BBC's online travel section covering world destinations, food cultures, local customs, and travel features for a global audience. Accepts freelance pitches from experienced writers.

We tell readers about places they’ve never been to and show them a new side to places they think they know. With vibrant imagery at the heart of its layout, BBC Travel provides an engaging and inspirational environment for our curious, passionate audience.

As a feature section within BBC.com, BBC Travel offers high-quality stories about destinations around the world that aim to amaze, immerse, inspire and connect. It is fuelled by new, unexpected and emotionally engaging stories from a global community of editors, writers, photographers and video journalists who provide a trusted perspective on the world of travel. We are independent, impartial and honest.

BBC Travel is targeted at curious, passionate readers who want to learn about the world as much as they want to travel there. They are professional, aspirational and intelligent. They are more concerned with the value of an experience than its price.

BBC Travel

<div><span style="color: rgb(20 20 20/var(--tw-text-opacity,1));">We’re looking for features that inspire, entice and excite. Content needs to be immediately engaging, and written in a tight, fast-paced narrative style, packed with insider knowledge and complete with a strong ‘why now’ hook. Articles need to be inspirational with a strong travel angle, and they must be sharable. </span><br></div><div><br></div><div>If you’re a good shooter then we’d love for you to supply relevant images to go with your feature, along with caption and credit information. Please deliver the high-resolution images via Dropbox (with a sharable link), WeTransfer or another file transfer system. Otherwise, we can source accompanying images from stock libraries.</div><div><br></div><div>Also, the BBC has adopted a mission to address a long-standing challenge in media: too few women as expert sources. As part of a company-wide initiative, BBC Travel asks that you strive for 50-50 gender balance in your reporting – meaning, the gender parity of your sources should be as close to 50% female, 50% male as possible.</div><div><br></div><b>Along with your draft, please submit:</b><div><ul><li>A list of all written sources, including books and academic papers (with links, when available).</li><li>The name, title and contact information (phone number, email – preferably both) for every interviewed source, even if they are not directly quoted.</li><li>A brief description of the information gathered from each source.</li><li>Your Twitter and Instagram handles, as well as a link to your public Facebook page (if you have one), in your submitted copy so we can include you in relevant social pushes.</li></ul><div><br></div></div><div><b>General commissions: </b>Ellie Cobb ellie.cobb@bbc.com or Eliot Stein eliot.stein@bbc.com</div>

Feature articles

<div><span style="color: rgb(20 20 20/var(--tw-text-opacity,1));">Photo essays should have a strong narrative arc, telling the story through images and informative captions. Horizontal format images are preferred as they look better on our site. All photo essays will only be commissioned upon seeing the images – please deliver the high-resolution images via Dropbox (with a sharable link), WeTransfer or another file transfer system.</span><br></div><div><br></div><div><b>Tone</b> should be evocative, authentic, entertaining and inspiring, aimed at professional and well-educated readers. Please look through the content on BBC Travel to get an idea of the style and tone we’re looking for.</div><div><br></div><b>Along with your draft, please submit:</b><div><ul><li>A list of all written sources, including books and academic papers (with links, when available).</li><li>The name, title and contact information (phone number, email – preferably both) for every interviewed source, even if they are not directly quoted.</li><li>A brief description of the information gathered from each source.</li><li>your Twitter and Instagram handles, as well as a link to your public Facebook page (if you have one), in your submitted copy so we can include you in relevant social pushes.</li></ul><div><br></div></div><div><b>General commissions: </b>Ellie Cobb ellie.cobb@bbc.com or Eliot Stein eliot.stein@bbc.com</div>

Photo essays

<div>We occasionally accept short, embeddable video (of about one minute or less) to accompany text stories. The amount (and length) will be confirmed with you upon commissioning.</div><div><br></div><div>For feature-length lead video (such as short documentaries of about three to five minutes), please inquire about our video brief.</div><div><br></div><b>Along with your draft, please submit:</b><div><ul><li>A list of all written sources, including books and academic papers (with links, when available).</li><li>The name, title and contact information (phone number, email – preferably both) for every interviewed source, even if they are not directly quoted.</li><li>A brief description of the information gathered from each source.</li><li>your Twitter and Instagram handles, as well as a link to your public Facebook page (if you have one), in your submitted copy so we can include you in relevant social pushes.</li></ul><div><br></div></div><div><b>General commissions: </b>Ellie Cobb ellie.cobb@bbc.com or Eliot Stein eliot.stein@bbc.com</div>

Videos

<div><font color="#ba0000">In a complex world of negative news and xenophobia at one extreme, and top 10 lists and substance-less roundups at the other, we’ve lost the experience and sheer joy of travel. BBC Travel aims to provide an antidote by celebrating the people, places and cultures that make this world so wonderfully diverse and amazing.</font></div><div><font color="#ba0000"><br></font></div><div><font color="#ba0000">To do this, we tell stories with unexpected angles – on themes such as culture, food, discovery and adventure – that haven’t been covered before.</font></div><div><font color="#ba0000"><br></font></div><div><font color="#ba0000">Questions to ask when crafting a pitch:</font></div><div><ul><li><font color="#ba0000">What is the unexpected or new angle to this story?</font></li><li><font color="#ba0000">Is this story emotional, relatable or educational? How so?</font></li><li><font color="#ba0000">What is the (non-seasonal) ‘why now’ hook?</font></li><li><font color="#ba0000">What’s the immersive travel angle?</font></li><li><font color="#ba0000">Who is the character(s) of this story?</font></li><li><font color="#ba0000">What makes it ‘shareable’?</font></li><li><font color="#ba0000">Why are you the best person to tell this story?</font></li><li><font color="#ba0000">Could you provide visual (photo and video) assets to accompany the piece?</font></li></ul><br></div><div>We will likely refuse point-of-interest (POI) or venue-based articles or guides, lists or roundups. We will rarely accept pitches for event-driven pieces.</div><div><br></div><div>BBC Travel will also likely reject:</div><div><ul><li>Any ideas that are too general</li><li>Substance-less lists, bullets of venues and ideas without real writing attached</li><li>Stories pegged to a seasonal ‘why now’ hook, (ie, we should do this story because it’s spring)</li><li>Outdated ideas (trends that peaked a while ago)</li><li>Pieces that don’t keep the general BBC audience in mind</li><li>Stories that don’t have a clear travel angle</li><li>Stories on singular events and festivals</li></ul></div><div>Please note: You will likely not get a response from us if your pitch falls into one of these categories.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div>

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