Travel Content and Cultural Sensitivity: How Should You Depict Other Cultures?

After returning from a trip, travellers are usually consumed by an overwhelming desire to tell everyone about the amazing experience they have had. This is what a travel writer is paid to do in the most eloquent way possible. However, it can also be the hardest part to master when it comes to depicting and representing other cultures.

Cultural sensitivity should be paramount when writing travel content, but it is often sorely overlooked. Mariellen Ward of the Breathedreamgo travel blog has discussed the dangers of cultural imperialism (or the belief that your way of life is better) in travel writing, while photographer Bani Amor has criticised colonialism in travel literature.

When writing about location, ethnicity and society, there are certain to be complicated politics that come into play. Although there’s no one-size-fits-all phrasebook to help travel writers avoid all controversy in their content, there are helpful tricks for traversing this complicated terrain. Scroll down to read the advice of the World Words team.

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Cultural Sensitivity and Travel Content

After returning from a trip, travellers are usually consumed by an overwhelming desire to tell everyone about the amazing experience they have had. This is what a travel writer is paid to do in the most eloquent way possible. However, it can also be the hardest part to master when it comes to depicting and representing other cultures.

Cultural sensitivity should be paramount when writing travel content, but it is often sorely overlooked. Mariellen Ward of the Breathedreamgo travel blog has discussed the dangers of cultural imperialism (or the belief that your way of life is better) in travel writing, while photographer Bani Amor has criticised colonialism in travel literature.

When writing about location, ethnicity and society, there are certain to be complicated politics that come into play. Although there’s no one-size-fits-all phrasebook to help travel writers avoid all controversy in their content, there are helpful tricks for traversing this complicated terrain. Scroll down to read the advice of the World Words team.

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Even More Tired Travel Clichés to Avoid

As you are probably aware, we have written about travel writing clichés before. Twice in fact. But as a few of our below-the-line commentators have rightly pointed out, our previous blog posts (which are here and here) only just scratched the surface. There are many more overused expressions that we want to cruelly expose and point at.

With 2016 upon us, and self-improvement plans under way, we thought it a fitting time to return to the subject and highlight even more trite travel terms. Scroll below to discover our latest mix of nails-on-chalkboard travel phrases.

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12 Tacky Travel Writing Clichés to Avoid

Every writer and editor has their personal peccadilloes about overused travel writing terms such as ‘off the beaten path’ or ‘sun-drenched’, but individual qualms shouldn’t mean a blanket ban on these phrases. These may all be overused clichés, but sometimes — to borrow another particularly well-worn cliché — they hit the nail on the head.

However, there are some words and formulaic travel phrases that are so overused, they are positively exhausted. Many of them are churned out so regularly in travel writing that they have lost all meaning, and no longer register with readers. And yet, thanks to writerly laziness, these hackneyed phrases keep on cropping up again and again.

We have named and shamed 12 of the worst offenders below; our very own dirty dozen of travel writing clichés.

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Not a quaff

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