It’s very possible to start a travel blog without traveling, and I have 6 creative ways in which you can do so.
In fact, I think this is an interesting sub-niche within the travel blogging world.
You don’t have to be a seasoned world traveler to build up a successful travel blog.
When you come across travel blogs online, many of them are run by people just like you who have a normal full-time job, are a stay at home parent, student, etc.
You don’t need to travel full-time to be a successful travel blogger.
The truth is, for 3 years I built up my travel blog while I was working 40 hours a week, only taking 1 or 2 vacations per year, with a few weekend trips sprinkled in between.
If I were to start a travel blog without plans to travel anytime soon, my suggestion would be to approach it from a few different angles.
There are many creative ways to write about travel without actually traveling, or ever leaving your home country.
Whether you have some or no travel experience at all, here are all the ways you can start a successful travel blog without actually traveling.
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5 Different Ways to Start a Travel Blog Without Actually Traveling
1. Write About Your Past Travels
If you’ve traveled over the last few years and have images and/or videos, you can easily turn your previous holidays into money making blog posts.
Think about the destinations you visited, the experiences you had, what you did, where you ate, where you stayed, etc. Do some research to find out what other people are asking about the places you visited.
Create some itinerary blog posts.
Write a blog post about tips and tricks for flying carry-on only.
Create destination overviews.
Write opinion pieces about whether or not you thought a certain attraction was worth it.
Review and compare hotels that you stayed in.
As you can see, there are endless topics you could dive into about your recent vacations.
2. Create Interview-Style Posts
Do you have friends or family members that travel frequently? You can interview them, and write entire blog posts about their experiences.
If you want an example of an interview-style travel blog post, you can view my post about Placencia, Belize.
I’ve never traveled there, but one of my good friends came back from a trip and wanted to share her experience on my blog.
I think writing travel blogs in the form of an interview is a great way to build credibility and authority with the travel blog space.
Even though you personally didn’t travel there, you are interviewing someone who did and learning about their real world experience.
In fact, I think this is actually a strategic approach to travel blogging. This way you are using multiple people’s experiences for a more rounded outlook on traveling.
Reaching out to other travel bloggers is another way to create travel content without traveling yourself. You would then provide a link back to their website in exchange for their time and information.
You could also find other travelers via Instagram, TikTok or YouTube.
3. Become an Expert in Travel Planning
One of the biggest pain points for travelers is not knowing where to travel in the first place, or what type of itinerary to build.
This is why people use travel agents. To be a travel writer without actually having to travel, you can provide value by doing the type of research people loathe doing.
To succeed in this, find out what people are searching for.
Here are some examples of search terms:
- Cheapest places to go on a honeymoon
- What is the best month to visit Bali
- Best places to celebrate New Year’s Eve
- Best places to travel for coffee lovers
- Best affordable carry-on luggage
Of course, these are just examples, but you can explore all kinds of topics like these, dive in and do significant research to provide the answers.
The theme here is to provide helpful information, tips, tricks and pieces of advice for the person reading it.
It’s not about you and your opinions. It’s about providing well-researched objective information to the person requesting it.
If you focus on this, you will see success.
You can use Tripadvisor forums, subreddits and Facebook groups to find insider tips from other travelers.
4. Build a Travel Blog About the City/Region You Live In
This is an area of the travel blog world that often gets overlooked.
Local travel is still a big market.
Even if you don’t live in a tourist-focused area, chances are there are still people searching for things to do. People who live near you are always searching for new things to do.
Or maybe they have friends or family coming to visit and they want to show them around.
This also presents an opportunity to become very focused on one area, which is a good thing in the blogging world now.
This is because if you can write a lot of content about one specific place, you start to become the trusted authority on this destination, and Google will send you more traffic.
The more visitors you get to your website means more potential money for you!
5. Create a Day Trips or Road Trips Travel Blog
This requires a little bit of traveling but not too much. Build out a travel blog that focuses on day trips and road trips from where you live.
When worldwide travel virtually stopped throughout 2020 and 2021, there was a massive increase of local travel.
And this doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
This is another solid sub-niche to get into within travel blogs, because local travel is much more recession-proof.
When the economy is down, people don’t spend as much money or vacation time on extravagant trips. But road trips are always in demand.
6. Create a Travel News Blog
This type of travel blog would entail writing short news style articles about the travel, typically a destination or a travel trend.
You would likely have to write several short articles every week, but this information is easily found in press releases by hospitality companies and destination marketing organizations.
Press releases allow you to use the information as written, and then you can add your own personal opinions or thoughts to the articles to ensure the information you’re providing on your blog is fresh and original content.
PR Newswire and Travel Pulse are great starting resources for this.
