Travel Notes Blog: Best Group-Written Travel Blog

Best Group-Written Travel Blog

This award celebrates travel blogs consistently written by two or more authors, regardless of subtopic.

Posted in order of nomination.

Hotel Chatter:

Independent hotel reviews with plenty of photographs. We're off to a good start, be sure to check-in here.

Gadling:

As part of Weblogs Inc, there's plenty of content to interest just about anyone. I don't really like their huge menus at the bottom of the page, to all the other channels though. But I guess it's better than having it all at the top. And then there's the totally unrelated (to travel) index at the side too, than can get confusing.

Jaunted:

As it's from the same stable as Hotel Chatter and only one can get the vote, Jaunted gets the elbow.

Inside Traveller:

National Geographic travel blog by Jessie Johnston and Emily Kin. Surprisingly for the National Geographic, it lacks photos. Plenty of links though.

Southwest Airlines Blog:

If you're nuts about Southwest you might like to know about their employees, customers, airplanes and airports. A real team blog, as the credits show.

World Hum:
Dedicated to exploring travel in all its facets: how it changes us, how it changes the way we see the world, and finally, how travel itself is changing the world. Concentrating on the journey rather than the destination. RSS feed not working.

The Lost Girls:

Put together by Amanda, Holly and Jen; three twenty-something New Yorkers who ditched their media jobs to embark on a year-long, round-the-world journey in search of adventure and inspiration. Let's hope they find it.

Vagablogging:

Well, at least it's in the right category this time.

The Gate:

The frequent flyer community's attempt to fly off with the singles and doubles titles. But it's stalled at the gate.

TripHub:

A real hub of information for planning your next trip. You could spend so much time sifting through it all that you decide to stay at home and read instead.

The Citizen:

'A youth culture travel guidebook written for the anti-tourist'. I counted less than 52 mini-guides here, so I guess it doesn't qualify. But check it out anyway.

The Travel Net:
It feels like a different 'blog' for each region, with a lot of very empty-looking categories and flickr 'styles' in the pages but no pictures. Not ready for an award at all.

Gridskipper:

Not a pleasure to read on my monitor, with one thin column of content over on the left and acres of empty space on the right.

Brave New Traveller:

That's more like it. 'News, reviews and opinion for the savvy online explorer'. Already listed in the new TravelNotes.org Travel Blogs section, before I saw the nominations and I'm glad to see this one in here. It's clean and balanced with good writing and sharp photography. What more could you want?

Today in Travel:

Daily group blog written by Josh Roberts, Christine Sarkis and various other contributors from Smarter Travel.

Vagablond:

Travel, food, wine and shopping. What more could a good vagablond need? Add in some top contributors and you have a recipe for success.

I think I expected this category to be a little harder but for me there are only a few real contenders.

Final Verdict

If it's raw, new energy that you want; go with Amanda, Holly and Jen.

But if we're honest, the girls have probably lost out to the more complete presentations.

Hotel Chatter deserves an honourable mention (they should probably be in the 'Best Informative/Practical Travel Blog' category) but my front-runners are Brave New Traveller and Vagablond.