Last Friday (13 November 2015) Turkey had first of its kind travel summit organized by Uzakrota.
Key people and companies from tourism sector and travel bloggers were united in a day full of valuable speakers talking about recent developments and answering much wondered questions related to the tourism and travel blogging. Not to mention coffee breaks full of networking.
This kind of summits is not a rare thing in abroad but for Turkey it was the first time for a fully dedicated summit for travel bloggers. It was no surprise such event was organized by Uzakrota (Gökhan Erdoğan), who’s behind one of the most know travel blogs of Turkey and one of the founders of “Travel Bloggers Club”.
Moderator for the “Uzakrota Travel Summit” was Onur Çağan Aygün known for his TV travel programme named “Dünyada Bir Gün” (A day in the World). I want to congratulate everyone involved in making this summit because not only topics were chosen very well, speakers for the topics were a perfect match. Attendance exceeded my expectations and attention was real. For those of you wondering what was the programme like, and who were the speakers (and who also knows how to speak Turkish >_<) here is the link.
Travel blogging is a hot trend not only in Turkey but in a global scale. It is safe to say travel blogging is one the parameters that shapes tourism and travel trends now. Travelling is much easier in these modern days and lots of people are doing it. Reaching out for information is just a click away and people use internet to find out where to go, what to do, where to eat even before buying flight tickets. And of course they stumble upon travel blogs.
Travel blogs are popular because people usually think they are more genuine rather than a tourism brands “possible sales” aimed suggestions. But I said “usually” because especially for the last couple of years, news about “Quit job, now travelling the World” , “making money from posting my travels” kind of dreamy news are increasing. This kind of news makes it sound like “perfect life” with no struggles to get readers attention and makes travellers who doesn’t own a travel blog yet to open one and for those who already have to think like “I should make money from this “. Adding insult to the injury seeing popular bloggers enjoying their sponsored trips, envy grows.
Even though “earning money from their blog” kind of bloggers are minority not majority, and things are not always “perfect” behind the scenes, people now have this prejudice that a travel blog should make money. More often I get asked “How much money you earn from your travel blog?” before they ask me “if I earn money from my blog” 🙂 But truth is most bloggers wish they do 🙂
Blogging is personal; most travel bloggers just want to share their experience. I don’t want to sound whining but seriously blogging takes much time and if you really don’t love it you really won’t be doing it. For most of the bloggers, main purpose is not “gaining money” from it, but idea that they can make money from their blog is a tempting one. But in reality it is super hard to stand out from many travel blogs. Having a super content alone is not enough, you need to network and reach out a lot and you need to be lucky as well. Most brands don’t care about how much work you put into a single post or how much time you spend on photos you used, but they care about how many visitors your website has and how many followers you have on instagram. (also don’t get me started on Instagram where you can buy followers and likes and everybody has “perfect” life!, but I’ll write about this eventually 😉 )
Anyway, I wrote a long one again >_<. To sum it up, travel blogging is improving in Turkey, increasing numbers of blogs, brands paying more attention to bloggers, people using travel blogs more often… I take all of these as positive steps. Because if people like travelling more and their trips get better with suggestions and advices thanks to travel bloggers, personally I would feel like I’ve fulfilled my intentions as a travel blogger 🙂
A travelling person would widen his/her horizon and I mean it both literally and metaphorically! I believe each time a travelling person saw a new place, meet new cultures he/she will know better that they are just a small part of the big puzzle. And they will come to understand that problems they had seem so much small now that they are happier. I believe this is the reason once you became a traveller you can not go back 🙂
Alright then, you dearest travel blog readers, let me hear what you think about travel blogging…