✨ Welcome back to our 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 podcast host and freelance travel writer - Holly Rubenstein!
We hope you enjoy - happy reading !!
Where are you based?
I'm based in South West London.
What outlets do you write for? Who is your audience? What are your travel specialties?
My primary outlet is The Travel Diaries, which I created and host. For the past six years, it has been the UK's most listened-to travel podcast, and it now has a significant international audience too. I also occasionally write for titles including The Telegraph, Country & Town House and The Sunday Times.
Alongside the podcast, I have a very engaged travel-loving audience across social media, with around 122,000 followers on Instagram and 45,000 on TikTok. I'd describe my audience as affluent, aspirational travel lovers: people who are looking for experiences over possessions, and who are highly influenced by both the podcast and my social content when it comes to where to go, where to stay and what to book. My main podcast audience is 40-50 - slightly older than my social audience who are largely in the 30-40 demo.
My specialisms are luxury travel and family travel, and combining the two is probably my favourite space to explore. I currently have a three-year-old and a nine-month-old, so I'm particularly interested in hotels that manage to be properly luxurious while also genuinely working for families - the holy grail!
Are you in-house or freelance, or both?
Freelance.
What are your professional pet peeves?
I genuinely love the travel industry and feel very lucky to work with so many brilliant PRs who have been SO supportive of the podcast. But! a few things do drive me slightly mad. First, repeated follow-ups on press releases or travel news that clearly isn't relevant to me in the first place. Second, asking for all my detailed preferences before a review trip, then arriving to find that none of them have been passed on to the hotel. And finally, being pitched a hotel that would “love to host me”, then when I say yes and suggest dates, the offer disappears. It's always much better to be upfront about what is actually possible.
In your past professional life you were …
A singer-songwriter, then a TV producer and red carpet journalist for the BBC and Reuters.
Where would you like to return to?
There are so many places and hotels I'd love to return to. Hotel-wise, I dream of going back to Airelles Chateau de la Messardiere, which is also where the new series of The White Lotus is being filmed, so I suspect that may become rather harder to get into. I also recently stayed at Sani Asterias in Greece and was surprised by quite how impressive it was, as a luxury family hotel.
More broadly, I'm trying to work my way around the best hotels in Europe for review purposes, with a very busy year ahead. I'm especially interested in luxury family hotels that don't feel like a compromise for the adults. I'm hoping to get back to Marrakech later this year, and I'm also going to be travelling in September and October - destinations tbc!
What's on your bucket list?
South Africa and Sri Lanka are both very high on the list, although I'm currently still working up the courage to do longer-haul flights with two small children. Closer to home, I'd love to visit Norway, Slovenia, the Amalfi Coast, the Athens Riviera and the Greek islands. I'm constantly inspired by the destinations my guests pick on the podcast. Japan is top of everyone's bucket list and it's high on mine too.
Where do you travel for fun?
I hope everywhere I travel is for fun, even when I'm technically working. I recently got back from a medi spa, which involved less eating than my ideal holiday usually would (!) but generally I try to find the joy in every trip. Travelling with children can be chaotic, of course, but it also makes you see the world through new eyes, which is incredibly special.
Your funniest, or most harrowing, travel story is …
Probably being bitten by a black widow spider in Big Sur. I was on a seven-week road trip across the US, reviewing what must have been 40+ hotels, and I felt this bite on my back. I'd actually been bitten by a spider before (not ideal as an arachnophobe) so I recognised the fang marks and took myself to urgent care. They drew around the bite to monitor whether the poison was spreading, and I completely panicked. The next day I was interviewing Richard Branson, so thankfully it didn't escalate!
What advice would you give your younger professional self?
Be hyper-focussed on what you want to achieve, and don't be embarrassed about taking your own ambitions seriously. I'm grateful that I followed through on mine, even when it would have been easier to do something more conventional.
What nugget would you like to add that we haven't touched on?
The Travel Diaries was recently nominated for an iHeart Podcast Award, which was an incredible moment for the show, especially as I hadn't submitted it myself. To be nominated alongside names such as Amy Poehler and Mel Robbins was a huge surprise, and it has really helped grow the podcast's US audience.
The show is now filmed too, so you can watch episodes on YouTube and Spotify. Upcoming guests include Rob Rinder and Rylan, Michael Palin, Steve Backshall, Tom Allen and many more.
I also include a hotel or destination review at the start of each episode, which has become one of the most powerful editorial parts of the podcast.
How best should people contact you?
The best way is by email: hollyruben@gmail.com. People can also find me on Instagram and TikTok at @hollyrubenstein, and you can listen to The Travel Diaries wherever you get your podcasts.
