The answer is many types of writing - from literary essays and sci-fi adventures, to self-help and shopping articles, to historical and biographical novels and creative nonfiction works, to guidebooks---if these works are driven by, or focus on, a strong sense of place. 

Sense of place is the essence of the genre. In travel writing the story’s setting is usually what dominates or drives the story. The setting can be natural or artificial - mountains, a river, a volcano or a city, a street, a museum, a fabulous hotel, a mansion, a crumbling shack or a divey bar. In many travel stories the setting is a character itself, if not the main character. The more authentic and detailed the setting, the more credible and intimate the story becomes. 

Travel writing encompasses journalism, short and long fiction, essays, and nuts-andbolts information pieces and books, and even poetry, songs and drama. Most people who come to my travel writing workshops want to learn how to write and market newspaper and magazine stories, and travel memoirs. But all of types of works are welcome. In this travel world of been there, done that, I particularly enjoy the challenge of helping writers discover imaginative and personal approaches to any destination, no matter how familiar or over-written it may be. 

Elements Employed in the Travel Writing Genre 

—Vivid portraits  —Making connections to the past, to other places, to the same place at other times, to other experience in other destinations  —Revelations & insights  —Heightened awareness  —Challenges and obstacles faced, won, lost  —The traveler’s external and internal states of disorder  —Irony  —The traveler as naieve outsider  —Local expressions and slang 

Portraying local characters 

If you like to include local characters in your travel stories, as reflections of the place, think of doing this
—By what a character says and how he/she speaks  —By what a character does (wears, sees, eats, chooses)  —By what other people say about the character  —By what you the writer/observer/traveler says about the character 

Using Drama 

I am not suggesting that you fabricate dramatic situations or anecdotes in your travel stories where none exist, but that you capitalize on what is already there. Carefully appraise your material before you start to write. You may be surprised at how the ordering or highlighting of your impressions, experiences or an event can create drama. 

Inanimate objects can be brought to life for the sake of creating drama. For example, while touring an Amerindian history museum, you might focus on an exhibit of petroglyphs (writings in stone), and make the petroglyphs speak, give them a voice and a setting apart from the museum in order to intrigue the reader. Or, while describing the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, you might focus on a particular shoe, that of a Roman warrior or a Victorian prostitute, and imagine the life of the person to whom it belonged. Have fun and your readers will too. Let your imagination go wild! 

Using Dialogue 

Dialogue can make a travel story vivid and dramatic, and add variety to the structure. Narration and description only say indirectly what a character's thoughts and responses are, but dialogue shows rather than tells. The language of the dialogue can indicate the character's intelligence, articulateness, educational level, regional or ethnic background, mood and attitude. Using a particular grammar, slang or jargon can show the character's world and/or background. 

A note on structuring travel stories…

Memorable travel stories do not necessarily open at the chronological beginning of a trip, but often at a high point of the action or experience. From this point, the writer works either forwards or backwards - or both - using flashbacks or flash forwards to fill in all the significant details that pertain to the five W’s and are relevant to the story: 

WHERE is the story taking place? 

WHEN is the event, story, situation happening? 

WHO (persons or organizations) does it involve? 

WHAT is the situation or setting ?

WHY and/or HOW, if it is relevant to the travel story or memoir. 

Thoughts on Travel Writing  

Form vs.content

Don't be obsessed with the form of your story before you've even determined the content. Some writers are extremely clever with form, get million dollar book advances, but haven’t much to say. Don't get hung up on the word literary either. There are many valid forms of travel writing. A piece of writing can sound literary with clever descriptions, poetic renderings, but not reveal much or even tell a story. 

