Top 7 Skills You Need to Become a Travel Writer

Do you dream of pursuing your passion as a travel writer for a career?

With a career as a travel writer, you’ll be able to travel the world, have your voice heard, and inspire others to explore the world as well. But what does it really take to become a travel writer? How do you jumpstart your travel writing career?

To become a successful travel writer, honing your storytelling and observation skills is essential. Sometimes, you can also delegate your tasks to the UK custom essay writing service to refine your writing piece. UKWritings.com is a trusted paper writing service that offers tailored essay services, making it a valuable resource for aspiring writers looking to improve their craft.

Table of Content

How to Craft Your Ways with Skills to Become a Travel Writer

Top 7 Skills You Need to Become a Travel Writer — Source: Unsplash

The whole enterprise of travel writing depends on understanding how to describe. As a travel writer, you must transport your readers to a place they might have never seen or heard of by putting words on the page. It’s necessary to have a solid command of language and be able to depict places in evocative ways.

To cultivate this skill, begin reading widely. Immerse yourself in the writings of Bill Bryson, Pico Iyer, and Elizabeth Gilbert. Notice how they write about the place and incorporate the sights, sounds and smells of experiences. How do they weave description with storytelling, voicing anecdotes and histories of the locals?

Write, write, write. Make it a daily or at least frequent practice. Describe every place you go to. Describe every person you meet. Describe every meal you eat. Go with your senses. What does the air smell like? What does local street food taste like? What sounds surround you in a bustling market?

Good travel writing, then, isn’t a list of facts or a play-by-play of where you’ve been – it’s the distillation of an experience and the expression of that experience in writing that readers can identify with.

Keen Observation Skills

The best travel writers, in short, are just the best observers. They see what others don’t – the pleats of a local piece of cloth, the way an old sunset brings out certain shades in the stones of antiquity, or the way local people gesticulate among themselves.

Train your powers of observation by making an effort to see destinations with fresh eyes, even if you have visited them before. Sense and record. Carry a small notebook with you at all times and write down interesting observations, bits of overheard conversation, or thoughts and impressions as they occur.

Developing a keen eye for detail and strong writing abilities is crucial for travel writers, and reading essay writing services reviews can guide you toward the best resources to enhance your skills.

Learn to people-watch in cafés or public squares, shaping stories about the people you observe. What might have brought them to you? What might their lives be like? Where are they going next and where have they come from? These exercises in fiction will enrich your writing and your travel tales.

Research and Fact-Checking Abilities

But whilst your experiences and memories are the skeleton of your travel writing, it is important to provide facts and figures to back up your stories. Readers want to be entertained, yes, but they also come to you for practical advice and information about the place you’re writing about.

Learn to back up your experiences with research. When visiting a place, understand the context, including its history, culture and current events. This may involve reading academic papers, perusing guidebooks, or interviewing locals, journalists or indigenous consultants.

Check your facts and don’t make false assumptions about places or cultures: as well as being a disgraceful sin of commission for any writer, you might find your credibility undermined and your work condemned online. Better to leave it out (if in doubt) or qualify it as a personal opinion than to put it in as a fact.

Cultural Sensitivity and Open-Mindedness

In the job of a travel writer, most of the time you’ll be somewhere you’re not familiar with, immersed in a different cultural context, surrounded by people who are doing things in ways you’re not used to.

Openness and respect are essential. Cultural sensitivity is not just about not being offensive. We’re interested in all the different ways that people live their lives, all around the planet.

Try to find out about local customs and etiquette before you go there. Learn at least a few simple phrases in the local language. Try to respect local traditions, no matter how strange or uncomfortable you find them. Just because you happen to be traveling, it doesn’t mean you’re not a cultural ambassador, in a way.

But at the same time, don’t cheat your reader by exaggerating your triumphs or downplaying your travails. It is fine to confess to culture shock, or even greater misunderstandings. These can sometimes lead to your finest insights and most empathetic narratives.

Photography Skills

With the explosion of digital media, it’s not surprising that travel writers now often accompany their words with photos. The good news is that you don’t need to be a professional photographer to enjoy success in travel writing. The bad news is, you should know a little about photography.

Master the basics of composition, light and editing. If you're using DSLR cameras, understanding how to adjust settings like aperture and shutter speed will elevate your photos.

Develop the ability to produce photos with a story or which evoke a feeling about a place. Understand that not every iconic site needs to be photographed – the most interesting photos can be of everyday scenes that help readers understand what it’s like to live in a destination.

But don’t forget that there may be local taboos on photographing certain things – and that it’s important to check with your subjects before whipping out your camera.

