British Guild of Travel Writers
Encyclopedia
The British Guild of Travel Writers (BGTW) was formed in 1960. It is a membership organisation that admits authors whose work focuses on travel. It also includes among its membership many other professionals who generate travel-related content for print, broadcast and online media. The membership, which now numbers over 200 individuals, thus includes not only authors of travel literature
and guide book
writers, but also journalist
s, editors, photographers and broadcaster
s.
The Guild's registered office is at Salisbury
in England
. A small secretariat is based in London
.
companies or tour organisers. Members are, in the main, citizens of the United Kingdom
or Republic of Ireland
, or foreign writers resident in Britain and Ireland who work for or with British media. Would-be members are required to demonstrate that they are bona fide travel writers (or other content creators) who rely substantially on income from their creative work, and that their interest in and professional commitment to travel writing has been sustained over at least three years. Many members are self-employed, while others are employed by newspapers, magazines or other media.
As the premier UK-based organisation for travel media professionals, the Guild provides for collegial exchange of views between members as well as facilitating mutual support, a year-round programme of meetings for members, legal advice, and training and professional development. The British Guild of Travel Writers does from time to time contribute to public policy debates where it judges that the issues at stake may have an effect on the market for good travel writing or have implications for the well-being and interests of the Guild members. In 2009, for example, it highlighted the possible negative effects on reader choice of the decision of the British retail chain W H Smith
to stock at certain of its stores only travel titles available from a single distributor.
The Guild holds an annual conference, restricted to members, which has latterly been held in the Scottish Highlands
(2007), Malta
(2008), York
(2009), Tenerife
(2010) and Mussanah in Oman
(2011). The 2012 annual conference will take place in Boulogne on the north coast of France
.
A monthly restricted circulation newsletter is prepared and distributed to members. The BGTW Yearbook, published in February each year, is circulated widely within the UK travel trade and is also available for purchase by the public.
Members in good standing are eligible to stand for office on the Guild's committee, which consists of about ten members elected by the full membership. Members who are no longer so actively professionally involved in travel writing, whether by virtue of having retired or for other reasons, are able to retain an affiliation with the Guild through the organisation's Associate Membership scheme. All full members are required to show each year that they still satisfy the criteria for full membership.
and tourism
issues from across the world. Many Guild members are established writers of guide books and narrative travel books, others frequently lecture on their specialist areas, while yet others comment critically on the history of travel or travel writing or on contemporary issues in transport
and tourism.
BGTW members write about destinations; they write about journeys, and they write about travel issues. The latter routinely include public transport
, civil aviation
, overland travel
, ecotourism
, slow travel, travel technology
, consumer protection
in the travel industry, medical tourism
and travel medicine
, and the development of and prospects for travel literature
.
but also more widely. The main BGTW award in 2011 was to a new art gallery, Turner Contemporary in Margate
, England. The winners of the 2010 tourism awards, announced in London
in November 2010, included the New Acropolis Museum in Athens
and the Haida Heritage Centre in British Columbia
, Canada
.
The winners in the three principal categories of the Guild's 2009 programme of Tourism Awards were :
As always, the award presentations were made at an annual awards dinner in London hosted on the eve of the World Travel Market
(WTM).
There are about ten other awards made each year.
The Guild may also, from time to time, make a Lifetime Achievement Award to an individual who has made, over a sustained period, a notable and positive contribution to the development of worthwhile travel, either through published work or other initiatives. Previous recipients of the BGTW Lifetime Achievement Award include Hilary Bradt
, the founder of the pioneering travel guidebook company Bradt Travel Guides
, and the distinguished British travel writers Eric Newby
and Patrick Leigh Fermor
.
Each year, the Guild supports the work of one, or sometimes two, charities. The charity adopted by BGTW for 2010, its fiftieth anniversary year, is The Travel Foundation, a UK-based charity that works with local communities to ensure that tourism initiatives are sustainable .
Since 2009, the British Guild of Travel Writers has run an annual travel writing competition to encourage new writing talent. The British Guild of Travel Writers in January 2011 announced an initiative, supported with sponsorship from the Sultanate of Oman, to provide scholarships for student taking doctorates in tourism studies at the University of Surrey
.
Travel literature
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
and guide book
Guide book
A guide book is a book for tourists or travelers that provides details about a geographic location, tourist destination, or itinerary. It is the written equivalent of a tour guide...
writers, but also journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
s, editors, photographers and broadcaster
Presenter
A presenter, or host , is a person or organization responsible for running an event. A museum or university, for example, may be the presenter or host of an exhibit. Likewise, a master of ceremonies is a person that hosts or presents a show...
s.
