A Local Travel movement is finding its legs. Strong legs. Last weekend, in a step to find good solid ground upon which to exercise those legs, I published two blog posts about it, one on the now-defunct Lonely Planet Travel Blog hosted by Yahoo!7 Travel in Australia and the other on The Brooklyn Nomad’s blog.

It’s true. Local Travel’s here. It’s a small new movement, but it’s gaining momentum. Stay tuned for more…

Lonely Planet’s Travel Blog (hosted by Yahoo!7 Travel in Australia)

On 17 December 2009, I wrote a post about the misunderstood merits of Local Travel on Lonely Planet’s Travel Blog hosted by Yahoo!7 Travel in Australia.

Judging by the glowingly supportive comments, I apparently tapped a rich vein of local travel enthusiasts eager to lend credence to a cause.

Given that, I was invited by Lonely Planet to write a follow-up post, digging a little deeper into the fertile earth I’d found. That text – Get Lost, Go Local – has again fielded some welcome input from readers.

Here’s how I begin:

My last post about the misunderstood merits of Local Travel appears to have hit a positive nerve. It seems there’s a choir out there of local travellers who welcome a little preaching. Amen.

So from my fine pulpit, let me crack open the Great Explorers’ Almanac and thumb to the right page for a decidedly un-academic but nonetheless historical sermon about the kind of travel you may find meaningful.

I go on to look at how the earliest travel interactions – those from the pre-guidebook days – were flawed but frank. I give a few paragraphs to my impression of contemporary travel as safe but soulless. And then try to tie it all together by proposing Local Travel as the solution.

Most importantly, I drop a big hint:

Two local-travel companies with global reach have united to give oomph to this effort. Spotted by Locals and the WHL Group will soon be announcing how you too can rediscover a misplaced spirit of adventure: Get lost! Go local.

The Brooklyn Nomad Blog

I was welcomed to the pages of The Brooklyn Nomad as a Guest Nomad on 12 February. The blog piece I wrote, called Going Local –Yesterday and Again Today, is a more personal look at how

“a wedge has been driven between travelers and hosts. Both parties now float through a common space that is, alas, no longer a shared one. Most locals keep to residential areas (or keep to themselves when outside the gates), while travelers Spirograph through set circuits complete with canned commentary, the delivery vehicles of which (from buses to guidebooks to smart phones) are little more than horses of a different color.”

It posits that “we [can] bridge the divide between host and visitor, and resuscitate the merits of ‘going local’ without any of its past discredits.”

Are you with us?

Tags:

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 3:51 pm and is filed under the following categories: