Posts tagged best trips

Editors’ Choice Grand Prize Winners
A riverside love nest, a neighborhood of books, a dusty subtropical sweet spot, a place where jazz hands can roam free, and a gallery where tiny taxidermy is a medium for angst-y artistic expression… each of our winners grasped the idea of what a Trazzler Trip is all about—and transported us to these wildly different corners of the world (in less than 160 words, no less).

Foodie Temples: Sarah Barker
Cutting the Dust With Sugar Cane Juice in Homestead, Florida

Love: Tess Link
Shacking Up on the Banks of a River in Ojai, California

LGBT Icons: James Mulcahy
Rocking Out to Rodgers and Hammerstein in New York, NY

Neighborhood Spots: Nick Rowlands
Rummaging Around Nooks and Crannies in Azbakiya Book Market, Cairo

Only in SF: Traci Hui
Feeling Nihilistic With Dead Mouse Hamlet in San Francisco, CA

The writers of our Grand-Prize trips win a free trip to San Francisco: five nights at a Joie de Vivre Hotel, free round-trip airfare within the continental US, and a $700 contract to write 15 trips about their Only-in-San-Francisco experience.

It’s always agonizing to choose just one winner per theme, so we awarded 15 Editors’ Choice Runners-Up prizes (15 $250 contracts to write ten short Trazzler trips):

Lisa Michele Burns, Maureen Duncan, Joanna Eng, GladysG, Lily Grace, Megan Kung, Apryl Lundsten, Doug Mack, Gail Nelson-Bonebrake, Mag Ritt, Diana Springfield, Ben Shattuck, Sam Sherman, Tuatara, and Laura Woodman.

People’s Choice Grand-Prize Winners
Foodie Temples: Mary Bonomo
LGBT Icons: Kayla Albert
Neighborhood Spots: Edna Zhou
Only in SF: Rebecca Feinberg
Love in the City: Kim Repp

Our People’s Choice winners win a free trip for two to San Francisco including round-trip airfare for two (within the continental US), 5 nights at a Joie de Vivre Hotel, and $700 in spending money to make a bit of Only-in-San-Francisco magic.

We can’t wait to hear all about our winners’ trips. As I write, our Island Contest winners, Adrienne Wilson and Heather McNeill are exploring Hawaii—one beach and shave-ice shack at a time—we’ll be tweeting about their adventures next week.

—Megan

Hello Trazzlers—

Over the past weeks, we’ve received quite a few questions about the different types of trips on the site—and even more queries about who writes our trips—so I thought I’d take a minute to explain how it all comes together.

Most of the trips on Trazzler.com were written by freelancers based all around the world. We focused on weekend destinations around big cities and dream trips all over the globe.

Then, in September, we opened up trip publishing to writers who applied and looked to recruit a new crop of freelancers and community managers. (Speaking of which, we are on the verge of announcing another round of freelance writers… thanks for hanging in there—we finally received some of our initial funding, albeit a bit behind schedule.)

To be honest, we weren’t quite sure what kind of response we would get and whether users would embrace our (admittedly quirky) style and slant. You most certainly did—we still can’t believe how good your submissions are and how many places in the world that never make it into traditional travel publications are popping up on Trazzler every single day.

Back to the trips… When you sign up to write for Trazzler and submit a trip, it is by default published as a “user trip.” We then read through these trips and determine—one by one—which trips become Trazzler trips and go into the public tripstream. If necessary, we also find a photo for the trip at this time. Incidentally, when we make a trip a “Trazzler Trip,” we automatically have this writer on our radar for future freelance opportunities.

User Trips and Trazzler Trips: a breakdown

User trips appear in the user’s “My Trips” area and also at the bottom of the country and tag listings and search results. User trips are preceded by the username and either display the map of the location or the user’s photo.

Trazzler trips appear in the tripstream—the procession of trips that you can move through by clicking “add to wishlist” and “skip to next.” Trazzler trips display the writer’s full name and a photo credit. They are also displayed with a photo thumbnail in the country and tag listings and search results and always rise to the top of these lists.

We’re eager to get your feedback on this setup. What do you think?

What is our criteria for choosing Trazzler trips? First off, we believe that when someone takes the time to write about his favorite spot or a place that she can’t get out of her mind, it is meaningful and valuable—whether we choose it as a Trazzler trip or not. We’ve read countless user trips that we sincerely hope that people will find and read, but that for one reason or another (see below) we couldn’t make Trazzler trips.

Reasons a trip might not get published as a Trazzler Trip:

The place/activity:
—too similar to another Trazzler trip
—too broad or generic
—too conventional
—an event or place that might not stand the test of time

The style or writing:
—too long (over 120-140 words)
—too many exclamation points or superlatives
—too many hyperbolic adjectives: amazing, incredible, breathtaking, awesome
—rampant misspellings or questionable grammar
—chronically mixed metaphors
—run on sentences

The focus:
—smacks of shilling
—reads like a tourist brochure—no special angle, no hook
—includes extraneous info that is not related to the trip
—too many reasons not to go there/too negative
—too much first person (some is fine, too much biography make it harder to place the reader in the moment)
—offensive, exploitative, destructive, violent, or mean-spirited

See our writing guide and FAQ for more information and guidelines. And feel free to ignore the above guidelines if you prefer to just do your own thing and share your trips with friends, family, and fellow trazzlers.