Networking and Self-Promotion

Now, let's take a moment to look at some key statistics related to travel writing:

Aspect	Statistic
Average salary for travel writers	$55,000 per year
Percentage of travel writers who are freelance	78%
Most popular social media platform for travel writers	Instagram (65% use it)
Average number of countries visited per year	7
Percentage who also maintain a travel blog	82%

It can take the form of networking: attend travel industry events and writers’ conferences; join professional organizations; connect with other writers and industry professionals on social media sites.

Once you have a sense of your capabilities, start pitching editors and publishers. This is not just a matter of devising good story ideas; you also need to finesse your approach to editors and publications.

Think about what you know or can find out about what editors are looking for. What kinds of stories does the magazine or website you’re targeting publish? How? Study the magazines or sites you want to pitch to. What’s their tone and style? Tweak your pitches so they fit.

Aside from conventional publishing, think about starting a blog or establishing a social-media presence. Your blog or social feed becomes a portfolio of your work – and collecting followers. Potentially, it can lead to partnerships with tourist boards or travel companies in order to provide content or gain experiences.

Adaptability and Problem-Solving

Travel involves many unknowns; flights are delayed, hotels fall through, misunderstandings arise due to language barriers. The ability to think on one’s feet is often essential for writers and necessary for them to stay positive and focused – and to find a story in the misadventures.

Use such an experience to develop your problem-solving abilities: what appears to be a setback actually might be a chance to change course.

Instead of being stuck on a train, you discovered an off-the-beaten-track village while rerouted there. If a rainy day forced you indoors, it might have exposed you to a city’s cultural attractions in ways that an unvarnished touristic outing never could.

Flexibility also means being prepared to break out of your comfort zone: sample new cuisines; try to speak in unfamiliar languages; say ‘Yes’ to unexpected invitations (with caveats for your personal safety, of course); some of the best travel stories come from those moments of spontaneity and challenge.

Time Management and Self-Discipline

Travel writing sounds like a life of leisure, but it is in fact one of the hardest, most self-disciplined industries around. You’ll have to find the energy to explore a destination, as well as sit down to write, edit photos or videos and run (or grow) the business of you.

Build a solid sense of time management, in other words, to make the most of your traveling whenever possible, and set aside time ‘in the field’ to write – treating it as a job wherever you can.

Learn how to write poorly (in noisy cafés, on buses, at night before a long day of tourism) to write well better than others ever will.

Keep in mind, also, that travel writing is a job. Meet your deadlines. Email your editors back in a timely manner. Be courteous to others and respond with professionalism (or something resembling it) to all communications, even if you’re cranky and have been up for 36 hours.

Health and Fitness

Not something you immediately think of, but travel writing is a highly physically demanding profession. You’re traveling an average of two weeks a month and can quickly find yourself in a place that’s very hard to reach, without hot water and on the cusp of malaria season.

Keep fit for long days on your feet (commuting, hiking, exploring, walking tours). Know how to eat well on the road, dining out regularly while also keeping to a healthy diet and avoiding unnecessary calories. Learn how to sleep well on the road, whether you’re sleeping in a strange bed. Train yourself to manage jet lag.

Invest in your mental health as well. Travel requires copious amounts of emotional energy, so extended periods on the road can lead to burnout or homesickness. Make sure you are prepared to manage stress, and don’t be afraid to take breaks when you need to.

Financial Management

Lastly, you must learn sound accounting. A travel writer’s income is notoriously erratic, and even more so when you’re starting out. Be good at budgeting, personally as well as while on the road.

Learn the business aspects of freelance writing, such as how to negotiate rates, file your taxes, and write contracts. Consider your other income streams and talent pools. Perhaps there are other avenues towards financial security that incorporate writing, such as coupling it with photography, videography or social media management.

Keep in mind some of those trips will have to be paid for on your own dime, not by a publisher or a sponsor, so you’ll have to figure out how to travel frugally and find interesting ways to fund your adventures, like travel hacking, house sitting, or making money through work while you’re on the road.

Conclusion

To summarize, you need to learn a lot.

In addition to become a better writer, it's always a plus point to embrace other skills like how to take better pictures to support your stories, as well as adapting different cultures to share it to the potential readers.

As an independent travel writer, it's also important to get some skills to manage your business. Becoming a travel writer means you're ready to embrace your status as a solopreneur – which requires a long learning curve, but it's worth pursuing once you get the hang of it.

If you love to travel and claim as a decent story tellers, what are you waiting for? Pack your bags, take your notebook, go i

You’ll have to write better, take better pictures, survive different cultures, and manage your business. This is a long learning curve, no doubt. But if you love to travel and tell stories, and you hold on to the idea, the dream, the fantasy of travel writing, you’ll build muscles and techniques, then another set, and another, until you emerge fit and happy and, yes, with a successful career. So, be glad you can do that. Pack your bags. Take your notebook. Go into the world.