{"id":37361,"date":"2013-07-10T13:34:27","date_gmt":"2013-07-10T12:34:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=37361"},"modified":"2013-07-10T13:34:27","modified_gmt":"2013-07-10T13:34:27","slug":"journalist-spotlight-tina-edwin-banerjee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/journalist-spotlight-tina-edwin-banerjee\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalist Spotlight: Tina Edwin-Banerjee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tina Edwin-Banerjee is the editor of <\/span>World Travel Guide<\/a>. She spoke to Cision about bespoke content, press trips, reading people\u2019s minds and working with PRs.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"TinaWhat sort of content does the World Travel Guide publish?<\/b><\/span>
We produce two or three different features a week, which range from destination features to themed top five posts (best hotels, best restaurants etc.). We also do celebrity interviews in a section called \u2018Going Local<\/a>\u2019. We\u2019ve spoken to range of people about particular destinations that they\u2019re very familiar with, from Simon Reed, AJ Buckley and Mischa Barton to Raymond Blanc and Jimmy Choo.<\/p>\n

We also do 24-hour guides and restaurant, hotel and spa reviews. This is the fun travel stuff, almost magazine content in a way, which we hope will draw people back to the site and encourage them to delve into our hundreds of destination guides where they\u2019re going to get fantastic information about countries, cities and ski resorts around the world.<\/p>\n

What commercial work does Columbus<\/st1:place><\/st1:city> Travel Media do?<\/b><\/span>
We\u2019ve always produced licensed travel content for clients, but a growing trend over the last two or three years has been the demand for tailor-made quality content. We\u2019re in a great position to write bespoke content solutions as we have a team of global writers who have up-to-date knowledge about destinations around the world. We can also call on them to produce content in different languages. Our clients range from London<\/st1:placename> City<\/st1:placetype> Airport<\/st1:placetype><\/st1:place><\/st1:placename>, which is one of our biggest, to Associate Newspapers. It\u2019s an area I see growing year on year and that\u2019s quite exciting for us.<\/p>\n

Who is your target audience?<\/b><\/span>
We attract one million unique users and two million page impressions per month. We\u2019re producing content for a consumer audience who are largely female, pretty affluent, travel frequently and are quite adventurous. We concentrate on luxury travel but that doesn\u2019t mean staying in a five-star hotel for the sake of it. When it comes to writing features, we cover a huge range of destinations. For example, we could write an adventure travel piece, such as in Portugal<\/st1:country> on a recent trip that I did, or it could be food and food trends in Ecuador<\/st1:country>.<\/p>\n

Our audience are people who really want to get under the skin of that destination, they love insider tips and they want to travel like they are locals. They don\u2019t just want to go to the tourist traps; they want to get off the beaten track a bit, but they want to do it in style. They want quirky, different and alternative, and they\u2019re happy to splash out a bit more to achieve that. That\u2019s who we\u2019re writing for.<\/p>\n

How do you engage with your audience?<\/span>
<\/b>We\u2019ve made massive upswings in terms of the number of Facebook fans and Twitter followers we have \u2013 our Facebook page has over 10,000 likes, our Twitter page has almost 9,000 followers. Social media is important not only in terms of PRs and finding out information, but also engaging with our users and readers. <\/b><\/p>\n

Also, each of us on the UK<\/st1:country> team have individual accounts which are themed. For example, I tweet about culture, luxury and adventure; we have someone concentrating on food; someone on fashion; and someone on sport (obviously all with a travel bent in mind). We\u2019ve got limited resources and an awful lot to do in the day but we do try and engage where possible.<\/p>\n

How often do you go on trips?<\/b><\/span>
Now I have my little girl, I tend to only do one or two trips a year. We divide up the trips that come in, so everyone gets their fair share. This year our team has been as far away as Argentina and Florida, so they can keep up their knowledge of travel destinations. It\u2019s very much as a result of our networking with PRs that we\u2019ll get these trips and the fact World Travel Guide\u2019s made, as a team of people, massive effort to promote the brand. Everyone has had a very important role in doing that and as result we\u2019ve had more press trips and travel opportunities.<\/p>\n