The Guild's registered office is at Salisbury
Salisbury
Salisbury is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England and the only city in the county. It is the second largest settlement in the county...
in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. A small secretariat is based in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
Membership and benefits
Membership is in principle restricted to travel media professionals who take a genuinely independent approach to the places about which they write and are not beholden to any national or regional marketing organisations, public relationsPublic relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
companies or tour organisers. Members are, in the main, citizens of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
or Republic of Ireland
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
, or foreign writers resident in Britain and Ireland who work for or with British media. Would-be members are required to demonstrate that they are bona fide travel writers (or other content creators) who rely substantially on income from their creative work, and that their interest in and professional commitment to travel writing has been sustained over at least three years. Many members are self-employed, while others are employed by newspapers, magazines or other media.
As the premier UK-based organisation for travel media professionals, the Guild provides for collegial exchange of views between members as well as facilitating mutual support, a year-round programme of meetings for members, legal advice, and training and professional development. The British Guild of Travel Writers does from time to time contribute to public policy debates where it judges that the issues at stake may have an effect on the market for good travel writing or have implications for the well-being and interests of the Guild members. In 2009, for example, it highlighted the possible negative effects on reader choice of the decision of the British retail chain W H Smith
W H Smith
WHSmith plc is a British retailer, headquartered in Swindon, Wiltshire, England. It is best known for its chain of high street, railway station, airport, hospital and motorway service station shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers, and entertainment products...
to stock at certain of its stores only travel titles available from a single distributor.
The Guild holds an annual conference, restricted to members, which has latterly been held in the Scottish Highlands
Scottish Highlands
The Highlands is an historic region of Scotland. The area is sometimes referred to as the "Scottish Highlands". It was culturally distinguishable from the Lowlands from the later Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands...
(2007), Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
(2008), York
York
York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...
(2009), Tenerife
Tenerife
Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of the seven Canary Islands, it is also the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 km² and 906,854 inhabitants, 43% of the total population of the Canary Islands. About five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, the...
(2010) and Mussanah in Oman
Oman
Oman , officially called the Sultanate of Oman , is an Arab state in southwest Asia on the southeast coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It is bordered by the United Arab Emirates to the northwest, Saudi Arabia to the west, and Yemen to the southwest. The coast is formed by the Arabian Sea on the...
(2011). The 2012 annual conference will take place in Boulogne on the north coast of France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
.
A monthly restricted circulation newsletter is prepared and distributed to members. The BGTW Yearbook, published in February each year, is circulated widely within the UK travel trade and is also available for purchase by the public.
Members in good standing are eligible to stand for office on the Guild's committee, which consists of about ten members elected by the full membership. Members who are no longer so actively professionally involved in travel writing, whether by virtue of having retired or for other reasons, are able to retain an affiliation with the Guild through the organisation's Associate Membership scheme. All full members are required to show each year that they still satisfy the criteria for full membership.
Scope of Members' Work
Texts, broadcasts and images created by BGTW members appear virtually daily in the UK media and on the Internet, and to a lesser extent in non-UK print and broadcast media, with Guild members reporting on travelTravel
Travel is the movement of people or objects between relatively distant geographical locations. 'Travel' can also include relatively short stays between successive movements.-Etymology:...
and tourism
Tourism
Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".Tourism has become a...
issues from across the world. Many Guild members are established writers of guide books and narrative travel books, others frequently lecture on their specialist areas, while yet others comment critically on the history of travel or travel writing or on contemporary issues in transport
Transport
Transport or transportation is the movement of people, cattle, animals and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, rail, road, water, cable, pipeline, and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles, and operations...
and tourism.
BGTW members write about destinations; they write about journeys, and they write about travel issues. The latter routinely include public transport
Public transport
Public transport is a shared passenger transportation service which is available for use by the general public, as distinct from modes such as taxicab, car pooling or hired buses which are not shared by strangers without private arrangement.Public transport modes include buses, trolleybuses, trams...
, civil aviation
Civil aviation
Civil aviation is one of two major categories of flying, representing all non-military aviation, both private and commercial. Most of the countries in the world are members of the International Civil Aviation Organization and work together to establish common standards and recommended practices...
, overland travel
Overland travel
Overland travel or overlanding refers to an "overland journey" - perhaps originating with Marco Polo's first overland expedition in the 13th century from Venice to the Chinese court of Kublai Khan. Today overlanding is a form of extended adventure holiday, embarking on a long journey, often in a...
, ecotourism
Ecotourism
Ecotourism is a form of tourism visiting fragile, pristine, and usually protected areas, intended as a low impact and often small scale alternative to standard commercial tourism...
, slow travel, travel technology
Travel technology
Travel technology is a term used to describe applications of Information Technology , or Information and Communications Technology , in travel, tourism and hospitality industry...
, consumer protection
Consumer protection
Consumer protection laws designed to ensure fair trade competition and the free flow of truthful information in the marketplace. The laws are designed to prevent businesses that engage in fraud or specified unfair practices from gaining an advantage over competitors and may provide additional...
in the travel industry, medical tourism
Medical tourism
Medical tourism is a term initially coined by travel agencies and the mass media to describe the rapidly-growing practice of travelling across international borders to obtain health care...
and travel medicine
Travel medicine
Travel medicine or emporiatrics is the branch of medicine that deals with the prevention and management of health problems of international travelers.-Globalization and travel:...
