Blog Profiles: Travel and Tourism Blogs

Welcome to Blog Profiles! Each week, PR Newswire media relations manager Christine Cube selects an industry or subject and a handful of sites that do a good job with promoting, contributing, and blogging about the space. Do you have a blog that deserves recognition? Tell Christine why on PR Newswire for Bloggers.

I have a soft spot for tourism and hospitality. I covered this beat many moons ago as a reporter for the Washington Business Journal.

I met a lot of great folks in the DC hospitality industry, sources who remain good friends and who still send me stories from time to time. While I don’t actively cover hospitality anymore, I like to keep up with the business pulse.

The impending bloom of Washington’s cherry blossoms are just weeks away, and I can feel the city begin to prepare for tourism.

With this in mind, here are some travel and tourism blogs I recently came across:

Ever In Transit looks to find “adventure every single day.” It’s written by California husband and wife Kevin Adams and Cassie Kifer, who feature travel tips, stories, and culinary excursions.

Kifer says the couple takes advantage of every opportunity to travel, taking into consideration their pets, home, and community in the San Francisco Bay Area. When they can’t go far, they travel to what’s close.

“We probably travel 5 percent to 10 percent of the year internationally and another 5 percent to 10 percent domestically,” she explained. “But the rest of the time, we do frequent day trips in Northern California.”

Adams and Kifer are serious travelers. I especially liked their recent piece on Discovering Ancient Hawaii in the Halawa Valley, Molokai.

In addition to the blog, their Pinterest presence also caught my eye. Adams and Kifer pin where they’ve been, and where they’re headed next. They have more than 11,000 followers on Pinterest.

“A few country boards toward the bottom are places we are planning to go to so I’m collecting articles I find and photographic inspiration,” Kifer said. “Pinterest can be a great travel planning tool.”

Follow @caskifer on Twitter.

Happy Hotelier is the work of Guido J. van den Elshout, a hotelier and blogger from The Hague, The Netherlands.

The Happy Hotelier aims to give visitors of The Netherlands and cities, including The Hague, Amsterdam, Delft, Leiden, and Rotterdam, more insight into Dutch accommodations and things to do as well as offer some hotel reviews.

I liked van den Elshout’s recent post, Closing Haagsche Suites, where he discusses closing his hotel. In it, he talks about having “mixed feelings, but looking forward very much to new adventures.”

Follow @HappyHotelier on Twitter.

Jason Around the World is the travel blog of Jason M., a 30-something-year-old “travel addict with a bit of a predisposition to places most people would never consider traveling.”

“My short-term goal is to visit every country and autonomous place in the next few years, followed by exploring some of the smaller towns and natural wonders of them,” Jason says on his blog. “I love seeing places by doing – things like climbing a mountain, running a marathon, and really getting a feel for a place is what life is all about to me.”

This is one of the most impressive personal travel blogs I’ve seen. Jason M. has covered the globe, and you can track his progress on his country list.

Through his writing and photographs, you can’t help but get caught up in where Jason M. is headed next. He’s even got a strategy for the remaining 42 countries on his list.

Follow @ironmanjt on Twitter.

Theme Park Tourist is the “ultimate guide to the world’s theme parks.”

The site has been offering news, reviews, and money-saving tips on parks since Feb. 2009.

“Whether you are looking for cheap deals on tickets and hotels, want to know when a new attraction is scheduled to open, or are hoping to keep up-to-date with the latest news and updates from your favourite theme parks, Theme Park Tourist has got you covered,” the blog says.

This is a fun site.

I especially liked Revealed: 10 new details of the Hogwarts Express at Universal Orlando. In it, the blog talks about how the Hogwarts Express will link the “existing Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Hogsmeade at Islands of Adventure with the under-construction Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Diagon Alley at Universal Studios Florida.”

“It will recreate the journey taken by Potter and his friends at the start and finish of every year at Hogwarts,” Theme Park Tourist reports.

Follow @ThemeParkNews on Twitter.

A Luxury Travel Blog is brought to us by Paul Johnson, who has worked in the travel industry for more than 25 years and also serves as a director of online tourism marketing company, The Dedicated Partnership Ltd.

A couple of posts that I found interesting include how to pick the right luxury African safari camp and the top 5 Thai festivals to try. Among them actually is one of my bucket list items — Loi Krathong — the November Thai festival of lights where waters around Thailand are lit up with a stunning display of lanterns.

Follow @luxury_travel on Twitter.

Christine Cube is a media relations manager with PR Newswire and freelance writer. She thinks it might be time to figure out a travel plan to Thailand this November. Follow @cpcube or give her a shout at PR Newswire’s Google+.