ABSTRACT
This chapter gives a historical overview to show how travel journalism has evolved since its earliest inceptions. As a precursor to journalism, travel narratives find roots in Ancient Egypt but have persisted in many forms, from medieval explorations to nineteenth-century handbooks. Travel writing and narrative, however, has changed its focus and goals as a variety of factors – technological, cultural, political – impacted the tourism industry, creating new desires and needs. While no one moment marks the beginning of this branch of lifestyle journalism, the intersection of travel writing and professional journalism at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century saw the rise of dedicated, journalistically-produced travel publications. With the professional recognition of journalism in the early twentieth century, the idea of travel journalism further evolved, and continues to change today with the internet. New websites and opportunities, including more recent innovations in Web 2.0 technology, have made it easier than ever for user-generated content to flourish, allowing us to question the place that travel journalism still occupies in a twenty-first-century media landscape.
