As the world begins its slow recovery from the past few years, more stories are growing from the ashes and showcasing resilience and profound adaptation, inspiring hope, and exhilaration to a new tide of travel. With international travel being a fair way down the track, there’s been a surge of bloggers and writers who have taken a page from Jack Kerouac and inspired a rising tide of domestic adventurers to hit the road.
Adapt & survive
Looking through blogging sites like WordPress or MK Blog Directory and you’ll be hard pressed to not find a slew of travel writers and bloggers who have readjusted their sights to a localized scope and surviving quite fruitfully as a result.
Typically, the manner that travel bloggers used to make a living was through multiple revenue avenues, not simply writing and posting stories. There was a fair amount of work supremely dedicated to accruing advertisers and sponsors, website partnerships and general social media interaction. For some writers it was indeed a full-time job.
Some have adapted more effectively than others, with monetary based bloggers taking a brutal pay cut in the loss of sponsorships and advertisers as the wheels remained on the tarmac. Some very well-known bloggers and writers were unfortunately unable to maintain their audience without an income stream and weren’t able to change up their approach.
For the more successful diverters, the international posts and articles have quickly shifted into handy survival guides for road trips, language, and education explorations, all with a heavier focus on safety and discovery of local gems that were often not on the radar.
Whether it’s a healthy distraction for the readers, or the incessant need for the human race to explore, the shift in tone has reinvigorated interest in close-to-home content.
The road less travelled
The classic road trip was once a staple of life before affordable air travel, and for those coming out of lockdown and needing a change in scenery, the only way was the highway. Whether it’s camping in the wilderness and finding a new sense of calm amongst the chaos, or the meteoric rise in ‘Staycation’ vacations – there’s still a vast world to explore, even if it’s confined to your own borders.
Families who were once looking to jet-set to another country for the holiday period are embracing the RV life and finding a more wholesome connection to slow and steady travel and getting in touch with their natural surroundings.
Younger generations of travelers and road warriors have gone for a more retro reinvention for road travel. The rise of ‘Van Life’ where people custom build their mobile homes or purchase all-inclusive vehicles to live permanently on the move.
Silver lined horizons
It is very easy to fall into a nihilistic mentality with the state of the world. There are a few benefits that have risen, even from the simple change in travelling lifestyle. Through the adjusted lenses of bloggers and writers around the world, there has been a surge in rolling with the waves and finding a new way to explore that is safe and ultimately cheaper than the international days.
Through this, there have been marked increases for regional areas of countries around the world. The tales of local communities starting to recover thanks to the rise in domestic tourism is a heartening chapter to hear.
Through exploring our own backyards, we are finding a newfound connection to our heritage and culture that will invariably make us stronger as a community going forward.
The practicality of exploring the unknown is also immeasurably good for mental health. With many people still working from home for the foreseeable future, the trend is also bleeding into Working Staycations as well.
The world may be changing at a rate we have not lived through before, the trials and tribulations are far from over. However, if we take a leaf from the books of those writers and bloggers who have adjusted with the times and focused on what CAN be done, the horizons will be laced with silver linings.
Of course, it’s important to stay up to date with the latest health and travel advice, but if it’s allowable, there’s no reason not to step out on the road and get to know your own backyard.
Tina Johnson helped bring The Marketing Folks from a-weekly newsletter to a full-fledged news site by creating a new website and branding. She continues to assist in keeping the site responsive and well organized for the readers. As a contributor to The Marketing Folks, Tara mainly covers industry new.
