In this electrifying episode of Travel Matters, Palle Bo and Rick Calvert sit down with Christine Lozada, famously known as the Drone Queen. Dive into the world of drone photography and videography as Christine shares her journey from a newbie to a renowned drone expert. Discover the secrets behind capturing breathtaking aerial shots, navigating legalities, and utilizing drones to land incredible travel partnerships. Whether you're a seasoned traveler or just curious about drone technology, this episode is packed with insights and tips that will elevate your travel content creation to new heights.

Three Key Points

1. Drone Photography and Videography Essentials: Christine Lozada reveals her top tips for capturing stunning aerial shots, including the importance of smooth, cinematic movements and understanding safety settings to prevent crashes.
2. Strategic Use of Drones for Content Creation: Learn how Christine uses drones not only to enhance her travel videos but also to differentiate her content, land partnerships, and monetize her work. She emphasizes the accessibility and affordability of drones as powerful tools for storytellers.
3. Memorable Drone Experiences and Safety Insights: Christine shares captivating stories from her drone adventures, including an encounter with a black tip shark migration and a daring drone retrieval from a cliff in Ethiopia. She also discusses the evolving ease of flying drones and how they have become essential tools for modern travel creatives.

In this episode of Travel Matters, join hosts Palle Bo and Rick Calvert as they sit down with travel blogger Mike Shubic from Mike’s Road Trip at TBEX North America 2023 in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. They dive into Mike’s journey from early tech adoption to exploring the latest in AI tools, sharing invaluable insights for content creators. Tune in to hear about Mike's adventures, the transformative power of AI in the travel industry, and how technology is shaping the future of content creation.

Key Points

1. AI Tools for Content Creation: Mike Shubic discusses various AI tools like ChatGPT, Luminar AI, and others, highlighting how they can enhance content creation, marketing, and video production, offering new revenue opportunities and audience engagement for travel creators.
2. The Evolution of Travel Blogging: Mike shares his journey from starting Mike’s Road Trip in 2009 to becoming a travel influencer, discussing how early adoption of video and new technologies like AI have transformed his career and the travel blogging landscape.

Future of AI in Travel and Content Creation: The conversation explores the potential and challenges of AI, including its impact on white-collar jobs, the importance of maintaining human creativity and artistry in content, and how AI can be a valuable tool without replacing the authenticity of personal experiences.

In this final episode from TBEX Europe 2023 Kalamata, you can meet two guests.

First, Rick talks to Elena Sergeeva. With a decade-long career in Sales & Marketing, she co-founded Travel Bloggers Greece in 2015 with the purpose to unite like-minded individuals and to educate the Greek market on how to work with bloggers. She is the founder of several travel blogs. She also works with JayWay Travel, one of the sponsors of TBEX.

She did a session at this TBEX called “Destination Blogging Community and DMO Partnerships: Value and Opportunities” where she talked about how working with blogging communities provides new marketing opportunities and continued growth for Andros Island. The session covered the needs of a DMO from the local travel industry – Projects to empower the island’s footprint in the global tourism market.

And our last interview from TBEX Europe 2023 is with Ivan Bengeri from Croatia. In 2013 he quit his 9-to-5 job to travel around the world. In November 2014, www.bengeri.com travel blog happened, and since then, Ivan has been blogging and traveling full-time.

So far, he’s been to 60+ countries, walked a Camino de Santiago (800 km) in September 2018, represented Southeastern Europe (SEE) as a travel influencer on Kerala Blog Express 2019, and in 2020 he launched Bengeri.travel agency to share his love for traveling.

In this episode, you can meet travel blogger Eric Stoen from the family travel blog Travel Babbo. He used to work in healthcare but was addicted to travel. So, in 2014 he quit his job and started the travel blog to inspire more people.

So far, he’s been to 101 countries and seven continents. Hear how he got started and how he grew his blog. You can also hear him talk about the time he took his kids to Antarctica.

Rick has tried to get Eric to be a speaker, but he keeps saying no. Will this interview make him change his mind?

In this episode, we have two guests. Cazzy Magennis and Bradley Williams are the travel blogging duo behind Dream Big, Travel Far.

Using captivating content and an intelligent approach to sharing their stories on mainstream media, their website reaches as many as 350,000 page views a month.

In their session, they shared the step-by-step details of how they have landed a large number of high-profile mainstream media features in the last 18 months – which has, in turn, helped them to 3-4x their blog’s monthly traffic.

This is their first TBEX, their first time as a speaker, and their first time as guests on a podcast. Have a listen and hear how they did.

In this episode, we have two interviews. First, we meet Brennen Bliss, a US Search Award-winning SEO consultant and principal at the US-based travel and tourism-focused SEO agency, Propellic. The agency forms successful and creative SEO campaigns for its clients. Brennen is passionate about travel; sending more people to incredible places is part of his lifelong mission. Brennan did a double session called “Advanced SEO: Hidden Strategies to Compete in Search.”

Then we have a conversation with Anna Kalogeropoulou, Deputy Governor of Tourism for the Region of Peloponnese, a destination for all seasons. Kalamata is one of the fastest-developing cities in Greece. This modern city has been re-introduced to the world as a tourism destination.

In this episode, we meet Caroline Makepeace (Caz) from yTravelBlog and This is Raleigh about Raleigh, North Carolina.

Together with her husband, Craig, she’s been traveling the world since 1997 and since 2007 with their two daughters.

The White House invited them to attend a travel summit as one of the top digital travel influencers in the world in 2014, and in 2020 they were granted a green card for their ”extraordinary ability in the art of travel blogging.”

Caz and Craig are from the Central Coast of Australia and now live in North Carolina – but they like to call the world our home.

She was the Opening Keynote Speaker for TBEX North America in Billings, Montana, 2019. We planned to have her on Travel Matters back then, but it wasn’t possible to make it happen. So, better late than never… Enjoy this conversation with an extraordinary travel blogger.

In this episode, we have an interesting conversation with pioneer travel blogger Melvin Boecher from Germany.

Melvin is the founder and CEO of Travel Dudes, co-founder of the Social Travel Summit, former COO of iAmbassador, and with more than 15 years of successfully running his business, he is a pioneer of professional travel blogging.

His Social Media are very popular. On Twitter, he has accumulated around 250.000 followers, and Melvin appears on over 8.500 recommended Twitter lists – this ranks him in the top 3 in travel. His Facebook page has over 115,000 fans, and his Instagram has around 50,000 followers. He’s also on YouTube, where he and his team post some great videos.

Hear how he started as a travel blogger, how he built his travel blogging empire, and what he shared in his session at this TBEX.