We do group trips predominantly, which works for us. It\u2019s about the destination, theme or angle the PR is pushing; does it have merit for our audience? If so, we\u2019ll go. You get such a diverse range of journalists writing for different kinds of publication on the trip that\u2019s it not a concern that we\u2019ll be writing about the same thing. It\u2019s also great because a lot of these press trips have freelancers on them, so it\u2019s an opportunity to find new names and writers we could commission in the future. They are also good as ways of getting to know PRs \u2013 what they do and who their other clients are.<\/p>\n

How is your relationship with PRs?<\/span>
<\/b>It is very much two way. Every day we get inundated with press releases from PRs, which are useful because you can scan them and it might give you a nugget of information that can inspire a story, top five, a feature you want to commission or something we can incorporate into our guides. As a team we go to networking events; the Trav Media ones are beneficial because there are a lot of PRs and freelancers in the room, so you make a lot of contacts.<\/p>\n

A lot of the time wasting PRs are the ones who don\u2019t know our website or who our audience is. We often get calls about deals but we don\u2019t run editorial deals on the website. We also get PRs who occasionally ring up and say \u2018Have you got the press release?\u2019 Of course I\u2019ve got the press release. It\u2019s just wasting everyone\u2019s time. Sometimes I think they\u2019re put under pressure to make these calls because I\u2019m sure they wouldn\u2019t want to.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Take Five<\/b><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/b><\/b><\/b>What\u2019s the best experience you have had while travelling?<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>
There\u2019s too many. Can I mention a few? Skydiving in Portugal<\/st1:place>, diving with manta rays in Thailand<\/st1:place>, walking the Inca trail in Peru<\/st1:place> and seeing bears hunting for salmon in Alaska<\/st1:place>. I have travelled to over 55 countries. Simple things like dancing salsa in Havana<\/st1:place> are just amazing and will stay with me for the rest of my life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Is there anywhere you haven\u2019t been that you\u2019d like to?<\/b><\/span>
There are loads of places. I would love to dive in the Galapagos. I have never really travelled into a proper desert and would love to experience the extreme desolation and heat that entails. Places in Asia like Myanmar<\/st1:place> and Laos really interest me. I think my favourite region is South East Asia, particularly because of the diverse food and cultures; I am Indian by birth, (I was born here), and I love going back to not only India but all the other neighbouring countries and there\u2019s a lot of places I\u2019d love to see.<\/p>\n

<\/span>And the Maldives<\/span> are on my wish list. I\u2019ve been saving for the Maldives for a few years, I have what I call a \u2018Maldives Bank Account\u2019 \u2013 everyone thinks I\u2019ve got some illegal account \u2013 I\u2019m putting money into so when the time is right, my husband and I can disappear for an idyllic luxury holiday. You have to save for these dreams or they remain pipe dreams.
<\/span><\/p>\n

Do you have any surprising hobbies of interest?<\/b><\/span>
I\u2019ve done almost a hundred dives around the world, from the Caribbean to the Great Barrier Reef. I can\u2019t get enough of it. My husband, who couldn\u2019t swim on our honeymoon, subsequently learnt to swim and got his PADI so I could share this with someone. Every time I get in the water it just feels fantastic.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/b>What would your super power be?<\/b><\/span>
I would like to read people\u2019s minds, please. I\u2019m incredibly nosey and it would help me to figure things, and them, out more. If I could get inside the head of my two-year-old daughter, that would make my life so much easier.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/b>Who would play you in a film? <\/b>\u00a0
<\/span>Freida Pinto, because she is infinitely more gorgeous than me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Editorial information on Tina Edwin-Banerjee, the World Travel Guide and thousands of other media contacts and outlets, can be found in the<\/span> CisionPoint<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Media Database<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tina Edwin-Banerjee is the editor of World Travel Guide. She spoke to Cision about bespoke content, press trips, reading people\u2019s minds and working with PRs. What sort of content does the World Travel Guide publish? …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":322,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[248,7272,3532,5741],"tags":[4637,4638,4639,4640,4641,4642,7291,7300,4634,4635],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37361"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/322"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}