travel literature data

The Best Travel Literature of All Time

Like many travellers, you may have found yourself immersed in the voyages of those who have gone before you from time to time. While living vicariously is no replacement for being on the road, there are some utterly wonderful nonfiction travel books out there, which are the next best thing.

A Time of Gifts by Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

It’s quite genuinely impossible to create a comprehensive list of the best travel literature. While there’s a lot of replication of these types of lists out there, some books endure precisely because of their importance at the time or to other writers. Although some authors listed below deserve to have more than one of their books featured on this compendium of the greatest travel literature, only their finest work has been included. Consider it your gateway to that writer’s greater oeuvre, if you’ve not read any of their work previously; a reminder if you have. Similarly, non-male writers have often been unfortunately overlooked in the past and some real gems that deserve to be on the best travel literature of all-time lists have been overlooked.

The following aims to redress the balance a little. Consideration is also given to some of the works that defined people who are now better-known for their other exploits, because there’s no greater adventure than that of somebody whose travels inspired them to do something more important or lasting in the world beyond merely moving through space and time for travel’s sake. Here are twenty of the best pieces of travel literature ever written (theoretically), to guide you to your next read, to find inspiration for your next trip, or to simply use as a general reading checklist until your next journey.

A Time of Gifts (1977) – Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor

Writing about Paddy Leigh Fermor in 2020, it would be easy to dismiss the great writer as a privileged individual who was fortunate to stay with royalty and the well-to-do all across Europe as he sauntered from one place to the next. But that would be an awful disservice. A Time of Gifts is the first of a trilogy of books documenting his journey, on foot, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople (Istanbul). His scholarship and complete immersion in every culture he encountered helped his writing transcend mere travel literature to reach a higher level of writing. You never feel as though he’s an outside observer trying to make sense of the foreign by superimposing his own beliefs. His prose has been described as baroque, and is densely layered with a deep intelligence, understanding and, above all, passion for everything he encounters. The trip itself was undertaken in 1933/4 and the Europe that Fermor uncovers on his peregrinations is one which is beginning to spiral blindly into major conflict. Somehow this aspect makes the random acts of kindness he experiences across Germany and the rest of the continent even more bittersweet.

Publisher: John Murray, Buy at Amazon.com

Arabian Sands (1959) – Sir Wilfred Thesiger

Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger (Photo: courtesy of P.S. Burton via Wikimedia Commons)

Another travel literature classic is Thesiger’s intrepid anthropological look at Bedouin culture and lifestyle in one of the remotest, most inhospitable places on earth: the Arabian Peninsula’s Rub’ al Khali. The setting for the journey is amid the embers of World War II, the repercussions of which were being felt worldwide, including among the Bedouin tribes who’d lived much in the same way they always had until the outside world intruded. In effect, this book offers a snapshot of a remarkable culture that was fast altering, which is what makes this, and many of the books written during the reign of the British Empire, fascinating historical documents. For all of the rightful condemnation of European colonialism, one thing is clear in this book: the fascination and inquisitive nature of the many British scholarly individuals sent to far-reaching corners of the globe created an immensely valuable cache of first-person accounts of cultures and peoples that may not have been recorded otherwise amid the inevitable and inescapable rise of globalisation of the time.

Publisher: Penguin Classics, Buy at Amazon.com

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942) – Rebecca West

West’s voluminous, in-depth examination of Yugoslavia during her time travelling there in 1937 was designed to explore how the country was a reflection of its past. West spent six weeks journeying across the whole region with her husband and meeting eminent citizens along the way. Sadly, by the time the book was published, the Nazis had invaded and the country would never be the same again, which makes this yet another invaluable early-20 th -century document. What sets Black Lamb and Grey Falcon apart though is the level of exquisite detail and research dedicated to the subject. If there was any proof required that travel literature serves an invaluable purpose as a piece of primary historical evidence, then this may well be it.

Publisher: Canongate Books, Buy at Amazon.com

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Border (2017) – Kapka Kassabova

Beautifully written and layered with a real sense of atmosphere, Kassabova’s haunting Border is one of the standout pieces of travel writing to be published in the last decade. Eastern Europe is one of the least explored regions of the world in travel literature. Owing perhaps in part to the secrecy and legacy of distrust brought about by the Cold War, even those who have travelled through as part of longer journeys (Paul Theroux in Pillars of Hercules or Bill Bryson in Neither Here Nor There ) scarcely shed any real light on the region. Here, Kassabova heads back to the nation of her birth (Bulgaria) to explore the fragments of political ideology, faith and race, and the blurred lines between them, that have developed around the border region separating Bulgaria from Greece and Turkey.

Publisher: Granta Books, Buy at Amazon.com

Border by Kapka Kasabova (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) – George Orwell

While much of travel literature is concerned with the voyage and seeking out the miraculous, the unique and the lesser known, Orwell took another route entirely. Down and Out in Paris and London does exactly what it says on the tin. It is a memoir of impoverished living in two of the world’s great cities, at a time when they were global beacons in terms of both power and culture. Not only does this book, in a very prescient move, eschew the superior tone of academia when examining the other, it also avoids all glamour in those cities, focussing entirely on the poor, the meek and the desperate. In Paris he lives on the edge of eviction, working the kitchens of a fancy establishment, while in London he lives the life of a tramp, moving from one bunkhouse and soup kitchen to the next, living day to day. It is to travel writing what the ‘method’ is to acting.

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972) – Hunter S. Thompson

The outlier on this list (all good lists need one) is Hunter S. Thompson’s delightfully absurd, occasionally apocryphal and downright debauched novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas . In it, he created a new way of writing known as gonzo journalism, a style of storytelling which is found most commonly today in some documentaries, where the lines of fact and fiction become blurred and with the journalist placed as a central character in the story. This brilliant commentary on the flexible and inconsistent nature of truth was perfectly epitomised by the increasingly hallucinogenic recollections of protagonist Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo. The road trip to Las Vegas ultimately casts important light on an American society gripped by racism and violence (partly why the story is still so powerful today is that America hasn’t yet learned to grow up). As such it remains one of the most intriguing snapshots of America out there, surpassing the work of many strait-laced travel narratives in the process.

