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Travel Journalism with JD Shadel

• Jeff Borman and Matt Brown

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Are "sensory inclusive" cities possible? Why do we take the basic UX of airports, hotels, and public spaces for granted? What's the report card on hotel and travel company marketing to LGBTQ+ audiences? What's the problem with carbon offsets? And why aren't more airports like PDX? Matt and Jeff solve mysteries and speak truths with JD Shadel, a London-based strategist, editor, and freelance journalist working at the intersection of tech and lifestyle, and you can read their recent work at:

https://www.cntraveler.com/contributor/jd-shadel
https://www.jdshadel.com/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/jd-shadel/

Speaker 1:

Hi everybody, Welcome to no Show. I'm Matt Brown, joined as always by Jeff Borman. Our guest today. Jd Shadel writes the Future of Travel column for Condé Nast Traveler and is editor-at-large at Good On you, the leading platform rating brands on critical social and environmental issues. Jd's written for the Washington Post, for them, for the BBC. They have a master's degree with distinction in international relations from the University of Exeter and is a former human rights commissioner for the city of Portland. Jd's work has been featured as an example in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. You know you've made it when you've done that. They're a fantastic moderator and MC, a fashion icon, an inspired social critic, current London resident, and JD is, hands down, the best person named JD you will ever meet from Appalachia. Jd, welcome to no Show.

Speaker 2:

Wow, I'm extremely honored by that introduction. As I like to sometimes say, I am the queen of lifestyle, so I'm being sarcastic I feel like that went way above and beyond. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to chat with you both and I've been listening to your past archive of podcasts and I have to say you are excellent hosts and I'm excited to see what questions we get into. I said at the start, when you first invited me on the show, that you could ask me anything, so let's see where we go.

Speaker 3:

One of the things I find most challenging for travel writers is balancing the narrative of being objective and also subjective. Right, gonzo journalism, hunter S Thompson, anthony Bourdain, all the way over, to just straight up travel guides, rick Steves style. Right, they've all got their place. The middle, however, gets kind of tough, really tough. What's an op-ed and what's an objective? Look at a place is something that I think seasoned travelers really think about when they read good writers. How do you navigate through that?

Speaker 2:

It's a really interesting question because, firstly, ethics in travel journalism, I think, are quite murky. I don't think a lot of people have a lot of fluency in terms of how travel journalism is produced. There's, you know, a whole network of PR that's happening behind the scenes. Who gets featured often relates to the budget that they have to, you know, get the word out about how great they are. And travel journalism itself is a hard to monetize profession, to be honest, and so a lot of people that are committed to that quite full time are also doing a blend of different things. And in that context I think it can be quite easy to, you know, just go on the press trips, just write about what you're paid to see and experience, and I've always felt a little icky about that kind of approach. That's not any slight to anyone that does that. I think there's actually a really good argument for why travel writers unfortunately need to take press trips, you know, as just a way of like budget for the experience and for the coverage which media outlets are rarely providing. So first just say there's a lot of icky feeling things happening in travel journalism. That said, there've been some really positive things that have emerged in years. One is the focus on avoiding parachute journalism, which has been sort of the norm. I think that's led to a lot of exotifying people in places when you know predominantly white men are traveling around the world and writing about their experiences, their impression of a place.

Speaker 2:

I think there's been a move to diversify the voices telling these stories, a focus more on local storytelling. One of the projects that I am most proud of in my career was I was the Portland Oregon travel writer for the Washington Post for a number of years while I was based in Portland and I got to work with the digital team on that. That project, which was so cool because really they uh work. They did like 50 city guides to cities all over the world and there was no parachute journalism. It was working with locals on the ground, have locals tell the story.