More soon. In the meantime, why not check out some writing that will inspire you to dive into the falling autumn leaves (and add the tag “fall” to any of your own autumnal ruminations):

http://www.trazzler.com/trips/tags/fall

I, for one, plan to get outside this weekend (to the Sierra de Guadarrama—I promise to write a trip), change out my city air for pine-scented mountain air, play in the snow, and enjoy my first election-free moments in a long, long time.
—Megan

We knew that travel could provide a (desperately?) needed break from day-to-day life. And that, at its very best, it has the capacity to open minds, dispel stereotypes, and even make us better human beings. (And, at its worst, make us kiss the ground when we get home.)

But what about the places we visit? Is it possible that we can leave a place better than we found it, just by having traveled there? Our writers have found trips all over the world that do just this—without sacrificing an iota of the joy of travel.

Rose wrote about rainforests destined to be chopped down that are now being preserved because they are more valuable as ecotourist destinations. Our freelancers, Tracy Broom and Livia McRee, submitted trips that struck a balance between ecotravel, volunteer work, and animal encounters. Phillip Orchard wrote eloquently about the humanity of finding peace and relaxation in places where tourists seldom venture.

Preserving Rainforest/Wildlife/Local Culture:
Zipping From Tree to Tree With Gibbons in Bokeo, Laos
Embarking on an Ethical Elephant Trek in Hongsa, Laos

Voluntourism
Restoring Habitat for Wildlife in San Cristobal, Ecuador
Bathing Elephants at a Rescue Center in Bangkok, Thailand
Building a Kindergarten to Save Coral Reefs in Vanua Levu, Fiji
Protecting Sea Turtles in San Miguel, Costa Rica

Socially Conscious Travel to Unexpected Places
Relaxing in a Women’s Prison in in Chiang Mai, Thailand
Basking in Peace on War-less CeCe Beach in Monrovia, Liberia

Travel experiences like these not only do good in the communities in question, they give us an opportunity to get deeper, to do something, and meet interesting and enterprising people off the well-beaten tourist path. If you contribute a trip that falls into this category, give it the tag “ethical travel” so that others can find it here:

http://www.trazzler.com/trips/tags/ethical-travel

But I don’t think we have to travel halfway around the world to make a difference in people’s lives and livelihoods. My next post is going to be about a fascinating person who has traveled close to home, making a herculean effort to save a beloved (and delicious) local cultural institution from homogenization and extinction… And you’ll get to read all about it here on Trazzler.

—Megan

We knew there was a huge, untapped creative force out there, but we’ve just been blown away by the quality of the submissions that we are receiving (both from prospective writers/freelancers and regular users). Are we on to something here? We think so.

A lot of writers have wondered what our plans are. Are we really going to hire people to write trips? The answer is a resounding “yes”—in fact we already have. Most of the trips on the site were written by professional writers and we intend to always dedicate a high percentage of our budget to community leaders, content managers, and freelancers.

But we will also always have a special place in our (metaphorical, editorial) heart for users who trazzle and swap trips with friends and contribute for the sheer joy of writing and sharing their travel wisdom. In the coming months we will develop ways to reward you, as well, through prizes and contests.

We’re just getting started, so the more users we get, the more we can build up the kind of permanent funding that would allow us to hire a constant, steady stream of contributors (subtext: please tell your friends, family, enemies, mechanic, dental hygenist, etc. about Trazzler.com).



So you can get a feel for what we like, I wanted to share a few of our favorites from the last batch of stellar submissions.

We loved motospike’s SE Asia trips. The mom in me is especially glad he braved “Death Highway” and lived to write about it.

Best international trip
Scarfing Spicy Pad Thai on Khaosan Road, Bangkok (motospike)

And on the local front, we have a special weakness for people sharing their favorite spots close to home…

Best local trip
Jumping in the Lake with Man’s Best Friends in Austin, Texas (laura)

And we also were quite taken by the quality of many of the photos submitted…

Best photos
Living Like the Garifuna in Cayos Cochinos, Honduras (changeling)
Motorcycling the Death Highway in Vietnam (motospike)

And, finally, we love writers who take a risk and write about something that 95% of the general public would probably never consider doing. This personal, quirky stuff so often falls through the cracks in traditional travel writing. There’s just not space for it. We’ve got plenty of room here.

Best “you’ll never find it in a guidebook” trip
Craning at Containers Piled High on Terminal Island, California (lars)

So come right in and write for that 5% who love to do the same stuff that you do (I’ve got a trip about driving through a steel mill in Cleveland coming soon—I have a feeling Lars would dig it).

More soon…

—Megan