Publisher: Random House Inc., Buy at Amazon.com

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson (Photo: Mathieu Croisetière via Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia (1975) – Paul Theroux

A perfect example of how gonzo journalism began to seep into travel literature comes from what is arguably the most important modern travelogue: The Great Railway Bazaar . In it, Theroux travels from London all the way to Southeast Asia and Japan, via India, then back to Europe via Russia’s Trans-Siberian railway. While Theroux upholds elements of the old school travel narrative – like the scholarly, studious approach and the inquisitive air – his journey by train is as much about the growing backpacker, hippie, trail and the western counterculture that encouraged it. Occasionally the line between fact and fiction is blurred in his writing, but only to better convey his interactions with the people he met. As such, you get a fascinating look at what could be called modern colonialism, whereby the train networks that were often built by colonial rulers in non-European nations across the world, like India and Burma, were now being used by a new generation in the post-colonial era to explore these newly-sovereign nations.

In Patagonia (1977) – Bruce Chatwin

Coming hot on the tail of Theroux’s above book is perhaps the most popular and enduring travel book of all time: In Patagonia . Bruce Chatwin starts it off with a direct nod to writing and journalism’s slide into apocrypha by framing his trip loosely around the search for remains of a “brontosaurus” found in a Patagonian cave, which he first found languishing in his grandparent’s house. The doubtful story behind this find sets him on a road where he aim to unravel various other mysteries whose only connection is geographical, including the final resting place of Butch Cassady and the Sundance Kid, in the wild, empty spaces of South America. It’s a brilliant book formed of loose sections that don’t directly link to one another but has greatly influenced modern travel literature today.

Publisher: Vintage Classics, Buy at Amazon.com

In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

In Xanadu (1989) – William Dalrymple

One of the travel writers greatly influenced by Chatwin was William Dalrymple, whose own quest for his first book, In Xanadu , was framed as a search for the fabled palace of Kublai Khan, Xanadu. This type of narrative has always proven to be a ready source of inspiration for some of the better modern travel books; searching for answers to popular mysteries. It has a journalistic bent to it, and manages to sidestep the awkwardness of westerners merely travelling abroad and casting aspersions about the people and cultures they encounter through an imperial gaze, as is the criticism often lodged again some of the earlier works of travel writing. Here, Dalrymple follows in the footsteps of Marco Polo (following footsteps of somebody famous is also a common trope of travel literature) to find the palace. While Dalrymple restores elements of the scholarly, learned approach common to writers like Robert Byron and Paddy Leigh Fermor, you can feel the impact of those 70s writers as well.

Publisher: Flamingo, Buy at Amazon.com

In Xanadu by William Dalrymple (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Into the Wild (1996) – Jon Krakauer

Few gripping travel narratives manage to capture the why? of our impulse to roam quite like Jon Krakauer does in Into the Wild . The book is both harrowing and revelatory, while performing a third-person character study on a young man he never actually met. In 1992 Chris McCandless walked into the Alaskan wilderness and never came back out. The book tries to examine what had led him there in the first place, whether he’d intended to return at all, and why he wasn’t the first to try and cut all ties with modern society. Krakauer looks to others, such as Henry David Thoreau ( Walden is the original escape from society book and a must-read for anybody fascinated by this subject), who successfully parted from the rat race, as well as the reasons McCandless initially fled from well-to-do family life years before and never contacted them again in his search for something more profound and meaningful. While most readers may disagree with McCandless’s methods, his motives seem far more familiar and relatable.

Publisher: Pan Macmillan, Buy at Amazon.com

The Living Mountain (1977) – Nan Shepherd

Perhaps one of the finest pieces of nature writing ever committed to paper is The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. Sadly, it’s also one of the most underrated books. The research for her book was undertaken in and around 1942, during the Second World War, which didn’t trouble the wilds of Scotland too badly. Here, the stark beauty of the Cairngorms seems to mirror the harsh reality of war. But Shepherd’s deep examination of the various microcosms of life that thrive on the region’s mountains is really a poem that exalts life. It’s a celebration of survival and endurance. Her wonderful book almost never made it to print, lying in a drawer for decades until a friend read it and encouraged her to seek out a publisher. We’re lucky it did.

The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

The Motorcycle Diaries (1992) – Che Guevara

Even if Che Guevara never became the revolutionary and icon of a generation that he did, The Motorcycle Diaries is a fascinating first-person account of travel’s capacity to broaden the mind. The young medic Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara sets out from his home in Buenos Aires with his friend Alberto Granado sharing a motorcycle ‘La Poderosa’ and in his pointed recollections, you can almost feel Che’s ideological shift. He sees poverty and pain and beauty in the poor communities they visit, and through this, we learn a lot about how Guevara became a key player in the Cuban Revolution. But it’s also a beautiful rumination about the paths we take in life and the importance of curiosity.

Publisher: Perennial, Buy at Amazon.com

Notes from a Small Island (1995) – Bill Bryson

You can’t really write a top travel literature list and omit Bill Bryson. He’s one of the finest travel writers still producing books. Notes from a Small Island is particularly intriguing because, while most of the books that make any top travel literature list tend to be written by Brits, this is a book about Britain, written by an American. And it’s a delightfully observed book at that, pinpointing the eccentricities and unusual aspects of the island nation that most Brits would never think twice about, but when seen through foreign eyes suddenly become absurd. Bryson is especially gifted at making even the most mundane things seem funny. His books neatly balance thorough research and scholarship with humour and keen observation, effectively amalgamating all of the key aspects of travel literature into one inimitable style.

Publisher: Black Swan, Buy at Amazon.com

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson (Photo: Wolf Gang via Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0)

On the Road (1957) – Jack Kerouac

Before modern travel literature’s more self-aware phase that started in the 1970s, we had what essentially kick-started the great 20 th -century American cultural upheaval: The Beat Movement. Kerouac was writing about sexual promiscuity, wanton drug use and giving the establishment the middle finger way before it was cool to do so. Well-educated and moving in New York’s literary circles, Kerouac’s thinly-veiled characters in On the Road (substituting Old Bull Lee for William S. Burroughs, Dean Moriarty for Neal Cassady, Carlo Marx for Allen Ginsberg, and Sal Paradise for himself) are painted into a quasi-fictional account of his cross-country jaunts in the late 1940s. The post-war world was much-changed; the white picket fence America with its Jim Crow segregation and uptight Bible-belt hypocrisy were no longer acceptable. Around the same time, J.D. Salinger was branding it phoney, while Kerouac was realising this in his own way, by embracing escapism and drugs. On the Road still resonates today; both the book and the Beats gave licence to a generation of youths to question the oppressive system that became all too obvious in the 60s.

On The Road by Jack Kerouac (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

The Road to Oxiana (1937) – Robert Byron

Much of the Afghanistan and Iran of Byron’s writing has disappeared, making the precision of his prose all the more valuable. The Road to Oxiana has all the classic elements of earlier travel narratives in it, scholarship, keen observation but also the kind of humour and casual presentation that would become far more popular in the writing styles common to the latter half of the 20 th century. Byron’s constant use of Marjoribanks to replace the name of the Persian ruler of the time was designed to evade censure or punishment in case his notebooks were confiscated and read. The humour of this rebelliousness is not lost when read today, even if some of his style may feel a little bit dated now. His architectural descriptions may be among some of the finest in all of travel literature.