Speaker 2:

Of course that creates its own sort of dynamic of you know the locals are gonna hopefully love where they're at. But yeah, I think it's. It's really an interesting dynamic where travel journalism is itself a challenging ethical profession and I think that creates, you know, some blurred lines in terms of, like you said, like what is opinion, what is subjective, who's paying for that experience? And I think that's really interesting. I just wish a little bit more literacy in audiences could help people read a bit more critically as well.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, you know, my background is almost all on the hotel side, and when travel agencies come on a paid expense trip to a group of hotels to learn about the hotel and then guide their travelers, it's very transparent, right. I mean, they are there, they are paid to be there, they are there to influence. You know, the original influencers in travel are travel agents, right, but it's very transparent that that is the role and that's why they're paid on these all in all included trips.

Speaker 1:

You can't do it unless you're comped economically. Not really A newspaper, even a midsize or large newspaper, can't say OK, go out and do a piece on the Fontainebleau in Las Vegas and we're going to pay for all your travel, we're going to pay for the room, we're going to pay for all your meals. It kind of reminds me of like celebrity access, like, okay, we're going to give you this comp stuff Only if we know that you're going to give us a review. That's pretty good, you're never going to travel all the way out there and then trash the place.

Speaker 2:

I think that's a really valid point, which is just like the, the budget for travel journalism doesn't really exist on the media side anymore. There are a few outlets that do provide that budget, but they're far and few between, and a lot of the content that you see is necessarily funded by the subject of the reporting, which you know is is great, for exposure doesn't lend itself to much critical assessment of a destination's merits, and I think that's where I used to work in guidebook writing as well, and I was a travel editor and that was one thing I observed, which is it's like you know, you'd see, destinations that had the budget to host a lot of travel writers would get a lot more of the coverage and a lot more of the glowing coverage, and I think that's where it's just a bit challenging. The whole economics of travel journalism are kind of fucked up.

Speaker 3:

How does a true professional as you are and Conde Nast sets the gold standard how do you compete then, today, with influencers who are just putting out 200 characters at a time and basically entering right into your space, but, in my opinion, far more on the take? How do you compete with that?

Speaker 2:

I don't necessarily view influencers as a competitor of travel journalism.

Speaker 2:

I think they serve slightly different purposes so I wouldn't necessarily say Condé Nast Traveler, for example, which is one publication I contribute to, is in competition with influencers.

Speaker 2:

I'd say we are a part of a very fascinating and broadening ecosystem of inspiration and information about travel, about the world, and there's some really positive, cool stuff happening on social where I think social has had a lot of negative impacts on travel, certainly in discourses around destinations and over tourism. The flip side is that it's also, you know, opened up an audience for folks who might not normally get featured in the traditional gatekeeping barriers of travel journalism, and so I'd say it's a mixed bag, but they're not really in competition. They're often serving very different audiences, very different needs and hosting different and interesting kinds of conversations. So there is, of course, like the icky influencer, you know, pay to play kind of thing, which nobody really loves. But I think what I'm really talking about is most influencers would prefer to call themselves content creators and I think within the world of content creation that there's a really a lot of interesting stuff happening, a lot of really interesting voices, a lot of talented people that are, you know, showing us the world in different ways than travel journalism might traditionally do.

Speaker 1:

Let's dig into some of your recent articles, which are fascinating. We all take, I think, the user experience of airports, hotels and public spaces for granted and we skip over how the UX for those experiences is tested for a very narrow slice of the sensory, gender, age, identity, high of the population, and it's given rise to a term called sensory inclusive city. Philadelphia just announced itself as one. Can you talk a little bit about? You just wrote an article on this. Can you talk a little bit about what a sensory inclusive city is and what it aims to be?

Speaker 2:

So sensory inclusive city is a really interesting term because in reality it's kind of a myth. It aims to solve some very real challenges. Sensory processing challenges are experienced by a wide swath of the traveling public. A lot of people have invisible disabilities, a lot of people have different sensory needs that mean just the experience of travel can be quite stressful and, as you pointed out, we don't really think about the design of public spaces like airports or hospitality destinations like resorts, museums, hotels, through a very inclusive lens. So I think the last decade or so we've seen a rise of certifications that often focus on training but also the facilities.

