How do you get into travel copywriting?

I hate this question. I have been doing travel copywriting for at least a decade, but how I got into it, I couldn’t tell you. It wasn’t intentional, and it certainly wasn’t memorable enough for me to recall when or how I got my first copywriting gig.

That said, I can tell you how I get the gigs now — and it’s not just one method. The vast majority of my travel copywriting work comes from existing contacts. Be it word-of-mouth recommendations (thank you to the many people who put me forward for the work they can’t take on), or simply from former colleagues or editors who have gone into roles where they are commissioning copywriters.

One of my most lucrative copywriting jobs came through SEO — somebody Googled “London travel writer” and I was the first result. This entirely unintentional but utterly happy turn of events meant that I was being paid £0.80 a word for 600 word articles that rarely took more than half a day.

While I haven’t strategically gone about getting myself copywriting gigs, Siobhan O’Halleran, our Travel Copywriting 101 course leader certainly has in her 16-year career. Here are some of the things she suggests: