✨ Welcome to our brand-new series, TravMedia's Travel Writer of the Week! ✨
Each week, we'll be shining a spotlight on one of the incredibly talented, passionate, and inspiring Journalists or Editors from our amazing community.
This week, we'd like to shine the spotlight on freelance travel writer - Tamara Hinson!
We hope you enjoy - happy reading
Where are you based?
Weybridge, Surrey
What outlets do you write for? Who is your audience? What are your travel specialties?
National newspapers, travel magazines such as Wanderlust, in-flights, international publications and travel trade magazines. The main region I cover is Asia (particularly India, South East Asia, Japan and South Korea) although I also write quite a bit of winter sports content - I used to be a snowboard instructor pre-freelancing and I did several working ski seasons. I'm also a keen scuba diver so I write quite a bit about diving. I love tech and have a travel and tech column in T3 magazine. Finally, I'm also a huge F1 fan and so I write quite a bit about that. I attend several races a year and love interviewing the people behind the sport - at this year's British GP I interviewed Mario Isolo, head of motorsport at Pirelli, and Bernd Maylander, the safety car driver. I also love off-the-beaten-path destinations and exploring the great outdoors - I've been to North Korea and hiked to Everest Base Camp earlier in the year. Oh and I love Germany and Poland. Germany is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated countries in Europe.
Are you in-house or freelance (or both)?
I've only ever been freelance
What are your professional pet peeves?
Invites for long haul press trips which are three nights or less, press trip invites with no hint of a story/timeliness, being asked to insert destinations into round up-style pieces written ages ago, being sent images for pieces which are 0.0002kb or 50 million MB and a tiff.
In your past professional life you were …
A snowboard instructor and a chalet girl. During university I did various random jobs: I worked in a jam factory, temped at a council processing licenses so that famers could take cattle infected with foot and mouth to the slaughter house, I worked as a cleaner on an army base....
Where would you like to return to?
North Korea. And Raja Ampat, to dive, although I'm doing that in April (not for a press trip, either, just for fun).
What's on your bucket list?
Jeju, South Korea. More North American resorts (but only if the price of lift passes comes down).
Where do you travel for fun?
Mountains for snowboarding, Asia for diving, any canal towpath or riverside for cycling....
Your funniest (or most harrowing) travel story is …
The day I spent going around the M25 on a coach, writing about the new motorway coach tour being launched by a company in Brighton. It never happened, and it was soul-destroying. The supposed highlights included seeing the world's longest sliproad. Oh and getting off my Ivalo (Finland) bound plane at Rovaniemi and realising I was around 200 miles from where I was meant to be (I was meant to stay on). That resulted in a £250 taxi ride. Also, spending the night as a Halloween scare actor at Universal. That was about as far removed from my comfort zone as it's possible to get. Being charged by an elephant in Lusaka. Falling off my bike in Maryland, cutting my head and being carted off to hospital after three very lovely people all stopped and helped me try to stop the bleeding (I bled all over one guy's American flag t-shirt).
What advice would you give your younger professional self?
Get more sleep when you're travelling to avoid losing the plot.
What nugget would you like to add that we haven't touched on?
Sorry to all the PRs who sent invites for press trips or events and who I can't always reply to.
How best should people contact you?
Email only.