The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Rome and a Villa (1952) – Eleanor Clark

Because the majority of travel writing is crafted around a voyage or quest of some sort, we expect the movement to transcend places, countries even. What Clark does exceptionally well in Rome and a Villa is offer an in-depth depiction of just one city: Rome. This book, although not particularly tied to or crafted around any one specific idea, offers a deeper understanding of The Eternal City based on Clark’s explorations, often on foot. Indeed, her scholarly treatment of the Italian capital brings the city’s rich, storied past to life in imaginative and illuminating ways that offer fresh insight on a place that we may easily think has already been well covered already. Which goes to show that places change with the times offering an opportunity for fresh perspectives. There’s nowhere that is dull or too well-known in travel writing if handled by the right scribe.

Publisher: Harper Perennial, Buy at Amazon.com

Shadow of the Silk Road (2007) – Colin Thubron

Colin Thubron’s fascination with worlds that are ostensibly closed off to westerners has often led him into places that many others wouldn’t think to go. He visited China before it had opened up to the world, and the same goes for Soviet Russia. In Shadow of the Silk Road Thubron exhibits why his books are perhaps the most masterfully crafted of all contemporary travel literature. His pacing and descriptive writing are exquisite, particularly in this book, in which he journeys from Xi’an to Antakya in Turkey following the old ways, through Central Asia, once known as the Silk Road. The worlds he uncovers and the people he meets are painstakingly woven into a rich text, much like a hand-woven Persian rug, that is one of the most evocative pieces of travel writing out there.

Publisher: Vintage, Buy at Amazon.com

Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Travels with Myself and Another (1979) – Martha Gellhorn

Even if Martha Gellhorn was writing today, she would rightly be upheld as one of the great journalists, but given that she was doing it decades ago, often better than her counterparts in a male-dominated field, is even more remarkable. The ‘Another’ that accompanies Gellhorn through much of the book was her former husband Ernest Hemingway, but the book also includes memoir from Africa in which she voyages solo. The book is presented as a collection of essays, a format that has become increasingly common in travel writing and which effectively allows the book to focus on more than one topic. Gellhorn’s writing includes keen observation, lively wit and a really sharp political outlook.

Publisher: Eland Publishing Ltd., Buy at Amazon.com

The Valleys of the Assassins (1934) – Freya Stark

Stark was an incredible human being. Fluent in numerous languages, including Farsi, she travelled the world often alone at a time when even men undertaking such journeys were considered intrepid. Stark was particularly drawn to the Middle East and was able to recount the stories of the women there, living in devout Muslim communities, in a way no man would ever have been able to do. She also discovered regions that had not been explored by Westerners before, including the Valley of the Assassins, which forms the basis of this eponymous book, receiving the Royal Geographical Society’s prestigious Back Award in the process. She continued to write books well into her 90s (releasing work over six decades) and died in Italy at the age of 100.

Publisher: Modern Library Inc., Buy at Amazon.com

Wild by Cheryl Strayed (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (2012) – Cheryl Strayed

Some may question this popular book’s inclusion on a list of the all-time greats, but it really has all the ingredients of a classic exploration of the human psyche. The physical duress that Strayed experienced on her hike of the Pacific Crest Trail (which runs from California’s border with Mexico to Washington’s border with Canada), and the gradual loss of her toenails as a result, is depicted with visceral precision. Her self-inflicted pain mirrors the mental health and dependency issues that plagued her before embarking on the feat, and in the process, we discover the restorative power of travel, of meeting new people and of forcing ourselves to step beyond our comfortably-positioned boundaries. Like any good travel literature, this book sheds light on why travel is so addictive, powerful and pertinent. Just like all the other books on this list, you’ll finish it wanting to plan your next trip.

Publisher: Atlantic Books, Buy at Amazon.com

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The Top Ten Most Influential Travel Books

Even before there were armchairs, voracious bookworms traveled the world just by reading

Tony Perrottet

Contributing writer

William H.H. Murray's guidebook to the Adirondacks “kindled a thousand camp fires and taught a thousand pens how to write of nature,” inspiring droves of American city-dwellers to venture into the wild and starting a back-to-nature movement that endures to this day. Of course, Murray's slender volume was part of a great literary tradition. For more than two millennia, travel books have had enormous influence on the way we have approached the world, transforming once-obscure areas into wildly popular destinations.

A detailed selection would fill a library. So what follows is a brazenly opinionated short-list of travel classics—some notorious, some barely remembered—that have inspired armchair travelers to venture out of their comfort zone and hit the road. 

1. Herodotus, Histories (c.440 BC)

Homer's Odyssey is often referred to as the first travel narrative, creating the archetypal story of a lone wanderer, Odysseus, on a voyage filled with mythic perils, from terrifying monsters like the Cyclops to seductive nymphs and ravishing sorceresses. As may be.  But the first real “travel writer,” as we would understand the term today, was the ancient Greek author Herodotus, who journeyed all over the eastern Mediterranean to research his monumental Histories. His vivid account of ancient Egypt, in particular, created an enduring image of that exotic land, as he “does the sights” from the pyramids to Luxor, even dealing with such classic travel tribulations as pushy guides and greedy souvenir vendors. His work inspired legions of other ancient travelers to explore this magical, haunted land, creating a fascination that reemerged during the Victorian age and remains with us today. In fact, Herodotus qualifies not just as the Father of History, but the Father of Cultural Travel itself, revealing to the ancient Greeks—who rarely deemed a foreign society worthy of interest—the rewards of exploring a distant, alien world.

  2. Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo (c.1300)

When the 13th-century Venetian merchant Marco Polo returned home after two decades wandering China, Persia and Indonesia, the stories he and his two brothers told were dismissed as outright fiction—until (legend goes) the trio sliced open the hems of their garments, and hundreds of gems poured to the ground in a glittering cascade. Still, Polo's adventure might have remained all but unknown to posterity if an accident had not allowed him to overcome his writer's block: Imprisoned by the Genoans in 1298 after a naval battle, he used his enforced leisure time to dictate his memoirs to his cellmate, the romance writer Rustichello da Pisa. The resulting volume, filled with marvelous observations about Chinese cities and customs and encounters with the potentate Kublai Khan (and including, admittedly, some outrageous exaggerations), has been a bestseller ever since, and indelibly defined the Western view of the Orient. There is evidence that Polo intended his book to be a practical guide for future merchants to follow his path. The vision of fabulous Chinese wealth certainly inspired one eager and adventurous reader, fellow Italian Christopher Columbus, to seek a new ocean route to the Orient. (Of course, Islamic scholars will point out that the 14 th -century explorer Ibn Battuta traveled three times as far as Polo around Africa, Asia and China, but his monumental work Rihla , “The Journey,” remained little known in the West until the mid-19th century).

3. Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768)

When the author of Tristram Shandy penned this extraordinary autobiographical novel, the Grand Tour of Europe as a rite of passage was in full swing. Wealthy young British aristocrats (almost invariably male), took educational expeditions to the great cultural sites of Paris, Venice, Rome and Naples, seeking out the classical sites and Renaissance artworks in the company of an erudite “bear leader,” or tour guide. Sterne's rollicking book suddenly turned the sober Grand Tour principle on its head. The narrator deliberately avoids all the great monuments and cathedrals, and instead embarks on a personal voyage, to meet unusual people, seeking out new and spontaneous experiences: (“'tis a quiet journey of the heart in pursuit of NATURE, and those affections which arise out of her, which make us love each other—and the world, better than we do.”) His meandering journey across France and Italy is filled with amusing encounters, often of an amorous nature (involving assorted chamber maids and having to share rooms in inns with member of the opposite sex), which prefigures the Romantic era's vision of travel as a journey of self-discovery. Even today, most “true travelers” pride themselves on finding vivid and unique experiences, rather than generic tourist snapshots or lazy escapes.

4. Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad (1869)

Writers of the Gilded Age (a term Mark Twain incidentally coined) produced thousands of earnest and tedious travel books, a tendency that Twain deftly deflated with Innocents Abroad. Sent as a journalist on a group cruise tour to see the great sights of Europe and the Holy Land, Twain filed a series of hilarious columns to the Alta California newspaper that he later reworked into this classic work. With its timely, self-deprecating humor, it touched a deep chord, lampooning the naïveté of his fellow Americans (“The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad”) and the modest indignities of exploring the sophisticated Old World (“In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.”) The result was to embolden many more of his fellow countrymen to fearlessly cross the pond and immerse themselves in Europe, and, hardly less importantly, to begin a new style of comic travel writing that echoes today through hugely popular modern authors such as Bill Bryson. Today, Innocents Abroad is one of the few 19th-century travel books that is still read eagerly for pleasure. (Its perfect companion is, of course, Roughing It , Twain's account of his misspent youth as a miner in the wild American West).

5. Norman Douglas, Siren Land (1911)

The Italian island of Capri began its proud reputation for licentiousness in ancient Roman times, and by the mid-19 century was luring free-living artists, writers and bon vivants from chilly northern climes. (It was even said that Europe had two art capitals, Paris and Capri). But its modern reputation was sealed by the libertine writer Norman Douglas, whose volume Siren Land offered an account of the carefree southern Italian life “where paganism and nudity and laughter flourished,” an image confirmed by his 1917 novel South Wind , where the island is called Nepenthe, after the ancient Greek elixir of forgetfulness . (Siren Land gets its title from Homer’s Odyssey; Capri was the home of the Sirens, ravishing women who lured sailors to their deaths by shipwreck with their magical voices). Millions of sun-starved British readers were captivated by the vision of Mediterranean sensuality and Douglas' playful humor. (“It is rather puzzling when one comes to think of it,” he writes, “to conceive how the old Sirens passed their time on days of wintry storm. Modern ones would call for cigarettes, Grand Marnier, and a pack of cards, and bid the gale howl itself out.”) Douglas himself was flamboyantly gay, and liked to scamper drunkenly around Capri’s gardens with vine leaves in his hair. Thanks largely to his writings, the island in the 1920s entered a new golden age, luring exiles disillusioned by post-war Europe. The visitors included many great British authors who also penned travel writing classics, such as D.H. Lawrence (whose marvelous Etruscan Places covers his travels in Italy; Lawrence also showed drafts of the torrid Lady Chatterly’s Lover to friends while on holiday in Capri in 1926), E.M Forster, Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley, Graham Greene and W.H. Auden. (The renowned poet wrote a travel volume on Iceland, of all places). The collective vision of Mediterranean freedom has inspired generations of travelers to those warm shores ever since.

6. Freya Stark, The Valley of the Assassins (1934)

The Victorian age produced a surprising number of adventurous women travel writers—Isabella Bird, for instance, wrote about exploring Hawaii, the Rocky Mountains and China—but the authors were regarded as rare and eccentric exceptions rather than role models by female readers. In the more liberated era of the 1930s, Freya Stark's tome revealed just how far women could travel alone and live to write about it. Her breakthrough book, The Valley of the Assassins , was a thrilling account of her journey through the Middle East. Its highlight was her visit to the ruined stronghold of the Seven Lords of Alamut, a medieval cult of hashish-eating political killers in the Elburz Mountains of Iran whose exploits had been legendary in the West since the Crusades. (The singular escapade made her one of the first women ever inducted into the Royal Geographical Society.) The bestseller was followed by some two dozen works whose freshness and candor inspired women to venture, if not by donkey into war zones, at least into exotic climes. “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world,” she enthused in Baghdad Sketches . “You have no idea of what is in store for you, but you will, if you are wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown and accept whatever comes in the spirit in which the gods may offer it.”

7. Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957)

This thinly veiled autobiographical novel, about a group of young friends hitch-hiking and bumming their way across the United States, has inspired generations of restless readers to take a leap into the unknown. Although the publisher made Kerouac change the actual names (Kerouac became Sal Paradise, the wild driver Neal Cassady became Dean Moriarty and poet Allen Ginsberg became Carlo Marx), its episodes were almost entirely drawn from life, qualifying it as a classic of travel writing. It was also a cultural phenomenon: Kerouac legendarily hammered out the whole lyrical work on a giant scroll of paper (possibly on one speed-induced binge), and carried it about in his rucksack for years before it was published, becoming an instant icon of the rebellious “beat” era, thumbing its nose at the leaden conformity of the cold war era. Today, it is still a dangerous book to read at an impressionable age (at least for younger males; women tend to be left out of the boyish pursuits, except as sex objects). The delirious sense of freedom as Kerouac rides across the wheat fields of Nebraska in the back of a farm truck or speeds across the Wyoming Rockies toward Denver is infectious.