Speaker 2:

There's a growing awareness of design, sensory inclusive design as well, and just inclusive design across the board. Some of that is regulated by different you know the ADA in America, for example, but a lot of other sensory needs are not really thought of or centered in conversation. So it's a really important topic. But I say it's a myth because the reality is you can't create a sensory inclusive city and you can't create. You know, training doesn't necessarily address a lot of sensory needs and, as some of the people I spoke to in the article acknowledged, it's a very good goal. It might be more appropriate to use terminology like a sensory-informed city, focusing on training, focusing on providing resources to folks who travel with different needs and abilities, and that's really what we get into.

Speaker 2:

That was a piece I published in the Future of Travel column and that's exactly the kinds of big questions we like to ask. Look at something like Philadelphia's certification. What that means, what that actually you know, is that a certification other cities should be looking to, and it's a really positive development. It's just it's a bit confusing sometimes for travelers, including those with sensory processing needs, to think about, like you know, what that actually has an effect on their travel?

Speaker 1:

Are there just a bunch of different entities out there saying, oh yeah, we'll certify you this way and we'll certify you that way, and now you can have a thing up on the front door of your place that says that you are a good person.

Speaker 2:

Certainly, the quality of certifying bodies varies greatly. The focus of the article I reported was an organization, a nonprofit organization called Culture City, who I actually have visited many destinations that have received their sensory inclusive certification and have to say that I think they're doing really amazing work for people with sensory needs. As someone who can fit under that umbrella, that very broad umbrella that they apply, I've used some of the amenities that they've they've offered travelers at different destinations and it can say they're doing really good work. They have a really rigorous training scheme, and I think where their work really shines is stadiums, event venues really like those places where, for example, if you're at a game or a concert and you are experiencing overstimulation once upon a time, you might have to leave the stadium and you might not get let back in due to ticketing rules, and so the way Culture City has worked to create, you know, multi-sensory rooms in stadiums and a lot of NFL stadiums, I think is a really empowering, powerful story. Stadiums, I think is a really empowering, powerful story.

Speaker 2:

Questions, though, start to arise. With a lot of other certification schemes, even Culture City, I think you know there's not a lot of information on their website about what that certification means what it accomplishes, its efficacy, and that can make it hard for travelers to necessarily understand and navigate all of the different certifications that are targeting often very specific groups of travelers. Some try to take more of a broader umbrella approach and sensory needs are just one of many areas of the of the traveling world that has certifications. So it's a really interesting conversation world that has certifications. So it's a really interesting conversation and I'd say it's a lot of good intentions and the efficacy just really depends on what goes into those certifications. And I have to say the piece you know has some criticism of the sensory inclusive city terminology. But overall I was very impressed with my experiences with culture city and think they're good people.

Speaker 1:

Speaking of certifications, let's pivot to greenwashing, one of our favorite subjects on the show, and we definitely want to hear your thoughts on sustainable travel and the feel good nature of carbon offsets. Now, carbon offsets has been something that we've sort of lived with for a couple of decades now, but I still don't feel like most Americans know exactly what you're talking about when you're talking about carbon offsets. If you had to define carbon offsets, how would you do so?

Speaker 2:

So I interviewed a critic of carbon offsets for a piece I did in the Washington Post, I think, last year, which really looked at the whole scammy nature of voluntary carbon offsets that passengers might experience. The world of carbon offsets, of course, is quite complex and nuanced. There are sometimes, you know, different regulations that speak to how those schemes work, but I'm primarily talking about the offsets that someone could buy, say when they're booking a flight to offset a certain amount of carbon, and the critic that I interviewed for that story described it as like paying someone else to go to the gym for you, which I think is a really great way of understanding the lunacy of the carbon offset market, because the reality is like. The reality is like there's no way to simply offset the exploding emissions that are coming from aviation. That doesn't mean that offsets are always evil. I just think they don't solve the climate crisis.

