Where do you go to get the travel advice that fits your budgetary frequency? There’s a lot of chatter out there. Much of it just leaves us shaking our heads.
For example? Every time we dive into one of the major travel magazines, we come away wondering about the rarefied air they dish. Have you flipped through the pages of Travel + Leisure and Conde Naste Traveler? It’s a great fantasy experience, but we were challenged to recall a single vacation of ours that we could say was inspired by something we read there. We can’t afford it. Period.
It’s our sense that those glam travel mags are all about selling fantasies that support the pricing structures of glam advertisers. That’s cool — if you can afford the freight. As an aside, we do love National Geographic Traveler, and AFAR, which both have print and online versions, and the Matador Network (online only).
If you hadn’t realized it, though, the interweb (joke there) has opened up space for a wide range of travel voices. Bloggers, if you will. Travel writer Chris Elliott recently conducted a poll to identify which bloggers are most appreciated (at least by Elliott’s readers). Interesting rabbit hole, with a dozen side channels. Dive in.
A far more interesting list, by comparison, was dished up on the Huffington Post, by writer Michael Hodson. Many of his fave bloggers are traveling widely with backpacks, trying to stretch an Aussie dollar, or working their way along.
Travel, clearly, is a very individual experience. Just because someone chooses to share their experience, doesn’t mean anybody else will want to repeat it. Often the best value that some of this stuff provides is not to tell us where we should or might want to go, but instead to warn us away from going down that road.
BTW, sitting here in our historic corner of downtown Hood River, we cling to a different view of travel. We believe that a room doesn’t have to cost a fortune. We dish value. We like a deal. A real deal. Not a room that costs $260 a night — or more. Can’t recall mention in those big mags of a “great” room priced in the two figures.
We offer any available room in the Hood River Hotel, on Sunday nights during 2012, at a flat $100. When you figure that the room comes with a voucher good for $10 off breakfast at our restaurant, the room is really just $90. Nice. On top of which, we’re offering riverview rooms mid-week for $99 during July. Yikes.