Read next: here’s my guide on How to Become a Travel Content Creator (easy & actionable steps)
How Do You Find Content For Travel Blogs Without Traveling?
Here are some creative ways to write about travel without actually traveling.
Forums like Reddit and Tripadvisor have lots of valuable real-world information from travelers.
You can use these websites in two ways: to get an idea of what people are asking and to find out the answers to these questions.
Remember, never copy anything word for word – this will get you in trouble with Google and your website will struggle to get traffic.
But you can read a good sample of answers and responses to then formulate your own information.
Another hidden way of finding content for your travel blog without actually traveling is by joining destination-specific Facebook groups.
There’s a ton of hidden gem information to be found within these groups.
You can also scan through Instagram posts and TikTok videos to round out the information you need.
Reading through comments on YouTube videos is another way to mine information from locals or travelers who have experience with that destination or travel topic.
See also: 115 Travel Blog Ideas That You Can Steal
Resources to Help You Create Content for Your Travel Blog
Photos
Travel blogs need visual content. This is a must.
To get you started, you can use stock photos. There’s nothing wrong with using stock photos, especially to populate your website with some content before you’re able to travel.
But please don’t use free stock photo websites. These images get overutilized and you start to see them over and over again on different blogs.
If you use these free stock images, it’s hard to build up some trust and credibility.
The good news is that there are great paid websites with thousands and thousands of unique photos.
Depositphotos is a service that I use quite a bit, and they’ve got tons of travel and destination specific photos, with new ones added all the time.
Canva has a massive database of copyright photos to use if you subscribe to the Pro version, which is only $12.99 per month.
I use stock photos from Canva on every blog post.
Writing Tools
You can even use artificial intelligence copywriting tools to help you write your blog posts.
I use a tool called Jasper, which can write entire blog posts for you in minutes.
All you have to do is tell it a little bit of information, such as what you want the blog post to be about and what type of information you want it to include.
And then it literally does the rest for you. It requires some tweaking and fact checking on your part, but using this tool has allowed me to write detailed blog posts in about one to two hours.
Jasper
Jasper comes with dozens of templates to help you easily outline, format and write entire blog posts.
They have different pricing structures to choose from.
And it may seem pricey, but I can tell you that the faster you can get enough content out there, the faster you will build up an audience and get enough traffic to your website to start earning (mostly) passive income.
ChatGPT
A similar tool that is currently free is ChatGPT. It works similar to Jasper, but has a little less functionality. I love using it to help me round out my paragraphs and come up with catchy titles.
With that being said, it’s important to not rely completely on AI writing tools to craft your entire blog post. These tools should be used as a guide and to help fill in the gaps.
RankIQ
RankIQ has a handpicked keyword library that only includes low-competition keywords that have high traffic potential.
Currently, there are over 76,000 keywords available.
I like to browse through these keywords to not only give me ideas about what to write, but use the tool itself to help me craft a perfectly SEO-optimized post that will rank fast.
Get access to RankIQ’s keyword library here.
Books
Books are also overlooked and they shouldn’t be. There are a ton of great reading resources to teach you how to be a better travel writer.
One of my favorites is the Lonely Planet’s How to Be a Travel Writer.
This seasoned travel author teaches you how to craft an immersive travel story and other tips to perfect your writing.
How to Start Your Travel Blog Without Any Travel Experience
Now that I’ve (hopefully) convinced you to start your travel blog, here’s how to do it.
Pick a Domain Name
Your domain will be the name of your website. You want it to be relevant to what you’re writing about, but also short and sweet. You can purchase your domain through Bluehost or Name Hero.
Set up Website Hosting
To house your website somewhere on the internet, you’ll need a hosting package.
Bluehost is the most valuable host to start with for young blogs. It’s extremely affordable at less than $4 dollars per month, and you can always upgrade later on.
Choose a WordPress Theme
Once you’ve got your hosting and domain figured out, the fun part begins.
Install WordPress.org and choose a theme. Kadence or Astra are great free themes to get started with.
Start Creating Content!
Start populating your blog with content. I recommend writing at least 2 or 3 posts to go live with.
After that, just publish posts as you write them. It really doesn’t matter how often you post as a travel blogger.
Some months I publish 12 posts, and other months I may publish 1 or even none.
The goal here is to launch as many well-written high-quality posts as fast as you can.
This is because it will take Google some time to recognize your blog is live and to start trusting it to send readers your way.
In my experience, it takes anywhere from 5 to 8 months for a new blog to start seeing significant search engine traffic from Google.
If you can write 30 to 50 SEO-optimized posts, in 6 to 8 months time, you’ll be seeing a good number of monthly visitors to your website who found you through Google.
Here are some travel blog post ideas to get you started.