Speaker 2:

If we're evaluating through the lens of do these solve the climate crisis? Do these mitigate the travel industry's impacts on the environment, then the answer is no. Do some offset programs have a more meaningful impact on forestry preservation, green energy projects, which are where a lot of the money from offsets goes? It's paid into, typically, some of these different kinds of programs. Some of them are known to be scans. Some of them do provide money to different projects. That might be worthwhile and I think that that can be great. But again it's like if we're talking about the baseline goal of solving the climate crisis or mitigating the emissions involved in a certain activity, then critics would have you look very closely at the claims being made on the basis of offsets.

Speaker 3:

It feels a lot to me like when the Pope would sell indulgences for sins.

Speaker 2:

It feels a lot to me like when the Pope would sell indulgences for sins.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and there have been many academics, many scientists who have made that same conclusion that it's yeah, it's, like you know, paying off your sins. Jeff and I were talking recently let's stay stay on topic here with with certifications and approvals. With certifications and approvals, what's the report card on hotel and travel company marketing to LGBTQ plus audiences? Is it on the right path or mixed reviews? I know Jeff and I have talked a lot about this and that is equally as evolving and as thorny these days.

Speaker 3:

Part of the conversation Matt and I tend to have when we're not recording, quite frankly, is at what point are travelers just travelers and people just people? And for businesses of any kind, meddling in identity politics is dangerous territory. Mind meddling in identity politics is dangerous territory. And for travel companies, perhaps even more complicated, because it's our roles to create a sense of welcome and comfort for all right. So, hotels on the West Coast, you want to include amenities that Chinese travelers want. Tea in addition to coffee is an easy example. Right At the same time, the joy of travel is experiencing new things and especially new people, and experiencing and celebrating differences. So when travel companies target a demographic like LGBTQ+, it can feel a little disingenuine.

Speaker 1:

It boils down to what's pandering and what's legit.

Speaker 2:

What's pinkwashing and what's not? That's a term often used in LGBTQ plus activism circles to describe a corporation or even a country that wants to market itself as queer inclusive, as a distraction, maybe, from something else, or even as a marketing ploy to capitalize on the perceived budget that queer travelers, queer trans travelers may have an interest in going to that place. This is a really interesting conversation. It's something I think a lot about as a queer person, as someone who travels, as someone who writes and reports on queer travel, as someone who travels, as someone who writes and reports on queer travel, I think the report card on travel is really a mixed bag for a few reasons. Firstly, it did feel like there were some positive changes happening for a few years and now it feels like things are rolling back in a few key ways. I would say like if you ask queer, queer and trans travelers generally, it's exactly that. It's like we just want to receive good hospitality, we just want to be welcomed, like it's not a complicated thing, like you know, if you're a kind, good person, it's not like anyone is asking for any particular special treatment. It's just that for a lot of history, queer and trans travelers have to think quite, you know deeply about our personal safety, about how welcomed we will feel at a destination, and that can really ruin a trip, and it's not just holidays and vacations. I think we also have to remember that for a lot of people, travel is a necessity, something that they have to do, not something necessarily that they choose to, whether it's their job or you know, even immigration can lead to the need for travel, and so there are human rights issues embedded in the travel industry here, and you know it can even be in small things. Like I mean, I have just in the last decade been traveling with a partner on the West. Like I mean, I have just in the last like decade been traveling with a partner on the West coast and, uh, you know, checked into a rural Oregon hotel for the staff to passive, aggressively give us a room with two beds when the reservation was for a single bed and there was clearly other rooms available at that hotel. And so those are the kinds of things that, you know, even those small types of passive, aggressive things you can experience when you're traveling can really dampen the mood a lot. And so I'd say the certifications that aim to train staff to better, just, like you know, not tolerate intolerance and to really just treat, you know, queer and trans travelers with respect and dignity that any other traveler would receive. Those are good things.

Speaker 2:

It was good to see more of that happening. I think that led to some positive changes in the industry. But now, as a lot of this has gotten a lot more politicized, where queer and trans people have become scapegoats for far-right authoritarian politicians, that has trickled into the way the travel industry is talking about inclusion and you know where a few years ago it might have felt like things were starting to move in the right direction. Now it feels like there's a backsliding and it's not in the hotel space but definitely the destination marketing space. What happened with Visit Florida in the last couple of months, you know? Taking down any content which welcomes queer travelers, lgbtq plus travelers to Florida, and that's pretty startling because Visit Florida had a pretty positive reputation, I think, among a lot of LGBTQ plus travelers as well as content creators, travel journalists.