8. Tony and Maureen Wheeler, Across Asia on the Cheap (1973)

It was one of history's great self-publishing success stories. When two young travelers roughed it in a minivan from London to Sydney, they decided to write a practical guide about their experiences. Working on a kitchen table, they typed out a list of their favorite budget hotels and cheap restaurants from Tehran to Djakarta, stapled the copied pages together into a 90-page booklet and sold it for $1.80 a pop. Their instincts were correct: There was a huge hunger for information on how to travel on a budget in the Third World, and the modest booklet sold 1,500 copies in a week. The hit became the basis for Lonely Planet, a vast guidebook empire with books on almost every country on earth. The young and financially challenged felt welcomed into the exotic corners of Nepal, Morocco and Thailand, far from the realm of five-star hotels and tour groups, often for a few dollars a day. The guidebooks' power quickly became such that in many countries, a recommendation is still enough to make a hotelier's fortune. (Having sold 100 million copies of their guidebooks, the Wheelers finally sold Lonely Planet for £130 million in 2010 to the BBC. (The BBC recently confirmed plans to sell the franchise to NC2 Media at a loss for just £51.5 million. Nobody ever claimed Across Asia was high literature, but the Wheelers now help fund a literary institution, The Wheeler Center, in their home city of Melbourne, Australia, to promote serious fiction and non-fiction). 

9. Bruce Chatwin, In Patagonia (1977)

Along with Paul Theroux's wildly entertaining Great Railway Bazaar , Chatwin's slim, enigmatic volume became widely credited with the modern rebirth of travel writing. A former Sotheby's art auctioneer, the erudite Chatwin famously quit the London Sunday Times Magazine via telegram to his editor (“Have gone to Patagonia”) and disappeared into the then little-known and remote tip of South America. In a stylistic first for the genre, In Patagonia weaves a personal quest (for a piece of prehistoric skin of the mylodon, which the author had seen as a child) with the region's most surreal historical episodes, related in a poetic, crisp and laconic style. Focusing on god-forsaken outposts rather than popular attractions, Chatwin evokes the haunting ambiance with deftly drawn vignettes from Patagonia's storybook past, such as how Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid lived in a cabin in southern Argentina, or how a Welsh nationalist colony was begun in the windswept town of Trelew. And thus the quirky travel pilgrimage was born.

  10. Peter Mayle, A Year in Provence (1989)

Mayle's breezy account of his mid-life decision to escape dark and sodden England to renovate a farmhouse in Ménerbes, a village in the south of France, created an entire sub-genre of do-it-yourself travel memoirs filled with charmingly quirky locals. It also inspired thousands to physically emulate his life-changing project, flooding Provence and other sunny idylls with expats in search of a rustic fixer-upper and supplies of cheap wine. Aided by the relaxed residency laws of the European Union, discount airlines and France's super-fast TGV trains, the once-impoverished southern France quickly became gentrified by retirees from Manchester, Hamburg and Stockholm, until it is now, in the words of one critic, a “bourgeois theme park for foreigners.” (Tuscany became equally popular, thanks to Frances Mayes' beguiling books, with the shores of Spain and Portugal following suit). Things got so crowded that Mayle himself moved out – although he has since returned to a different tiny village, Lourmarin, a stone's throw from his original haunt. In recent years, Elizabeth Gilbert's wildly successful Eat Pray Love (2007) offered a similar spirit of personal reinvention, inspiring a new wave of travelers to follow her  path to the town of Ubud in Bali in search of spiritual (and romantic) fulfillment

A Smithsonian Magazine Contributing Writer, Tony Perrottet is the author of five travel and history books, including Pagan Holiday: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists and The Sinner's Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe; www.tonyperrottet.com

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Tony Perrottet | READ MORE

Tony Perrottet is a contributing writer for Smithsonian magazine, a regular contributor to the New York Times and WSJ Magazine , and the author of six books including ¡Cuba Libre!: Che, Fidel and the Improbable Revolution that Changed World History , The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games and Napoleon's Privates: 2500 Years of History Unzipped . Follow him on Instagram @TonyPerrottet .

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A systematic approach to literature analysis: traveling through stories

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Ryusei Uenishi, Claudio Ortega, Ángel Pérez Martinez, Michelle Rodríguez-Serra, Paula Elías, A systematic approach to literature analysis: traveling through stories, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities , Volume 37, Issue 2, June 2022, Pages 565–579, https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqab081

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Travel literature has captured humanity’s imagination ever since the emergence of famous works such as The Wonders of The World by Marco Polo and The Journal of Christopher Columbus . Authors in this genre must process large and diverse volumes of data (visual, sensory, and written) obtained on their trips, before synthesizing it humanly in such a way as to move and communicate personally with the reader, without losing the factual nature of the story. This is the ultimate goal of the natural language processing (NLP) field: to process and generate human–machine interaction as naturally as possible. Hence, this article’s purpose is to analyze and describe a nonfictional literary text, which is a type of documentary text that contains objective, qualitative, and quantitative information based on evidence. In this analysis, traditional methods will not be used. Instead, it will leverage NLP techniques to process and extract relevant information from the text. This literary analysis is a new kind of approach that encourages further discussions about the methodologies currently used. The proposed methodology enables exploratory analysis of both individual and unstructured corpus databases while also allowing geospatial data to complement the textual analysis by connecting the people in the text with real places.

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Travel: literature and guidebooks, trying to decide what to read.

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Literature of travel and exploration: an encyclopedia. Jennifer Speake, editor. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003. Trustee Reading Room Reference (DR) G465.L565 2003 Useful not only as a source of background information, but also as a way to identify travel narratives about particular places. Also lists editions and translations of travel narratives in the entries for individual writers.

Trade, travel, and exploration in the Middle Ages: an encyclopedia. Editors, John Block Friedman, Kristen Mossler Figg; associate editor, Scott D. Westrem; collaborating editor, Gregory G. Guzman. New York : Garland Pub., 2000. Firestone HF1001 .T7 2000 This encyclopedia has solid coverage of many writers, places and concepts important in medieval travel. Includes suggested further readings, editions and translations of major authors/texts. More up-to-date than the entries in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages .

A reference guide to the literature of travel, including voyages, geographical descriptions, adventures, shipwrecks and expeditons. Edward Godfrey Cox. Seattle, The University of Washington, 1935-49. Firestone Library Z6011 .C87 [3 volumes]

When the going was good: a guide to the 99 best narratives of travel, exploration, and adventure. Grove Koger. Lanham, Md. ; Oxford : Scarecrow Press, 2002 Firestone Z6016.T7 K64 2002 Limited to narratives in English or English translation, and almost entirely from after 1800.

