Clay Hubbs at RolfPotts.com

This month at the RolfPotts.com Writers page, I interview indie travel guru Clay Hubbs, who in 1977 created Transitions Abroad magazine “for people who travel to learn.” The bimonthly magazine and its website focus on the life-changing alternatives to mainstream tourism.

In the interview, Hubbs reflects on his beginnings as a traveler, and how travel planning has changed. “Travel web sites and books today reflect the cowardice and lack of curiosity of so many would-be travelers,” he says. “It seems that now folks like to read about risk-taking travel but they don’t want to do it. They want to find out everything before they go instead of discovering for themselves. They want to travel independently but with the reassurances of a package tour.”

Here are some other outtakes from Hubbs’s interview:

• “I’m convinced that the Internet will be the salvation for specialized magazines like Transitions Abroad. (I don’t really see what we’re doing as specialized; it’s just not mainstream.) Instead of chasing readers, readers search for us. I love it.”
• “Based upon my experience, my advice to young travel writers is this: decide on your message and mode of delivery and stick to your guns. It’s important for a writer to develop and hone a style. But it’s even more important to have a point of view and a curiosity about the material (the world) that informs that style. I think of Rick Steves. We started out at about the same time with a similar message or “travel philosophy.” Rick was a good businessman, and he understood that there were thousands (millions?) of Americans who longed to travel Europe as he had taught himself to do, as a vagabond. But they either had no idea how to do it or they lacked the nerve to try. So Rick became their teacher and coach.”
• “When you know you have an audience and an obligation [as a writer-traveler] you pay closer attention. You might go places you wouldn’t otherwise go. You take notes and photographs. Joanna and I went to Ethiopia a few years ago expressly to write about volunteering there. It was exciting for us, and the information we brought back was useful — although little of it had to do with volunteering.”

Full Clay Hubbs interview online here.