✈️ 15 Inspiring Travel Blog Examples in 2024

Looking for travel blog examples to inspire your own blog strategy and design?

We’ve collected 15 of the most interesting, beautiful, and successful travel blogs to showcase how each is finding success — and how you can emulate their best strategies on your own website.

15 Travel Blog Examples

Let’s take a look at some of the most intriguing and accomplished travel blogs out there.

1. Indie Traveller: DIY travel
2. The Hawaii Vacation Guide: Hawaii travel blog
3. Travel Hacking Mom: Traveling using points
4. Anywhere We Roam: Travel adventures
5. Bucketlistly: Travel guides and backpacking itineraries
6. The Blonde Abroad: Solo female travel
7. Salt In Our Hair: Travel photography
8. The Planet D: General travel
9. Expert Vagabond: Nomadic travel and photography
10. The Poor Traveler: Cheap travel tips
11. The Broke Backpacker: Budget backpacking
12. View From the Wing: Travel industry analysis
13. Charlotte Plans a Trip: Personal travel blog
14. The Barefoot Nomad: Family travel
15. Nomadic Matt: Digital nomading

1 Indie Traveller

About

Indie Traveller, launched by Marek Bron in 2012 after leaving his video game development job, is a user-friendly travel blog.

It provides practical destination guides, travel advice, and gear reviews, all inspired by Marek’s own two-year adventure, which started with a life-changing trip to Thailand.

What Indie Traveller Does Well

Marek reviews travel bags exceptionally well (it’s not an easy task ).

Here are two things you can take away from his approach to implement on your site:

He buys the backpacks. Readers and Google know when you don’t have experience with a product. They won’t trust your reviews, and you’ll get lower rankings and earnings.

He uses product feature boxes. A product feature box shares pros and cons. It also has a button with an affiliate link users can click to buy the product.

Here’s an example of a product feature box on Indie Traveller:

You can create similar boxes with the free GenerateBlocks plugin.

Beyond the Blog

Marek sends out a monthly newsletter where he shares updates on his adventures, inspirational messages, and travel advice.

2 The Hawaii Vacation Guide

About

The Hawaii Vacation Guide is a travel blog about visiting Hawaii.

Created by Jordan and Erica Fromholz in 2019 after moving to Maui from London, this blog is a unique and authentic guide to exploring Hawaii’s beauty and culture.

What The Hawaii Vacation Guide Does Well

Here are a couple of ways they’ve used this to their advantage:

Created Hawaii-focused itineraries. Travel itineraries are a hot commodity, and they convert best when your entire audience is going to the same location.

Became the go-to authority on Hawaii. When someone wants to learn about traveling to Hawaii, they visit The Hawaii Vacation Guide. For example, there are over 1.5k monthly searches for their website.

Beyond the Blog

Jordan and Erica have a YouTube channel with over 100,000 subscribers. They post frequent videos on all things Hawaii travel, including trip planning, itineraries, reviews, and much more.

3 Travel Hacking Mom

About

Travel Hacking Mom is a small travel blog by Alex, Pam, and Jess — a trio of moms who travel the world cheaply using credit card points and miles.

What Travel Hacking Mom Does Well

Despite only receiving 8,000 monthly visits, Travel Hacking Mom uses smart monetization strategies to maximize their earnings per visitor.

Narrow focus on high-value market. The site only covers using credit card points for travel, allowing them to capitalize on high-paying credit card affiliate products.

Travel hacking courses. They offer a pair of expensive courses that teach you how to travel hack.

Consultations. They offer two types of consultations – a free one where they will try to sell you on a credit card, and a paid $99 strategy session for more general questions.

Between credit card affiliate commissions, course sales, and consultations, a single visitor could earn more than $1,000.

Beyond the Blog

4 Anywhere We Roam

About

Anywhere We Roam is a travel blog that follows the journey of Paul Healy and Mark Barnes, who started this site in 2018 to escape their day jobs, find an outlet for their photography passions, and fund their love of travel.