Global odyssey: a bibliography of travel literature, 1940 to the present . Compiled for the Center for the Study of Global Change by Dawn Childress. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University, 2006. Firestone Library Z6011 .G563 2006

Global odyssey: a bibliography of travel literature before 1940 . Compiled for the Center for the Study of Global Change by Melissa S. Van Vuuren and Angela Courtney. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University, 2006. Firestone Library Z6011 .G56 2006 Bibliography of published travel narratives, in English, arranged geographically. Does not include guidebooks or guides for emigrants.

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Travel literature

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• 2 Historical
• 3 19th century and later

Travel literature is a broad and popular genre of writing covering adventure and exploration, travel writing collections, travel-related memoirs, and travel-centric fiction. Travel writing often blends with essay writing, coming in the form of travel writing collections or as features in magazines. Styles range from journalistic, to the introspective, to funny, and to serious. Early examples appear in medieval China, ancient Greece, and in early Arabic literature.

• Narrow Road to the Deep North ( Oku-no-hosomichi )- Verses and poems by 17th century haiku poet Basho Matsuo on his travel to the northeastern Japan.

19th century and later

Long distance travel became more accessible to people with the advent of rail, ocean-going steamships and later the automobile and aeroplanes.

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Travel literature: what it is, how it arose, its characteristics and most important works

What is travel literature.

Travel books or travel literature comprises a type of texts that bring together aspects such as experiences, feelings, voices, scenarios, reflections, etc., about a journey that is made by the narrator. This type of literature can include works about conquests, explorations, adventures and other journeys that are part of this same category, and that can be real or fictitious facts that make allusions to known geographical spaces, for example.

In this sense, they are texts that originally respond to the need to give an account of unknown regions, explorations, etc., which is why those who initiated their development, according to the tracing of these texts, were often explorers and travelers who, with the passage of time, will shape one of the most important types of literature in this artistic field.

How does travel literature arise?

As for the birth of this literature, it is believed that the writing of these books is located in the fourteenth century with the emergence of the work Embassy of Tamorlán, which expresses the chronicle of a journey undertaken by envoys directly from King Henry III to meet Tamorlán, emperor of Asian origin, and ends around the fifteenth century.

In its beginnings, travel literature or travel books were used to communicate and express the discoveries, advances and descriptions of people who undertook journeys to unknown areas and detailed, under this type of text, what they found along the way. Thus, in principle, those who start with this category will be travelers and explorers, especially. The reasons that propitiated these journeys could easily vary, among them were the exploration of new lands, espionage work, etc.

It is considered that the first manifestations of this type of literature were in the hands of authors such as Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Far Bartolomé de las Casas, authors who wrote detailed texts under the format of the chronicle and who have special importance in terms of the content related to the conquest and arrival to the American continent.

However, the notion of travel literature will change significantly towards the 20th century. At this time this type of literature changes its tone, since most of its authors, writers and travelers, will travel not by order of superiors, but simply for the taste and particular interest of doing so. Thus, the horizons for this category are broadened, including the adventures of those who set out on new roads and describe everything they have seen in the texts.

Development of travel literature

The texts of this type of literature are mainly housed under the narrative format, often in the novel. This is because their content can be better structured in this type of structures, as it must follow aspects such as coherence in the story. One of the main characteristics of travel literature in terms of the development and creation of the works has to do with the fact that they may or may not be based on real events. Thus, the author may resort to fictitious or even speculative facts.

Unlike a detailed description of aspects and data about a trip, travel literature includes texts that are not a collection of events, but can be constituted as exploration logs and even a travel diary, which is why we will find experiences of the narrator, explorations, adventures that may or may not be starred by the narrator.

The dimensions that this type of texts have reached are especially due to the different contributions made by authors who have been interested in this type of texts, leaving in their wake tools that have been fundamental for creative continuity. This, even when conditions have undergone important transformations, since events such as technological advances, the invention of means of transportation and cultures have changed the form and given variety to styles. Despite this, they have remained under the magnifying glass of the author of travel literature.

Travel literature will take its final form, as we know it, after the Romanticism, when important changes are generated in relation to the objective of the tours and travels of the authors. At this moment, it is no longer only a process that throws in its writing detailed information from an investigation or with a commercial purpose, but it becomes an inspiring journey in which it begins to take other aspects and resources of literature to constitute, finally, travel literature in the notion of the present time.

Characteristics of travel literature

Now, in order to understand in depth what this type of literature consists of and under what ideas it lays its foundations of creation, it is necessary to review the most important distinguishing features in its development process. Among them, we find the following:

Writing motive

As we have seen, the central motive of this type of literature is the journey itself. When we speak of travel literature, we are talking about texts that make extensive journeys through the experiences of the narrator. In this sense, the journey constitutes the central axis of the plot.

Travel literature in novels

The main format chosen by this type of texts, in its most recent moments, is the novel. The structure of this narrative genre facilitates for the reader the incorporation not only of the central argument, as we saw in the previous point, but also the sum of descriptions that make the construction of images for the reader. These include aspects of his journey, such as the cultures he encounters, the societies, the people, the landscapes, etc.

Functions of travel literature

Another aspect that we should highlight about this category or literary modality is that it has the capacity to fulfill several functions, among them two mainly. On the one hand, we find that a travel book has a documentary function in terms of the undertaking of the journey and its portrayal in the work, and a literary function with the consolidation of a work itself.

Portrait of societies

As a way of obtaining information, following the documentary function, these books are excellent tools. This is due to the fact that in their descriptions, travel literature provides key data about the areas visited or traveled to, providing information such as location, landscapes, food, aspects of nature, religious beliefs, traditions and customs, among others.

Chronological narrative

Many of the texts in travel literature follow a chronological narrative, so that the story progresses and develops according to a specific time that is linear and thus makes it easier for the reader to follow the same journey. In this sense, the situations faced by the traveler or explorer must be narrated obeying the course of events.

About the protagonist

It is important to bear in mind that in this type of texts, generally the central role, the protagonist, is built under the figure of a hero who, in his journeys, faces different dangers and challenges that are put in his way, besides constituting the most important actions of the story.

Development scenarios

Being a type of literature that involves a physical displacement in its story, travel literature includes scenarios different from those that are part of the daily life not only of the character, in many cases, but also of the reader. Hence, it increases the level of expectation before the unknown, presenting the public with different scenarios and environments such as enchanted islands, deep forests, impenetrable jungles, among others.

Variety of formats

The travel story, as it is also known, has the ability to be constructed under different formats, despite the fact that its most recurrent genre has been the narrative and with it, the novel. That is why, especially in its initial stage and some authors later on, travel literature will be seen in formats such as letters and chronicles. The latter format represented his first mode of writing, where any trait of fantasy or fiction was absent.

