Interesting how a lot of food media has been good about covering the impact of the pandemic on the individual producers of food while travel media seems to be all, "When can you go back to Paris? Let's ask the CEO of Delta!"

The much-vaunted Connection With Other People and Cultures, which is ostensibly the core of travel and travel media, is basically absent. It's just...how does this impact you, the aspirational consumer?

I'm sure there are exceptions and apologies to travel pubs and writers who ARE using this time to tell human stories and make those connections, but I've been poking around a lot of the big sites and the trend is jarring

It's so striking to compare the current state (and recent evolution) of food writing and travel writing. One has taken a lot of steps to expand its breadth to reflect the complexity of the world, and showcase a whole range of voices. And one has...taken a lot fewer steps.

(Lots more in my head but it's past my bedtime and I should sleep, night night)

JK one last thing before I sleep: my point is not that travel media should skip the consumer angle altogether but that, just as food writers are covering the human stories of how small restaurant owners or farmers (etc) are affected, travel should do the same.

Every feature in every travel publication includes an appearance by some local person—a hotel employee, a cafe owner, a fishmonger, SOMEONE. How is the pandemic affecting them? What's THEIR story right now? That's something that would be easy to report but is mostly missing.

Travel features LIVE on the people they include. They're the point, or PRESENTED as the point. How many stories have you read that close with some platitude about hospitality and the beauty of culture and how people make a place? A lot!

If cross-cultural connections are the foundation of travel stories, why are they so lacking right now? Why not check in with the tour guide in Trinidad or the chef at the cafe in Croatia where you had that meal that you then wrote about at length?

In fact, that's a free idea for travel publications: a series of stories checking in with the people featured in *past* stories. Personally, I'd much, MUCH rather read that than another interview with a panel of Travel Industry Insiders.™