What Anywhere We Roam Does Well

The minimalist design on Anywhere We Roam is award-winning, snagging the best Web Design / User Experience award at the 2021 Traverse Creator Awards and other coveted awards.

The color scheme and layout are minimal, with black, white, and blue accents coupling nicely with the spaced-out elements and palette-matching imagery.

The minimalist approach spotlights Paul and Mark’s incredible photography and keep readers scrolling. Images are spaced just enough so the next comes into view as the previous one fades away.

The full-screen image headers at the top of each page are also a nice touch, ensuring readers are met with a captivating photo every time they open a new page.

Beyond the Blog

Paul and Mark share gorgeous reels and photographs on Instagram – many of which are related to recent blog posts.

5 BucketListly

About

BucketListly is a travel blog specializing in travel guides, backpacking itineraries, and photography resources.

It was created in 2012 by Pete Rojwongsuriya, a web developer in Thailand who got fed up with his demanding corporate job. Pete has been traveling for 10+ years and has visited over 85 countries.  

What Bucketlistly Does Well

Bucketlistly displays affiliate links in a sophisticated, conversion-boosting manner.

These links are interpolated into the destination guides – extremely detailed itineraries based on Pete’s travels. Each guide features extensive original photos and detailed commentary on each location.

Each destination’s category page has an array of affiliate links to relevant travel services for the destination, including flights, hotels, buses, trains, car rentals, and travel insurance.

Many of the travel guides also have embedded hotel recommendations from Booking.com, who Pete is partnered with.

Beyond the Blog

Pete also shares incredible cinematic videos on YouTube and travel and photography pins on Pinterest.

6 The Blonde Abroad

About

The Blonde Abroad is a solo female travel blog. Launched in 2012 by Kiki Rich, a former corporate finance professional who quit her job to see the world, the site helps female travelers prepare for their own travel adventures.

What The Blonde Abroad Does Well

Kiki has mastered the art of creating highly engaging and scannable content on her blog.

Check out her Mykonos Beach and Party Guide, which includes many readability-boosting elements:

• A “party craziness scale” graphic
• 1 image per list item
• Bolded sentences to highlight key points
• Aesthetic subheadings

And when Kiki includes normal text, she uses short paragraphs that are easy to read.

The bottom line? Make your content scannable and easy to read.

Images, graphics, headings, and other elements can make your posts easier to read, increasing their time on the page and improving their rankings.

Beyond the Blog

Kiki has a successful Instagram account with over 500,000 followers, which helps her earn additional revenue through paid partnerships and promoting her tour company.

7 Salt In Our Hair

About

Salt In Our Hair, run by Nick and Hannah, is a general travel blog that started as an Instagram account. The duo left their corporate careers to pursue their passion for travel blogging.

What Salt In Our Hair Does Well

Nick and Hannah use custom graphics in their content to present data more effectively.

For instance, instead of an unwieldy bulleted list or table, they crafted an easily understandable, appealing graphic to display weather information.

Another example is this graphic in their Java guide, which highlights essential spots for an 8-day visit.

You can use Canva to add engaging, helpful graphics to your blog, even without graphic design experience.

It’s a great tool for creating custom graphics, as it offers a wide array of templates you can fine-tune to match your site’s branding.

Beyond the Blog

Salt In Our Hair started on Instagram, and the account continues to thrive. Nick and Hannah have over 330,000 followers and get high engagement by posting video reels of their travel adventures.

8 The Planet D

About

Founded by ex-movie industry professionals Dave Bouskill and Deb Corbeil, The Planet D is a comprehensive travel blog offering tips and covering over 110 countries.

Recognized as top travel influencers by Forbes, the duo has journeyed to more than 120 countries across all seven continents.

What The Planet D Does Well

Dave and Deb demonstrate authority in the travel blog space with a few replicable strategies:

Prominently displaying the publications and TV channels they’ve been featured on, which includes National Geographic, Forbes, and BBC.

Here are a few other ways they showcase authority:

They build social proof by sharing the impressive size of their audience.

They highlight their expertise by listing the travel awards they’ve won.