Most important works and authors

Among the main works of this type of literature, we find titles such as: Embassy of Tamorlán, Book of Marco Polo, Por carreteras secundarias, Paraísos Oceánicos, by Aurora Bertrana, Viaje a la Alcarria, by Camilo José Cela, Lugares que no quiero compartir con nadie, by Elvira Lindo, Heridas del viento, by Virginia Mendoza, El camino más corto, by Manuel Leguineche, Vagabundo en África, by Javier Reverte, Donde la Vieja Castilla se acaba: Soria, by Avelino Hernández, Naufragios, by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Los senderos del mar, by María Belmonte, Venecia, by Jan Morris, El pez escorpión by Nicolás Bouvier, Viajes con Charley by John Steinbeck, Viaje al Japón by Rudyard Kipling, Letters from Istanbul by Mary Wortley Montagu, among others.

And among the main authors who gave way to this type of text are figures such as: Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux, Rebecca West, Ryszard Kapuściński, Alexandra David-Néel, Peter Matthiessen, Alí Bey, Adolfo Rivadeneyra, Ana Briongos, Jordi Esteva, Juan Goytisolo, Paco Nadal, Javier Reverte, Gabi Martínez, Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Jan Morris, Javier Reverte, Manu Leguineche, Robert Byron, Colin Thubron, Norman Lewis, Mark Twain, among others.

To learn more about other types of texts, authors, literary movements and more, don’t forget that you can find this and more information in our Literature section.

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Travel apps industry report 2024: how travel and tourism companies are utilizing travel apps to drive revenues.

Dublin, June 04, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Thematic Intelligence: Travel Apps (2024)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. This report provides an overview of the impact travel apps has on the travel sector and seeks to understand some of the contributory factors. The key trends within this theme are split into three categories: consumer trends, enterprise trends, and industry trends. Several case studies are included to analyze the multiple ways countries and companies have responded to the impact of travel app's growth and what they are doing to grow with this market. The report analyzes the players impacted by this theme alongside the contributing trends, destination trends, unintended opportunities, and trends that have emerged as a result of travel apps. It then dives deep into an industry analysis, presenting several real-life case studies looking at how companies have responded to the impact of this theme on their operations. Recommendations are also offered for the travel sector, alongside a description of companies mentioned throughout. This report focus is on travel apps. Key Highlights

Globally, travelers are increasingly online and more mobile savvy than ever before. The online travel market value is expected to increase going forward, according to the analyst forecasts. By 2026, market value is projected to reach $662.63 billion (CAGR 2023-26: 7.98%) as travelers increasingly switch to online travel intermediaries over in-store travel agents.

According to the analyst's Q4 2023 Consumer Survey, 80% of global respondents stated that 'time saving' is either 'essential' or 'nice to have' when making a purchase and 83% of global respondents stated that 'convenience' is either 'essential' or 'nice to have' when making a purchasing choice.

Travel apps allow companies to offer a more convenient service, which often saves both time and money for consumers. When looking specifically at OTAs (online travel agencies), the most successful companies in this sub-sector give little reason for customers to shop elsewhere when purchasing the main services and products that create a domestic or international trip.

The number of consumers who access the internet via mobile devices is increasing across the globe. When assessing the increase in the number of mobile internet subscribers across G7 nations (an organization of the world's seven largest so called 'advanced' economies, and therefore important tourism source markets), all countries displayed healthy growth.

Key Report Features

Understand the current travel apps trends within the travel landscape today and how these will escalate in the near future.

Assess how travel and tourism companies such as tour operators, OTAs and DMOs are utilizing travel apps to drive revenues.

Acknowledge the potential pitfalls of using travel by understanding the social, cultural, and environmental effects on the destination.

Discover recommendations for businesses involved in travel apps.

The analyst's thematic research ecosystem is a single, integrated global research platform that provides an easy-to-use framework for tracking all themes across all companies in all sectors. It has a proven track record of identifying the important themes early, enabling companies to make the right investments ahead of the competition, and secure that all-important competitive advantage. All across the travel and tourism supply chain, now have an opportunity to capitalize on travel apps, and there are notable examples of this. Therefore, all should buy this report to fully understand how this theme will continue to be a key theme in the future travel landscape.

Company Coverage:

IHG Hotels & Resorts

Marriott Hotels & Resorts

Key Topics Covered:

Executive Summary

Thematic Briefing

Technology trends

Consumer trends

Industry trends

Industry Analysis:

Market size and growth forecasts

M&A trends

Venture financing trends

Patent trends

Company filing trends

Social media trends

Value Chain:

Intermediaries

Transportation

Destination

Travel services

Public companies

Private companies

Sector Scorecards:

Travel intermediaries sector scorecard

Rail and road sector scorecard

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/eu57gq

About ResearchAndMarkets.com ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

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Expedia Group Media Solutions

How to attract travelers with data-driven tourism marketing.

By Expedia Group Media Solutions

June 5, 2024

Did you know that 60% of travelers start planning their trip without a specific destination in mind? 1 Data like this can change how and when you communicate with travelers. By understanding travelers’ buying journeys from looking to booking and the latest travel trends, destination marketers can attract travelers and even shape destination decisions. 

Travel data and trends can help you understand and appeal to your target audience better. The ability to attract travelers could get more complicated as third-party cookies are phased out, which is why leveraging our robust first-party data can provide the audience insights you need. Keep reading to learn how data in the Path to Purchase report and our Unpack ’24 travel trends study can give you the competitive advantage you need to create data-driven destination marketing campaigns that resonate with travelers.  

Travel marketing along the path to purchase

As a destination marketer, you can use Path to Purchase insights to inform your strategy and get your message across clearly to your intended audience in the fragmented travel and tourism industry.   

Destination indecisiveness is high

Nearly three in five travelers surveyed didn’t have a specific destination in mind or considered multiple destinations when they first decided to take a trip. More than 80% of travelers from Mexico and 62% of travelers from the U.K. were undecided on their destination, indicating that these travelers may be even more open to destination inspiration. 2   

What this means for destinations

Location indecisiveness in the early stage of travel planning creates opportunities for destination marketers to determine destination decisions. Targeting travelers while they’re still in the inspiration phase is the key to building awareness for your brand and showing what makes your destination unlike any other. 

To appeal to travelers’ wanderlust and keeping costs in mind in this phase and throughout the purchasing journey, travel advertisers should consider showing breathtaking locations and interesting experiences along with compelling deals and clear calls to action to drive travelers to conversion. It’s also important to know how long people spend looking for vacation inspiration, so you know when to launch your campaign to attract more visitors.  

