Travel often inspires the creation of narratives about journeys and destinations, more so with the increasing availability of online platforms, applications for smartphones and tablets, and various other social media technologies. This book examines travel blogs and their associated social media as a form of self-presentation that negotiates the tensions between discourses of travel and tourism. As such, it addresses how contemporary travellers use online platforms to communicate their experiences of journeys and destinations, and how the traveller/tourist dichotomy finds expression in these narratives. Addressing the need for more in-depth analysis through a study of blogs, this exploration of networked narratives of an individual’s travel experience considers personal motivations, self-promotion, and self-presentation as key factors in the creation of both personal and commercial travel blogs. As this text applies concepts such as self-presentation and heteroglossia, it will be of interest to both students and scholars of tourism, new media, sociology, cultural studies, and discourse studies.

Shivya Nath quit her corporate job at age twenty-three to travel the world. She gave up her home and the need for a permanent address, sold most of her possessions and embarked on a nomadic journey that has taken her everywhere from remote Himalayan villages to the Amazon rainforests of Ecuador. Along the way, she lived with an indigenous Mayan community in Guatemala, hiked alone in the Ecuadorian Andes, got mugged in Costa Rica, swam across the border from Costa Rica to Panama, slept under a meteor shower in the cracked salt desert of Gujarat and learnt to conquer her deepest fears. With its vivid descriptions, cinematic landscapes, moving encounters and uplifting adventures, The Shooting Star is a travel memoir that maps not just the world but the human spirit.

The Emerald Handbook of ICT in Tourism and Hospitality incorporates key research findings, in-depth case studies and discussion of the future implications stemming from technologies changes and developments across a number of core themes.

Part memoir and part philosophical look at why we travel, filled with stories of Matt Kepnes' adventures abroad, an exploration of wanderlust and what it truly means to be a nomad. New York Times bestselling author of How to Travel the World on $50 a Day, Matthew Kepnes knows what it feels like to get the travel bug. After meeting some travelers on a trip to Thailand in 2005, he realized that living life meant more than simply meeting society's traditional milestones. Over 500,000 miles, 1,000 hostels, and 90 different countries later, Matt has compiled his favorite stories, experiences, and insights into this travel manifesto. Filled with the color and perspective that only hindsight and self-reflection can offer, these stories get to the real questions at the heart of wanderlust. Travel questions that transcend the basic "how-to," and plumb the depths of what drives us to travel — and what extended travel around the world can teach us about life, ourselves, and our place in the world. Ten Years a Nomad is a heartfelt comprehension of the insatiable craving for travel, unraveling the authenticity of being a vagabond, not for months but for a fulfilling decade.

Living in a world that is increasingly ‘on the move’ means that many of us now rely on mobile devices, social media, and networking technologies to coordinate togetherness with our social networks even when we are apart. Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in the emerging practices of ‘interactive travel’. Today’s travellers are more likely than ever to pack a laptop or a mobile phone and to use these devices to stay in touch with friends and family members – as well as to connect with strangers and other travellers – while they are on the road. New practices such as location-aware navigating, travel blogging, flashpacking and Couchsurfing now shape the way travellers engage with each other, with their social networks, and with the world around them. Travel Connections prompts a rethinking of the key paradigms in tourism studies in the digital age. Interactive travel calls into question longstanding tourism concepts such as landscape, the tourist gaze, hospitality, authenticity and escape. The book proposes a range of new concepts to describe the way tourists inhabit the world and engage with their social networks in the twenty-first century: smart tourism, the mediated gaze, mobile conviviality, re-enchantment and embrace. Based on intensive fieldwork with interactive travellers, Travel Connections offers a detailed account of this emerging phenomenon and uncovers the new forms of mediated and face-to-face togetherness that become possible in a mobile world. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, tourism and hospitality, new media, cosmopolitanism studies, mobility studies and cultural studies.

It was hitting rock bottom that convinced Lauren to quit her job, sell everything she owned, and travel the world alone. It wasn't an easy decision: she suffered from debilitating anxiety, was battling an eating disorder, and had just had her heart broken. Not only that, but she had so little life experience that she had never eaten rice or been on a bus. She'd hoped leaving everything behind would help her find and heal herself, but instead Lauren's travels were full of bad luck and near-death experiences. She was scammed and assaulted; lost teeth and swallowed a cockroach. She fell into leech-infested rice paddies, was caught up in a tsunami, had the brakes of her motorbike fail, and experienced a very unhappy ending in Thailand. It was just as she was about to give up on travel when she stumbled across a handsome New Zealander with a love of challenges... How Not to Travel The World is about following your dreams, no matter how many curveballs life throws at you. It's about learning to get out of your comfort zone, finding the humour in messed up situations, and falling in love with life on the road.

The keys to real success in travel writing and blogging.