Speaker 2:

So you just see this kind of rollback, regressive attitude. I don't know if it's so much just like identity politics or the culture wars the so-called culture wars that have made queer and trans people the scapegoats, or if it's like a lingering. You know homophobia, transphobia, it's probably all of the above but it has created an environment where now I think you know again, we are, as a community, thinking a lot about our safety and about, like, where we're going to be welcome, because it's not fun to take a holiday or to go on a business trip and then just feel like you're constantly on where you know you're not really welcomed, and so I think that that would be my answer to that question. It's a mixed bag. It does feel like there's some regression, but thankfully we do have many allies, and I would just say fly more queer flags please. If you're a travel business, put the.

Speaker 1:

Let's talk a little bit about another article you did recently on the renovation of part of the Portland Airport, the PDX revamp. It was very refreshing to see that airport go all in on making the space a real part of the city, which I think has been a challenge for airports right, at least it has been kind of in our lifetimes. Modern terminal construction has sort of moved on from the quaint marine terminal you know kind of small terminals that you'd see in cities to this kind of big box, anodyne, very liminal space that took root in the 80s and 90s and you know terminals in the 2000s, while nice have a decidedly corporatized shake-shack kind of feel and all this has. There are a lot of reasons for all of this. You know planes got bigger, security needs got bigger. The space had to be treated differently than, I think, the more boutique spaces of, say, the 30s, 40s, 50s. Pdx, though, in its new incarnation, subverts that. What did you think when you first got the tour of the new space?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, let me start with a full disclosure, as I did in the Condé Nast Traveler News feature about the PDX opening, which is that I'm a big fan of PDX and that's a weird thing to say about airports. Certainly, as you said, airports have become quite sterile, quite shopping mall-esque, and are not places that people really want to spend time. I, unfortunately, have quite a lot of anxiety when I travel, even though I am a travel writer and travel quite frequently. I show up to airports very early so I spend a lot of time in airports when I am traveling and PDX is one of those airports that I actually really enjoy going to and that's led me over the years to do some work with the airport as well.

Speaker 2:

I wrote a zine about the opening of the airport previously, wrote a comic, wrote a crowdsourced poem that the executive director of the airport read at a demolition party when Concourse A was torn down. So I have a lot of history with PDX and I'll say I really was kind of shocked when I first took the tour before the airport opened. It opened August and I was there in February, got a tour of the in-progress construction site and you know I'd seen all the renderings. It's a really cool project because it aims to use locally sourced timber, which is a more sustainable construction material than some of the alternatives, and it has the first mass timber roof of a major American airport, which is pretty cool. And so the photos, the renderings, looked cool.

Speaker 2:

The photos from the construction site look cool, but when you're actually in this space it is a really stunning design.

Speaker 2:

It really embodies the character and the spirit of the Pacific Northwest. I mean, there's real trees living in the airport, which is really cool. On top of that, the airport has a unique administration which manages a lot of its own leasing. A lot of airports outsource leasing, and so that means you get the shopping mall effect, whereas in the new main terminal, 100% of those brands are Pacific Northwest born brands, which is a really cool thing to say about an airport, so as, as more of those shops open over the next year, you know, you'll be seeing more kind of favorite, beloved brands opening at PDX, and so it really does feel like a microcosm of the region. It's like when you're in the space that you are being welcomed to the Pacific Northwest or reminded why you don't want to leave, and that's cool when you compare that to other airport projects. I mean, there are a few iconic international ones of course, but PDX really does stand out nationally and that's why I am really excited to yeah, to see it open.

Speaker 3:

It does. I was there recently and two things really stood out to me. I also tend to arrive at airports very early and when we were arriving I said there's a great place we can go get a beer. We've never heard of. I was excited to get to the airport for that part of the experience. The other thing was it's the only airport outside of Nashville that has a live musician in the terminal right Sunday morning. The guy's out there playing guitar. It was awesome.