Style and Voice

Types of Travel Stories 

Travel writing generally falls into two types: service oriented, commercially-driven pieces, or literary /armchair traveller’s tales. Although both types can be commercial, pieces/works, the first category seeks to impel the reader to go to that place, and reproduce that travel experience, i.e. take that tour, dine at that restaurant, stay at that hotel, and is highly fact-based. The first category might include general destination pieces, travel advice, how to’s, round-ups (best B& B’s in the Finger Lakes...or Finger Lakes wineries) and articles for special audiences (bird watchers, mountain bikers, golden agers, RV’ers, etc.). The second category could include humorous or reflective essays, memoirs, historic, political. The best of all these types of travel pieces seeks to entertain, instruct, illuminate, or inspire.

COMMERCIAL (Some categories overlap) 

DESCRIBING A TRIP a bicycle tour, canal boat cruise  HOW TO Travel light...Ride a camel...Photograph cathedrals,  HEALTH Avoiding jetlag, etc. 

ROUND UPs: —The best wineries in the New York Finger Lakes
—The trendiest ski resorts
—The Pocket Museums of Paris
—Cuban cigar bars of Montreal
—Haunted houses of London
—Chateaus of the Loire Valley
—Great Museums of Texas
—Best Florida beaches 

SHOPPING For furs in Montreal / For Oriental rugs in Turkey / For crafts in Mexico

DESCRIBE A TOUR like Irish cultural bus tour with folklorist Mick Moloney 

WALKING TOURS Old Montreal, New York’s Soho district 

A MUSEUM Tyrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta / Anne Frank in Amsterdam 

A SPECIAL HOTEL, delving into the history, lore, celebrities who stayed, scandals 

RESTAURANTS from cheap to fabulous 

FESTIVALS Catfish Eating, Hog calling, Old Timey Fiddling, Jazz, etc. 

HISTORIC a castle, The Culloden Battlefield, 

AN EXPERIENCE fishing for sharks in the Magdalen Islands / scuba diving around wrecks / archaeological dig for dinosaurs in Alberta, Living in a kibbutz, in an igloo 

SPORTS off-trail cross-country skiing in Quebec, whitewater rafting the colorado River, Portugal on Horseback 

ADVENTURE treks, hunting and photo safaris, dog sledding, Face to Face with the Mighty Gorilla; 

MODE OF TRANSPORT Spain on Horseback / China by motorbike/ Indianapolis by pogo stick / USA by Recreational Vehicle / Quebec by skiidoo, 

MODE OF LODGING camping / glamping/ staying in ski huts/ hunting lodges/ igloos/ in teepees on a native reserve 

SCENIC OR HISTORIC HIGHWAYs and ROUTES America’s route 66/ California’s Route#1 / The Apache Trail/ The Cabot Trail

OFFBEAT turtle races/ Cock fights/ [Denis Cavagnero wrote about crashing weddings in London and getting his teeth fixed in Bulgaria!] 

BEHIND THE SCENES of the Tokyo fish market The Bronx Zoo . The Montreal Botanical garden..Madame Tussaud’s wax museum/ 

NATURE or nature activity- in pursuit of The Green Flash/ California’s Redwoods/ Adrift on the Amazon/ Birdwatching in Quebec/ Caribou watching in the Arctic/ the wonders of the Aurora Borealis - the Northern lights 

A PERSONALITY FEATURE rendezvous with a female bull fighter/ A rodeo star / a Japanese fugu chef/ an alligator wrestler/ Malaysian snake charmer 

LITERARY 

Literary/armchair travel writing isn;t created with a sell-the-destination objective, but more for the self-expression of the writer. It can be insightful, philosophical, humorous, reflective, entertaining, revealing, even political. It usually engages language in a rich and colorful way, and expresses a strong personal style or voice. Literary travel pieces more often end up in book anthologies, as that of the highly successful Traveler’s Tales series, and in magazines like Harper’s and The New Yorker.

Some examples might be:

—Essays - on cultural shock, on trying to communicate in a foreign language, on travelling in the Third World  Picaresque tales of an unusual trip - focusing on the characters and misadventures, while giving a thoughtful window onto a particular culture or subculture.  —A personal experience - for example A Mexican Driving Lesson; a piece about learning to drive in Mexico - could show the roads, small towns, mores, laws, customs of the country, the national character, etc.