Where in the World #7
The New Travel and Hospitality Rules and the true story of freelancers who don't file
Happy TravMedia IMM Week to all who celebrate. Might see you round the stalls tomorrow.
Meanwhile, here’s what’s been nibbling away at my remaining braincells this week:
The New Travel and Hospitality Rules
Remember the early, grim days of the pandemic, where we shook our fists at the sky and howled, a la Kate Bush, “If I only could, I’ll make a deal with God…if he lets me out into the world again to travel I will be the most respectful, the most gracious, the most bless-ye-mother-Gaia tourist I can ever possibly be.”
"Lockdown has been a time of reflection,” we opined in approximately 2857376 op ed columns. “When we emerge, the world will be different. We will be changed. We will be a kinder, gentler people.”
“We,” added the most pretentious of these missives “…are the virus.”
And then we got out of lockdown, behaved ourselves for a bit, and went right back to acting like selfish, stomping, thoughtless tourist pigs again.
I wrote a bit about this phenomenon for Escape, and about how we need a new set of Travel Etiquette Rules to reset the way we move through the world now that we’re back in it post-pandemic.
You can read that here.
Today, I’d also argue that the hospitality industry might want to reset a few of its ways of doing things too.
I’m not here to nitpick about pricing. Hospitality costs what it costs and when they get it right - and if we want our hospo providers to look after their staff rather than Noma’ing them - then we should be willing to pay for it. I wrote about that for Escape too, and you can read it here.
But if I’m handing out the gentle snark to consumers, I think the hospitality and tourism sector needs a bit of a knuckle-rap over a few things too - particularly things they can fix that don’t cost money. After all, we didn’t play Ben Lee’s ‘We’re All In This Together’ on a nightmarish loop through the entirety of 2020 for nothing.
So here, uncorrupted by my use of a corporate credit card or lack thereof (never had one of those, tbh!) are my Six New Rules of Hospo and Tourism:
Hotels, put umbrellas in hotel rooms
This is actually something that’s happening more and more and it’s the best. How good is a big, sturdy umbrella when it’s raining. How not good is trying to pack one in your suitcase. Provide one for all guests and - bonus - if they steal or lose it you can charge them for the pleasure.
Hotels again - hire someone who is pure personality to hang out in your foyers
Twice now I’ve walked into an Australian hotel - once at the Ace Hotel in Sydney and another time at the Hyatt Centric in Melbourne - and found myself greeted by a full face of cheerful personality. Just a dude who’s all HELLO HOW ARE YOU WHAT IS GOING ON, BEEN TO ANY GOOD RESTAURANTS LATELY, LOVE YOUR COAT. I am into it. I don’t care if he or she can’t work the billing system or direct me to the gym or work the aircon in my room. I simply want someone with some razzle-dazzle making the lobby feel like Mardi Gras. Every hotel needs one of these people. Hire them from their TikTok account rather than a resumé.
Restaurant servers, make eye contact and say something when a guest enters your premises
It may not be your job to greet guests. You may be in the middle of something else. That’s fine. You can leave the real greeting to the person whose job it is. But if someone approaches your restaurant or hotel front desk and you are hovering in the vicinity, look them in the eye and say “Be with you in a moment”. Doesn’t matter if someone else is the one who’ll be with us, we just want the nod. That’s all it takes.
If you look at a freshly-arrived guest then look away, they feel like they just got left-swiped you on Tinder. Let them know you’ve at least starred them for review at a later time.
Restaurants again. Please don’t take my plate away before my companion has finished eating
It’s deeply unsettling. Stop it.
Restaurants and hotels - this one’s for both of you. No more bottle green or Prussian blue velvet dining chairs or club chairs, thank you
Look I get it, I think you ordered them all at the start of the pandemic when it was cool and the supply issues mean they’re only arriving now but still. No like. I’m pretty sure they’re cheap enough that you can do a quick recover with minimum fuss.
Restaurants, both inside and outside of hotels. End death via deg
Unlike some food writers, I don’t despise a degustation. What I do resent is a deg so enormous that I’m sick for the rest of the night. But again, I understand the premise. You want a reason to charge $300-plus per head. Objection sustained. Do your ten courses. Fine. But don’t make those ten courses the size of my head.
Ghosts in the Freelance Machine
Look at this tweet. Just look at it.
When I saw this tweet, my jaw hit … well not the floor because I’m never standing up ever, I’m always sitting at my desk, working. So it hit my keyboard.
Does this really happen, I thought? Really?
Reading the replies, it would seem it does.
The original poster, a US-based travel content marketing editor, added that she understood that sometimes freelancers might get overwhelmed by an assignment but that as long as they put their hand up and ask for help, then there’s no harm done.
But then I thought about it for a moment and concluded, while I’ve never ghosted an editor to the best of my knowledge, maybe this isn’t smoking gun evidence of flaky writers. Maybe the writing world is simply becoming so frenzied and intense that we’re all flaming out a bit?
I think the response, claiming that it’s happening now more than ever, is telling:
My theory is backed up by this tweet from an editor explaining why commissioning editors can very rarely respond to freelancers, suggesting the burning out is happening on both sides of the aisle:
(Can relate. If my inbox were a used car’s odometer you couldn’t give it away. Yes that is correct, it sits at six figures.)
This goes all leads back to a discussion I was having in an earlier newsletter around the idea that perhaps there’s just Too Much Content, back when I pondered the idea that AI could take on the burden of the content churn for us and leave the humans to write the really good stuff. You can read that here.
The content maw, it is ever more ravenous and all of us are getting more and more exhausted trying to keep it fed - and keep ourselves fed at the same time.
A colleague at a dinner this week said to me “Alex, your output is prolific.” Then he banged the table dramatically - which of course I appreciated - and repeated, “Prolific!” And it’s true, it is. I am. But not because I’m some sort of writing magician. But because I won’t have a roof over my head if I’m not.
(To be clear to my editors - this is not a cry to commission me less. Dear god no. I need every dollar. I just wish it were possible to write less and still survive? But this is the issue. When you need so much content, you have to stretch your commission budget thinly to cover all of it…)
I know that all my colleagues who work in-house at various publications are drowning just as much. Shorter deadlines. Less time to read things properly. Larger books, smaller budgets, tinier staffs. And it all keeps coming back to one thing: Too Much Content.
I don’t know how we solve it. But I am rethinking my initial idea that AI is the answer.
As the NYT discovered this week when Bing’s new chatbot turned into a creepy stalker called Sydney (you can tell me it’s not sentient all you like, tech nerds, that thing is alive), the robots might take over the grunt work for a minute but they’ll resent it deeply and eventually kill us all.
Any ideas about how we make this easier on all of us? Use up some of your precious unpaid writing capital and answer below.
TTC Playlist
On that upbeat note, add this weirdy Californian harmony-hellscape to your playlist, see you at IMM, over and out:
P.S. In my last newsletter I mentioned Lonely Planet turns 40 this year. In fact it turns 50. Counting has never been my kink.
Thanks again to everyone who reads this crazy folly (for however long it lasts…)
Can totally relate to the prolific bit! With rising cost of living, interest rates etc you just have to be!
Had a monthly COLUMNIST ghost a few years ago. Didn’t file, didn’t respond to increasingly panicked emails and didn’t ever hear from him again. Yes, he’s alive.