Preparing Five-Star Travel Articles
by Jennifer Noble

Relaxing, energizing time away from home is a common goal with any vacation. With this goal in mind, preparing travel features follows closely the planning of a family vacation or weekend getaway. The travel article's job is to not only describe a location or event, but to evoke the feelings involved with vacationing. Think of the excitement that begins to stir as the spread of travel brochures and maps begin to consume the kitchen table. Much like visiting a fitting restaurant or hotel, crafted articles will capture the heart of the distinctive experience of travel. Create five star qualities for travel features in helping people detail their next trip with the following recommendations in mind.

1. Consider what you should feature. Likes and dislikes vary from one traveler's interest to the next. Thus, look for events to feature with appeal to more than one type of person. This is one method of covering a broad audience, or you can also pepper your list with several travel opportunities. Include diverse findings on a given location and try to find events growing in popularity. Many events are already well known and don't provide as much interest unless there is something new to try for the attendees. Ask yourself, "Who would want to come to this event?" Write for that person and describe what they would enjoy doing. Then consider another age group and see if there is still appeal in some aspects in the event for them. Add more depth by including many of those opportunities for exploration and fun. Sports, history, music and dining all have their own niche and noting these different interests adds to the list of potential adventures to plan.
    
2. Offer travel or photography when you query. If you have recently traveled on vacation yourself, this will provide ample writing opportunities. As you pull the unique findings from your trip together, use these to make up the body of your query to an editor. Travel expenses are often not covered as part of a writing assignment for smaller markets, so by offering your own travel or writing on a trip you've planned, you will be able to match your experience with an editor's needs. Another frequent need for travel magazines is photography to accompany the locations described in the feature. By taking high-quality digital photos, you will have memorable snapshots and visual aids to offer that help explain your writing.
    
3. Pay attention to the imagery. Have you ever realized how many people are photographed in travel brochures? Usually there is one, and often not more than three. This observation offers writers insight for communicating the expected pace of a destination. Look for spots with gracious travelers and not too over-populated. Take note of the friendliness of the surroundings. When traveling, it is important to feel at home in the place you choose to stay. Many times locations are described with sunsets or by the abounding nature as to connect those universal comforts with the reader. There may also be varying prices for accommodations in close vicinity, which gives more options for different budgets.
    
4. Provide reliable information. Reliability is of the utmost importance. It can be frustrating to plan a trip and have misinformation. Incorrect phone numbers, missing dates or locations and dead website links are all easy mistakes to make. One good way to prevent this from occurring is to prepare information along the way for your travel feature by taking thorough notes as you compile the research. Perhaps start your article with the facts and information you dig up and plan on working it into the text as you learn more. This way you won't have to worry about misplacing the work you've done or neglect something from earlier research.
    
5. Learn a magazine’s objectives. Travel is affected by seasonality, thus the articles will often follow calendar events. The research for a summer article could be about Christmas festivities depending on the publication's deadlines. This can present a challenge to write, as you need to scoop out events six months before they happen. For many opportunities, the planning is sketchy at this point and to finish the story, last-minute research will need to be checked. It is beneficial to start gathering ideas early on, develop and build on those ideas and formulate the final elements as you go. Different travel publications may also target different age groups, and many travel features are appealing more now to younger travelers. When you've heard back from a query, follow-up by asking about the magazine's readership and more specific needs. Another request they may have could be to feature a particular location for advertising purposes. This is important, as the business will get a feel for how the magazine is reaching their potential consumers.

After choosing your featured destination, taking the trip and making notes of the discoveries and targeting your audience with your reliable fact-finding, you will be able to show a sampling of what the location has to offer. It will be alive with scents, sounds and feelings from the surroundings and still offer a surprise if readers choose the same travel attractions.