As an aspiring world traveler, the travel feature is an important story type I find myself drawn to, particularly as I plan trips and start to learn about a specific location. Place and travel stories allow for a lot of creativity and often bring in copy that reflects all five senses, a feat that is not easily transferable to other types of feature stores. Place and travel stories generally require the writer to visit the place they are writing about, thus are often first-person accounts. This provides a true analysis and understanding and can be what makes or breaks a travel story, depending on how well the writer appeals to the audience.
In terms of examples of travel feature writing, The Travel Rag has several stories that center around specific cities or regions and in particular, specific culture aspects of these places, like bullfighting in Madrid, Spain. This is a good website to start at, especially when you are looking for very specific profiles of a place you plan to travel to.
In terms of international and travel journalism, but that with a more newsy approach, I find Nicholas Kristof a fantastic resource. His columns for the NYT are interesting, relevant and very appealing and although they genuinely focus on a current world issues and conflicts, Kristof is well-versed and gives a fantastic and convincing sense of place in his writing.
But overall, I also find the personal blog approach to travel writing very intriguing and this is more or less what I did when I studied abroad in Sevilla, Spain last spring. My blog, Cuentos de la americana en España, was where I documented many of my travel stories, cultural observations and overall experiences. Although I made it a first-person account and it was thus less journalistic, I really tried to focus on certain sights, sounds and experiences I found appealing. In general, I find travel blogs a great source of writing and that it offers a lot of flexibility. One of my favorite personal blogs, Wallagrams, documents the journey of a close friend and her husband as they prepare to embark on a year-long trip around the world. Although they don't leave until fall 2012 (and neither of the are journalists), the blog is plenty interesting already, full of travel advice, gear reviews and lifestyle changes the pair has made in preparation for their big departure. It's definitely an interesting read and challenges me in terms of my future travels.