They also share the many minor brands they’ve collaborated with on their Work With Us page.

These authority-boosting strategies help legitimize them in the eyes of readers and search engines.

While it might be tough for a newer travel blogger to get featured on TV or huge websites like Dave and Deb, you can establish authority in other ways:

• If you get a backlink from a prominent website, ask if you can use their logo in the “Featured On” section of your homepage.
• Apply for travel blog awards. If your content is good and your blog is well-designed, you might win something!

Beyond the Blog

Dave and Deb have a YouTube channel where they post their travel vlogs and share trip guides.

9 Expert Vagabond

About

The Expert Vagabond was started by Matt Karsten, a seasoned digital nomad who traded normal life for a one-way ticket to Guatemala in 2010.

This blog teaches you how to travel cheap, make money on the road, and take pictures while you’re at it.

What Expert Vagabond Does Well

Matt and his team include many relevant internal links in their blog posts. For example, their Best Travel Tips post includes 47 relevant internal links.

These internal links use appropriate anchor text that explains what the other page is about, which helps Google understand your site better and improve your rankings.

Beyond the Blog

Matt’s Instagram account – which has over 135,000 followers – showcases his family’s latest travel adventures.

10 The Poor Traveler

About

The Poor Traveler was started in 2009 by Yosh Dimens and Vins Carlos after a series of mishaps on their early travels. It’s a budget travel blog offering in-depth guides to help novices avoid similar mistakes and travel more efficiently.

What The Poor Traveler Does Well

Vins and Yosh use content templates to structure their blog posts, providing consistency and a time-saving blueprint across similar posts. These templates eliminate the need to create a new outline for each post, streamlining the blogging process.

For example, if you compare their Tokyo Travel Guide and Seoul Travel Guide, you’ll see that the outline structure is very similar.

The same goes for their visa application guides.

To speed up your blog growth, create content templates whenever you’re writing a series of similar posts.

Beyond the Blog

Vins and Josh run a popular YouTube channel with over 150,000 subscribers, where they share weekly videos about their latest travels.

11 The Broke Backpacker

About

The Broke Backpacker, created by adventurer Will Hatton, started as a collection of handwritten budget travel tips circulated among a small group of travelers.

It eventually evolved into a major travel blog, offering detailed guides on how to travel the world for a mere $10 per day.

What The Broke Backpacker Does Well

The Broke Backpacker has extensive profiles for their team members.

For example, the Meet the Team page provides details about the founder, writers, and other contributors behind The Broke Backpacker, including:

• A photo
• Their name and title
• Links to their author pages, Instagram profiles, and personal websites
• Their background and what they do at the company

But it doesn’t stop there. Each team member also has a personal about page, which provides a more in-depth bio, links to other social media profiles, and a list of all the posts they’ve contributed to.

These pages are important for two reasons:

They let you showcase your team’s expertise and build trust with readers and Google.

They humanize your website and help build an emotional connection with readers.

Beyond the Blog

The Broke Backpacker has a Pinterest account that sends traffic to individual blog posts.  

12 View From the Wing

About

View From the Wing is a travel blog created in 2002 by Gary Leff, known as “the godfather of the frequent flyer hobby.” He offers expert travel advice, credit card tips, analysis of the current state of the travel industry, and deep-dive trip reports.

What View From The Wing Does Well

Gary drives traffic to his blog by sharing new posts with his email list and social media followers.

He posts 4-5 news stories or opinion pieces daily. The mixture includes travel thought pieces, news about the industry, or interesting travel experiences submitted to Gary.

This focus on time-sensitive news content means Gary needs to pump out more content than the typical blogger to drive significant traffic.

However, there’s an upside: driving traffic through email and social media means Gary’s revenue is less affected by volatile Google algorithm updates.

Beyond the Blog

Gary is very active on X (formerly Twitter), where he shares new blog posts with his 39,000+ followers.