Speaker 2:

I'm all in on the future of Portland and a micro cinema, a nonprofit micro cinema, and a micro cinema, a nonprofit micro cinema. Hollywood theater huge fan, one of the best theaters in the world If you're a film buff has an ongoing festival of shorts spinning at the airport. There are 96 taps of Oregon beers on at Loyal Legion, the mezzanine bar. There's just a lot of cool things about PDX. It's the localist airport I've been to. That's a term that they're using to describe it and I feel like that's very accurate.

Speaker 3:

Totally agree. A few places got more publicly beat up during the pandemic than Portland. Right, it was the whipping post for public policy gone wrong, for drug policy, policing, right, some for good reason. But it was also really politically convenient for some voices not to let that go. All said, I've spent a good amount of time there in Portland since 21, and I'm in love with the city and its surroundings. It has just a wonderfully rebellious spirit and it keeps getting its act together and cleaning itself up and the downtown's better. Everything is going the right direction. I'm all in on Portland. My question to you is when will travel coverage shift to the version of Portland that I see?

Speaker 2:

That's a question I keep asking myself. As we mentioned earlier, I was the travel writer for the Washington Post for a number of years. I think some of those articles are still online. They're very outdated, so they're not going to really help you that much if you're traveling there today.

Speaker 2:

But I've always seen a side of Portland that I don't think the media really captures. I think it's often the Portlandia cliche or it's the Trumpian doomsday. You know dystopia, and the fact is it's like you know, I live through Portland, through all of the downturn. It was the media darling in the early 2010s and then it became the punching bag for American urban decline, or the doom loop, as people would say, and just that narrative never felt true if you're actually there. So I don't have an answer for you. I would love to write. If you're a travel editor listening to this and you want some accurate, fun coverage of Portland, I would be happy to do more of that. It's again.

Speaker 2:

I live in London now, but I frequently go back to Portland. It's my second home and I I'm in love with the city as well. So I don't know. It's a very weird city. I mean, there's some things I don't like about it. There's some weird stuff going on there, but it's weird in both the. You know the Wallsian sense of like it can be kind of weird, and it's also weird in the keep Portland. Weird like fun sense. It has range and so, yeah, let's change the narrative on that. Don't have an answer for you. Love Portland, let's keep it weird in the right way.

Speaker 1:

It's time for the mystery question. This is an easy one and it's a two-parter JD. If you were visiting Portland and you were visiting London, it's sort of like a live aid thing. Let's say you're doing them one day after each other. What are the two bars you should absolutely visit in either city?

Speaker 2:

absolutely visit in either city. You should have a look at my Google Maps for bars because I've got so many flagged everywhere and this is a hard question to answer, but I will give you two. So for London I live in East London and whenever anyone visits I absolutely make reservations. At a bar with shapes for a name, which I think is one of the best bars in the world, it's so cool, it's so interesting, it's so weird, it's very pretentious, but like also people that are really nice and it's open till 4 am. So you get the cool cocktail bar vibes open till 4 am. It has kind of a, you know, primary color theme and if you're into sort of like you know I don't know like pre-mixed cocktails that are actually really great to have a little primary color paint splotches on the Negroni bottle, go check it out. Must recommend.

Speaker 2:

And then in Portland that's very hard because most of my life in Portland was spent in dive bars, so I have many dive bars, but I am a huge fan of Bar Diane in Northwest Portland, which is a little wine bar just right off 21st Ave my old haunts and they just really great. You know, pretty affordable wine, pours, DJs on the weekends, really chill vibes must check out. So those would be my answers, but every time someone asks me that I find a recommendation close. So now I'm just going to make sure that Bar Diane is in fact open and it looks like it is Great.

Speaker 1:

Excellent. Thank you for doing this and we really appreciate it.

Speaker 2:

We hope to have you back. Thank you so much for having me and for the really interesting questions.