Travelers spend 33 days looking for inspiration for travel destinations  

We know that advertisers want to have a clear view of travelers’ buying journeys and the potential touch points they can have with travelers. That first moment, when travelers look for inspiration, is a key opportunity to influence travelers’ choices, and the window to reach people is 33 days long on average. 3  

Your current strategy might be to advertise to an audience that already showed an interest in your location, but the data is clear that there’s a large opportunity to create impactful ads that drive those looking for inspiration to consider new destinations — including yours. 

It’s also important to note that two-thirds of travelers were influenced by an ad during the inspiration phase of their journey. 4  

What this means for destinations:

Inspiration can come from many sources, like family recommendations or advertisements, so destinations need to ensure that they have a multi-channel approach to appeal to travelers during this stage. All our solutions help get your destination in front of our motivated travel audience.  

If you’re looking to take your budget further, you could consider a co-op campaign . These campaigns are cost-effective and help marketers meet collective goals, and we do the heavy lifting to connect complementary destinations, hotels, airlines, and more to engage jointly with travelers and drive demand. 

When it comes to connecting with travelers across channels, destination marketing organizations (DMOs) see over 80% higher engagement with our native display ads compared to standard display ads. 5 Our native advertising solution uses contextually relevant, non-disruptive ads seamlessly integrated across our 200+ travel websites and apps. These experiential ads allow you to highlight multiple features and images with a single placement and create a pleasing experience for travelers when they’re looking for inspiration or ready to book.   

VisitScotland used native advertising to engage travelers with immersive and informative ad placements across prominent homepages and hotel search results pages. By implementing native advertising, the marketing campaign generated an above average click-through rate (CTR) and an 80:1 return on ad spend (ROAS). The campaign’s success elevated the visibility of VisitScotland and effectively engaged qualified travelers, resulting in increased bookings. 

You can also leverage in-app ads as part of our native advertising solution to gain a competitive advantage. Did you know that on average, in-app ads drive 150% more conversions than mobile web ads? 6 This is one more lever you can pull to execute a successful marketing strategy.  

Travelers use social media the most for inspiration 

Social media is where people seek authentic travel experiences and reviews when considering hotels, activities, or destinations. For travelers considering what to book, 65% of them use social media for inspiration. 7  

For those in destination marketing, tapping into social media as part of your mobile marketing strategy is an effective way to get travelers to consider your destination. You could add a human touch to your mobile marketing campaigns by utilizing influencer marketing at this stage. If you’re working for a convention and visitors bureau, you can engage travelers on social media by highlighting what they could expect if they choose your destination by using captivating images and copy that highlight authentic experiences.  

Discover the latest travel marketing trends 

Let’s look at a few more trends that can help you learn how to promote a destination by implementing specific insights into travelers’ behaviors in your campaigns. Our Unpack ’24 study is a glimpse into eight predicted trends we see shaping the travel and tourism industry this year. Based on extensive data and a global survey of 20,000 travelers, the report highlights the growing popularity of alternatives to well-known vacation spots, traveling to see a concert, and booking a trip because of a movie or TV show. You can find more trends in the full study, and you can dive even deeper with our quarterly insights and research .

We’ve pulled trend takeaways to help shape your marketing campaigns and get your destination in front of our global audience of high-value travelers who are coming to dream about, research, and book travel on our trusted brands.   

Travelers are booking destination dupes 

Destination dupes are budget-friendly alternatives to popular travel spots that offer similar experiences, usually without the hefty price tag or crowds. Think of it as the travel equivalent of finding a high-quality, affordable alternative to a luxury brand. For example, travelers might choose Pattaya over Bangkok or Perth instead of Sydney to enjoy a comparable vibe and attractions at a fraction of the cost. One in three travelers polled said they’ve booked a destination dupe. 8  

What this means for destinations  

If you think your location could be a dupe, it’s time to position yourself as an alternative. You know what your destination has to offer, and we can help you tell that story to potential travelers. Does it have something in common with a higher-profile location? Try turning that into an advantage and highlight the elements your destination has in common with more well-known places. To take it a step further, you could showcase promotions or deals in your advertising that could appeal to cost-conscious travelers. 

Concerts are driving tourism 

Tour tourism is a popular emerging area of leisure travel. This trend sees concertgoers looking beyond their local venues to catch a show, with 40% of travelers saying they would travel for a concert as an excuse to visit a new place, while 30% would travel because tickets were cheaper elsewhere. 9  

When Taylor Swift’s 2024 tour schedule was announced for Asia and Australia, travel searches increased by over 250% year over year for the corresponding tour cities. Similarly, when the 2024 European tour dates were announced, travel searches for May to August 2024 increased by nearly 65% for cities with corresponding tour stops. 10 To reach travelers venturing out of town for a concert, you could target certain search windows, lean into influencer marketing, or create packages with local establishments to provide more value for potential attendees.  

Our data-driven audience extension solution can help you reach customized audience segments, like those traveling during a certain time, to make sure your destination is in front of the right people, at the right time, and with the right message using targeted marketing. 

Set-jetting could be your untapped travel marketing trend

Set-jetting, planning trips inspired by TV shows and movies, is more popular than ever. More than half of travelers say they’ve researched or booked a trip to a destination after seeing it on a TV show or in a movie. In fact, travelers say TV shows influence their travel decisions more than Instagram, TikTok, and podcasts. 11  

You can lean into this source of travel inspiration where people want to book because they were inspired by a particular location. We helped one of our partners, Brand USA , create an immersive and interactive experience and debuted this innovative approach to travel booking with a shoppable streaming platform that delivers unique video content to replicate what travelers would experience at a destination. 

Our Media Studio team concepted and built this unique approach to destination exploration that allows travelers to quickly and easily book their trip as they immerse themselves in what the destination has to offer. Brand USA is the first partner to use this trailblazing solution, and we’re excited to roll out this approach for other destinations across the globe. 

Reach your goals with the leading travel media network  

We know it can be difficult to act on emerging market trends. That’s why we’re here to help you understand consumer behavior and travel trends to ensure your destination stands out from the rest using our expertise, innovative technology, and powerful platform. All our advertising solutions focus on helping DMOs stand out in a crowded marketplace and drive tourism, and we can help you find the perfect combination for your specific needs.  

To learn more about the array of advertising solutions we provide and how your destination can leverage data, contact one of our experts today. 

Expedia Group Media Solutions is the world's leading travel media network. We connect advertisers with hundreds of millions of travelers across the globe. Our exclusive first-party data on traveler trends, search behavior, and booking data provides travel marketers with unique insights to inform their strategies. We offer a full-funnel suite of solutions to help you convert travelers, and our digital experts can help you create advertising campaigns that deliver.

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