13 Charlotte Plans a Trip

About

Charlotte Plans a Trip is a small travel blog run by a Dutch travel blogger named Charlotte, who was inspired to start blogging when her fiancee Ries convinced her to travel journey beyond Amsterdam. Their first big trip was to Canada, and she and Ries have been travel blogging ever since.

What Charlotte Plans A Trip Does Well

Charlotte’s blog is multi-lingual – she offers Dutch and English versions. You can toggle between them on the home page.

She’s essentially created two versions of her website. Her Dutch pages have different URLs than their English counterparts, and Google indexes them as separate pages.

The main benefit of this is a substantial traffic increase. Ahrefs shows that 40% of her traffic comes from Netherlands-based visitors.

Beyond the Blog

Charlotte has a small following on Instagram, where she shares her life, travels, and latest blog posts.

14 The Barefoot Nomad

About

Launched in 2009 by Charles and Micki Kosman, The Barefoot Nomad is a comprehensive family travel blog.

Initially documenting the couple’s travels in Southeast Asia, the blog evolved to cover global destinations and kid-friendly travel upon their children’s arrival.

What The Barefoot Nomad Does Well

The Barefoot Nomad allows comments on their posts, which has spawned many rich discussions and added beyond the original post content.

Beyond the Blog

Micki and Charles have an Instagram account, which they use to review and promote travel, tech, and food products.

15 Nomadic Matt

About

Nomadic Matt is a travel blog that helps people travel on a budget. It was founded in 2008 by Matt Kepnes after a trip to Thailand inspired him to leave his dull cubicle job and explore the world.

He and his team share money-saving travel tips, low-cost destinations, and other practical advice that enables everyone to travel to amazing places.

What Nomadic Matt Does Well

Nomadic Matt has extensive schema markup, which is structured data you can add to a site’s HTML to help search engines better understand the content on the page.

Here’s what the schema on NomadicMatt looks like:

Adding schema to your blog is helpful because it ensures web crawlers – programs that Google and other search engines use to analyze websites – don’t misinterpret your content.

You can use an SEO plugin like RankMath to fill out as many schemas as possible. The easier you make it for Google to understand your page, the better your content will rank.

Beyond the Blog

Matt converts readers to email list subscribers with a newsletter signup box and engages them with frequent emails containing beginner-friendly travel tips.

His welcome email sequence sends out 12 emails in less than a month!

What Does A Successful Travel Blog Include?

While there are many ways to build a successful travel blog, our analysis has revealed a few key components that nearly every great blog has.

Leverage personal experience. You need to have personal experience with the destination or topic being covered. It’s obvious when the person writing about a location has never been there, and both readers and search engines will take notice.

Run display ads. Nearly every blog discussed was running display ads, and most were running Mediavine or Raptive. It’s a simple way to add revenue that will have little effect on your other blog monetization methods.

Have a coherent theme. Successful travel blogs typically focus on the travels of 1-2 people or a specific destination. More general sites without a connection to a person or a destination will struggle with branding and SEO.

Make social media accounts. Building an Instagram, YouTube, or Pinterest account in the visual-heavy travel niche adds authenticity and provides a new traffic channel.

Take great pictures.  The more impressive your images, the better the impression visitors will have on your site. If they’re really good, you can even sell photography gear and lightroom presets!

Recommend booking services. Every blog on this list recommends at least one booking service. Anyone interested in traveling will need these, and you’re missing out on revenue if you’re not pushing them to your preferred provider. To view the best options, read our list of hotel affiliate programs and airline affiliate programs.

If you do these 5 things, you’re well on your way to building a booming travel blog!

Summing Up

Making a successful travel blog is incredibly lucrative. In fact, our affiliate marketing statistics show that travel is one of the three most profitable niches, with the average person earning $13,847 per month.

However, with great reward comes high competition – especially in the world of blogging.

Here at Authority Hacker, we’ve spent 10+ years helping more than 15,000 students – build their own successful blogs – including many travel blogs.

To help you get an edge on the competition, we’ve distilled our most essential blog-building knowledge into a free training.

In this training, you’ll learn the seven insider secrets that make new blogs 83% more successful.

Join the free training now.