TRAVEL WRITING
Become a Destination Uganda Traveler with these simple guidelines.
Travel Now, Find Your Audience.
Writer’s guidelines
Destination Uganda Travelers write the most widely read travel stories about Uganda. We champion experiential and sustainable travel before we are even cool and celebrate journeys that are about places, experiences, cultures, authenticity, living like Ugandans, and great photography.
And, with the theme of “Travel Now, Your Way,” we shun packaged travels and fluff in favor of stories that offer a strong sense of place, inspiring narratives that make readers take discovery journeys with solid service information to help them plan their journeys.
The type of stories
Our goal is to find the new, showcase fresh travel opportunities in Uganda, and be an advocate for curious travelers. Accordingly, each story captures a place’s essence in a way that inspires readers to follow in the writer’s footsteps—and equip them with useful destination information.
Our stories are precisely about traveling around Uganda. Generally, we are interested in places accessible to most travelers, not just the intrepid or wealthy. The sites we write about vary widely, from mainstream to adventure travel.
Our readers are particularly interested in conservation areas, historical places, cities, and little-known or undiscovered places. Story subjects include photography, food, festivals, lodgings, ecotourism, adventurous learning experiences, bus, boat, road trips, and short getaways. Essays offering reflections on the travel experience get a massive readership.
Who can write for us?
We accept content from tour guides, travel consultants, travelers, freelancers, and self-made travel bloggers. Story ideas are generated by the staff and freelance contributors, including writers who want to develop their travel writing skills.
We also assign stories to professional travel writers and those we’ve not used before, but only if their published clips demonstrate the highest writing skill.
Writers can email us their written articles or article propositions they think we can sponsor.
How to write & become a DU-Traveler
Destination Uganda Travelers write pieces that get readers’ attention. Writers create with more than just notions and place names. So please do not send us any unfocused articles or how-to blogs.
Restrict each submission to one or two well-developed articles or proposals for article sponsorship you have exceptionally crafted for us. A carefully considered submission combines your experience traveling to a particular place with the excitement you get from consuming your own narrative.
A good post has a title that suggests what the story is, an introduction that amplifies that, a strong body, subheadings, and great original images to represent the story.
A carefully considered proposal for a travel story should combine support for going to a particular place with some premise or hook. A good story proposal has a headline that suggests what the story is, a base that amplifies that, a strong lead, and not much more than 500 words that clearly set out the premise and approach of the piece.
The story proposal should represent the writer’s style and answer these questions about the story: Why now, and why for Destination Uganda Travelers?
Check previously published stories to ensure we have not recently run a piece on your proposed topic. Please include your credentials, relevant links, and contact details.
Email your story or proposal for sponsoship to media@destinationuganda.com with the subject “MY DU-STORY.” You will receive a reply from the editor about whether your story is publishable.
How long a story should be?
Most DU Traveler stories and destination guides range from 750 to 2,500 words, depending on the subject. Traveler photo stories generally run from 500 to 1,500 words.
We don’t compensate for guest posts or traveler reviews but offer linkbacks and exposure.
Compensation for professional pieces varies depending on the type of story but is competitive with industry standards. Payment is made upon acceptance. We pay for all rights to the script and visuals, although the author can use the material online with reference to the publication.
What we look for in your writing style
There are no limitations on style, as long as the writing is lively and exciting, although a sense of discovery should be at the heart of every DU-Traveler story. We want our writers to project a curious and knowing voice that captures the experience of travel—the places and personalities, the insights and idiosyncrasies.
Writers who work for us must see destinations with fresh eyes and genuine insight. We place a premium on surprise and good storytelling—the compelling anecdote, the colorful character, the lively quote, the telling detail.
And we prefer that our readers be allowed to experience a destination directly through the words and actions of people the writer encounters, not just through the writer’s narrative.
Beyond being intensely evocative of place, our articles attempt to speak to the soul of traveling. No matter how seasoned, every traveler wonders what awaits at a new destination, and it goes beyond weather and accommodations and language and scenic and museums.
There’s a certain frisson of expectation: How foreign is this destination? What new experience will I have? That is travel as texture—the feel of a place, its essential differentness, its look, its flavor. We seek that texture in every story we publish.
Photo guidelines
DU-Traveler stories usually include photos of people involved in and enjoying the activities of the place being featured. This doesn’t mean tourist pictures in the pejorative sense. Generally speaking, we are trying to show a destination from a number of different points of view: overviews from a distance, medium-length views, close-ups of interesting details, intriguing people, street scenes (where relevant), interiors, restaurants, and interesting inns or other lodgings, cultural sites, scenics, and anything else that helps give readers a sense of what a place is like.
DU-Traveler stories feature places that are accessible to the public. Thus, we seldom go behind the scenes. The general rule is: If the average visitor can’t do it, then don’t shoot it.
National park personnel occasionally object to activities being shown in photographs because they violate park rules or constitute a hazard to the visitor, the environment, or the wildlife. Please check with park officials and advise the illustrations editor if a potential problem exists.
Photographers must furnish complete caption information, including who, what, when, and where. Failure to comply will result in holding back on publication. Please jot down any quotes that could be used in captions to illuminate the photographs, and obtain telephone numbers of any persons prominently featured in case the caption writer wants to interview them.
DU-Traveler pays all field expenses for anyone on contract. Photographers must work with the DU-Office to find complimentary transportation, lodging, meals, admission fees, or activities for which a charge is usually made.