Hello friends! Today I am absolutely thrilled to welcome Nina Ruggiero, senior editorial director at Travel + Leisure, to teach us all about Travel writing! Nina’s been at the outlet for a decade, overseeing coverage across digital platforms, and on top of her day job she co-runs Be a Travel Writer, an online course, newsletter, job board, and community for current and aspiring travel journalists. I’m overjoyed to have her with us today, so read on for your expert guide to Travel writing. Take it away, Nina!

***

Ah, the elusive travel writing assignment. Are there really publicists who will invite you to report from an overwater bungalow in the Maldives, and editors who will pay you to get them the scoop on the hottest restaurants in Tokyo? The short answer is yes, but this is one of the most competitive niches in freelance writing, if not the most competitive.

I’ve been an editor at Travel + Leisure for almost 10 years — about the same amount of time I spent wanting to be a travel writer before landing this gig. In my current role as senior editorial director, I oversee all digital content across platforms. The relatively long road it took to get here, coupled with constant questions about how to break into this beat, inspired me to co-create Be a Travel Writer with my colleague, Stacey Leasca, an award-winning travel writer and journalism professor. BATW is a comprehensive online course, newsletter, job board, and community for current and aspiring travel journalists.

Below, you’ll find five tips that will put you on the map (pun intended) and help you thrive long term as a travel writer. If you’d like to learn more, subscribers to Freelancing With Tim can use code BATW40 for 40% off our course.

The first step is just simple research. Make a list of which Travel publications are currently commissioning, and what you actually know about them. I find the best social media platform for editors’ pitch calls is LinkedIn, but subscribe to newsletters that curate these calls for you, too. At BATW, for example, we have a job board that we update daily with calls for travel and lifestyle pitches and new job openings ($9/month or $90/year), and a weekly newsletter with a sample of the latest opportunities (free). I also recommend subscribing to What Editors Want on Substack, though it’s not travel-specific. You can also set up Google Alerts and curate your own X lists of editors who use that platform to put out pitch calls. Many publications that work with freelancers have About Us sections on their sites with pitch guidelines as well. Then, spend time digging into each publication and understanding their nuances:

Once you have a sense of a publication’s overall tone, style, and output, take a look at its masthead and read some of the editors’ work. Follow them on LinkedIn, Instagram, or wherever they’re most active. See if you can figure out what their style is within that publication, and if you’re lucky, you might be able to identify the stories they’ve recently edited — use that knowledge to tailor your pitch to that specific editor. [Note from Tim: As I always say, pitch the editor, not the publication.]

When it comes to who to pitch, I always say to aim for the middle of the masthead: section editors, senior editors, and editors of that ilk. Generally speaking, they’re most likely to regularly commission content.

So you’re just starting out, and no one’s knocking down your door to send you to Tahiti. Throw a cocktail umbrella in your coffee mug, put your tourist hat on, and look around you: How can you use your own backyard to prove what you can do? Is there a beloved local park, attraction, or even restaurant with an interesting story to tell? As a local, you have an automatic answer to the all-important question: Why are you the right person to tell this story? You’re also likely to already have connections to the right sources, and you won’t need an editor or publicist to take a chance on you and fund your travel. Even to an editor who hasn’t worked with you before, you become a low-risk, high-value reporter with insider information. Consider this one foot in the door and one foot on the plane to the more exotic assignments in your future.

One of the surest ways to stand out in Travel writing is to specialize, whether that’s in a particular region, type of travel (think: family, solo, adventure, wellness, and so on), or in something even more niche, like theme parks, golf tourism, or luxury aviation. Choosing a lane will help you focus your efforts, build a Rolodex of sources who come to you first with news, and become an expert who editors remember and reach out to each time they have a need for the type of content you do best.

A great example of this is Jeff Jenkins, who started Chubby Diaries to spotlight plus-size travel and ended up with his own National Geographic TV show. (He’s the guest lecturer on this very topic in our “Finding Your Beat” class.) Once you’ve figured out what it is you want to specialize in, own it! Shout it from the rooftops, start networking within your niche, and don’t be afraid to put yourself at the center of some of your stories. Highlight your beat on LinkedIn and in any online profiles you have, and include it in your email intros to editors. Editors’ inboxes often act like search engines, and even if we miss or decline a pitch, we’ll likely find you later when a need arises and we’re digging through our archives for writers.

You don’t have to have 1 million, or even 1,000, Instagram or TikTok followers to get an assignment, but it certainly helps to have a well-curated, unique, and cohesive online presence. Struggling to get assignments commissioned from major pubs? Launch your own Substack newsletter and start publishing yourself; a clip is a clip, and it can be refreshing for editors to read your real, unedited voice. Post your travels on Instagram, regardless of how many likes you get at first. Start following and engaging with like-minded people. Join Facebook groups within your niche and share insights. Follow Travel publicists on LinkedIn and set up meetings. There is still value in making real-life connections, and there are many travel media conferences held around the world every year. A few highlights include:

All the travel writers I know who get the most work have one thing in common: they’re adaptable. They pitch longform features they’re passionate about, but they don’t turn their noses up at a quick-hit news story or a seasonal roundup in between. If their budget and schedule allow, they see the value in taking a less-lucrative or exciting assignment to show an editor they’re dependable and easy to work with, leading to the work that makes their heart sing down the line.

They’re open to trying different formats, including first-person narratives, reported destination guides, SEO roundups, and news. They learn the differences and see the value in each. They can discern when a first-person angle adds value to the story (and when they are truly the right person to tell that story). They use the free tools available to them, like Google Trends and Answer the Public, to brainstorm roundup ideas, even if those stories include more desk reporting than travel. If they’re looking for regular travel news reporting work, they work hard to build sources and overcommunicate their availability with editors, even if that means early or late hours, or signing on from different time zones.

Traveling for assignments requires an investment not just from the commissioning publication and the host destination, but it also requires you to invest your time and energy. So the more content you can get out of a trip, the better it is for everyone involved.

Even if you don’t consider yourself a photographer or videographer, take the time to work on those skills, even at a basic level. Personally, I didn’t start out with much professional training in either, but I rented a camera for a safari to teach myself on the fly and fell in love with it. You also might make a few extra bucks if you can offer even some high-quality (usually horizontal) iPhone photos to a digital editor along with your story. And if you’re writing a first-person story, your editor might even want a photo or two of you in the destination.

I also learned that if you pay attention to what’s trending on Instagram and/or TikTok and play around with apps like InShot enough, you too can make a 60-second-or-less travel video worth publishing. If you hate being on camera, there are so many wanderlust-focused formats that rely only on beautiful scenery shots. Before you know it, you might just find yourself in Botswana, snapping away at a pride of lions, wondering how the heck you actually got this job.

Nina Ruggiero is the senior editorial director at Travel + Leisure, where she oversees award-winning travel content across digital platforms. She is also the co-founder of Be A Travel Writer, an online course, newsletter, job board, and community for current and aspiring travel journalists. When she's not traveling between her current home in LA and T+L HQ in NYC, Nina can often be found in Italy or the U.K. She regularly appears as a travel expert on national and regional TV and speaks on industry trends at top travel conferences around the world. Follow her on Instagram @ninamarienyc.