me along with extreme optimism. To write my post on Istanbul I started looking at blogs in case I had forgotten something, and I came across an article by The Traveler whose reading was agonizing because it was all poetry to the point that it didn’t tell me anything about the city.
It is an informational article, not a poem.
Spelling mistakes
If you have a blog, read what you write and make sure there are no mistakes. For me it is an obsession, every post I create I read it 4 or 5 times before I publish it.
If you are a journalist or content creator, you should be able to write articles without errors. Also, there are proofreaders, put in a little effort.
Tell you what to do
All bloggers are experts at telling you what to do. There are people who like to eat and drink, others who like nature, others who love architecture and so on. You can’t advice all your readers to do the same because everyone has different tastes.
Also, who are you to give advice?
I humbly believe that it is better to tell what you have done, what you discovered, what went well or badly and how the overall experience seemed to you. From that point on, let each reader take or leave what works for them.
Very bad or very false photos
I studied social communication with a major in audiovisual arts and from there I became an obsessive perfectionist of photography. It kills me to see a poorly taken photo on social networks and more on a blog.
You had a spectacular trip, but your photos are crooked, poorly framed and nothing special. It is inadmissible to me. The most absurd thing is that many of the blogs that appear first in search engines have horrible photos and a very repetitive content.
There are other photos that are good, but they go overboard with retouching. Thus, the rice fields that wears fluorescent green turn out to be dark green, the lagoon that wears bright turquoise is mold green, the turquoise beach with white sand is blue with brown sand. Tremendous shock.
In conclusion, we can use blogs to guide us a bit when traveling, but you must get the idea that things are surely different from what you are seeing on the internet. You also must assume that there will be good and bad things in all trips. Neither is going to be poetry or a Woody Allen movie.
Understanding this has helped me to have less expectations and not get so much upset when traveling; because I am very demanding and I try to assimilate that everything is not going to be perfect as I want it to; in fact, things are more likely not to my liking. This does not mean that I am prepared for everything, I still have and will continue to have bad experiences from which I will continue to learn.