, and the development of and prospects for travel literature
Travel literature
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
.
Awards for Innovative Developments in Tourism
Through its annual Tourism Awards, the Guild recognises innovation and excellence in the tourism industry, not just in the British IslesBritish Isles
The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and...
but also more widely. The main BGTW award in 2011 was to a new art gallery, Turner Contemporary in Margate
Margate
-Demography:As of the 2001 UK census, Margate had a population of 40,386.The ethnicity of the town was 97.1% white, 1.0% mixed race, 0.5% black, 0.8% Asian, 0.6% Chinese or other ethnicity....
, England. The winners of the 2010 tourism awards, announced in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in November 2010, included the New Acropolis Museum in Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
and the Haida Heritage Centre in British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
.
The winners in the three principal categories of the Guild's 2009 programme of Tourism Awards were :
- Switzerland Mobility, an initiative to promote activity-based explorations of SwitzerlandSwitzerlandSwitzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
(viz. in particular cycling but also hiking, skating, canoeing, etc). In Switzerland the organisation is usually referred to as Suisse Mobile (in FrenchFrench peopleThe French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...
) or Schweiz Mobil (in GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
). - ConCERT Cambodia, a non-profit ínitiative in Siem ReapSiem ReapSiem Reap is the capital city of Siem Reap Province in northwestern Cambodia, and is the gateway to Angkor region.Siem Reap has colonial and Chinese-style architecture in the Old French Quarter, and around the Old Market...
, CambodiaCambodiaCambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
, which promotes socially responsible tourism in Cambodia, The acronym ConCERT stands for Connecting Communities, Environment and Responsible Tourism. - The former home of Charles DarwinCharles DarwinCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
at Down HouseDown HouseDown House is the former home of the English naturalist Charles Darwin and his family. It was in this house and garden that Darwin worked on his theories of evolution by natural selection which he had conceived in London before moving to Downe....
in KentKentKent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
(England) which has been sensitively restored to create an engaging educational experience exploring aspects of Darwin’s life and work.
As always, the award presentations were made at an annual awards dinner in London hosted on the eve of the World Travel Market
World Travel Market
World Travel Market is a UK event aimed at the global travel industry. Almost 46,000 senior travel industry professionals, government ministers and representatives of the international media, converge on ExCeL London each year in November to attend WTM. This year World Travel Market is scheduled...
(WTM).
Other awards
At the annual awards dinner, the Guild also makes awards to its own members, recognising excellence in various categories of travel writing, as well as for travel photography, radio and television programmes related to travel, etc. The leading award is for the Travel Writer of the Year, based upon a portfolio of about half a dozen published articles and evaluated by an independent panel of assessors.There are about ten other awards made each year.
The Guild may also, from time to time, make a Lifetime Achievement Award to an individual who has made, over a sustained period, a notable and positive contribution to the development of worthwhile travel, either through published work or other initiatives. Previous recipients of the BGTW Lifetime Achievement Award include Hilary Bradt
Hilary Bradt
Hilary Bradt MBE is the founder of Bradt Travel Guides, a publisher which became an increasingly visible presence in the travel guide book world starting in the mid-1970s....
, the founder of the pioneering travel guidebook company Bradt Travel Guides
Bradt Travel Guides
Bradt Travel Guides is a publisher of travel guides founded by Hilary Bradt who was awarded an MBE in 2008 for services to the Tourist Industry and to Charity....
, and the distinguished British travel writers Eric Newby
Eric Newby
George Eric Newby CBE MC was an English travel author. Newby's best known works include A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, The Last Grain Race, and Round Ireland in Low Gear.-Life:...
and Patrick Leigh Fermor
Patrick Leigh Fermor
Sir Patrick "Paddy" Michael Leigh Fermor, DSO, OBE was a British author, scholar and soldier, who played a prominent role behind the lines in the Cretan resistance during World War II. He was widely regarded as "Britain's greatest living travel writer", with books including his classic A Time of...
.
Each year, the Guild supports the work of one, or sometimes two, charities. The charity adopted by BGTW for 2010, its fiftieth anniversary year, is The Travel Foundation, a UK-based charity that works with local communities to ensure that tourism initiatives are sustainable .
Since 2009, the British Guild of Travel Writers has run an annual travel writing competition to encourage new writing talent. The British Guild of Travel Writers in January 2011 announced an initiative, supported with sponsorship from the Sultanate of Oman, to provide scholarships for student taking doctorates in tourism studies at the University of Surrey
University of Surrey
The University of Surrey is a university located within the county town of Guildford, Surrey in the South East of England. It received its charter on 9 September 1966, and was previously situated near Battersea Park in south-west London. The institution was known as Battersea College of Technology...
.