The traveling blog: who are we?
Who is hiding behind the travel blog Itinéterre? We explain everything to you: who we are, our background, how we came up with the idea for this site and what our philosophy is. At the end of this article, we hope you want to travel as much as we do!
What is itinéterre?
Itinéterre is a specialized travel blog in the best routes to discover the Earth.
The blog is written by expatriates or locals.
They share their experience to offer travelers the best tours of their country of residence.
The site is full of advice: budget, accommodation, visits not to be missed, scams to avoid, etc ...
It aims to help all travel lovers plan their adventures.
Why the name itinéterre for your site?
Itinéterre is the mixture of the words 'itinerary' and 'Earth' in French.
This name perfectly sums up the mission of our travel blog: to give you the best routes to discover Earth.
Why this travel blog?
Creating an itinerary is the starting point for all trips.
It is also the most tedious moment ...
Searching for information always takes a long time! And you are never sure you have made the right decisions ... Itinéterre's ambition is tohelping travelers plan their vacation easily knowing that they have made the best choices.
On our travel blog you will find:
- Guides written by expats or locals to visit many destinations
- Their advice on when to leave, what to take, administrative procedures, etc ...
- The best tours to discover each country with visits not to be missed and the stops you can miss without regret.
- Their advice on security and scams to avoid
- Their accommodation recommendations for all budgets (from youth hostels to 5-star hotels, including B & Bs and unusual hotels)
- All their tips for getting around, drinking, eating, shopping, etc ...
The philosophy of the Itinéterre travel blog
Our experience has convinced us that organizing a trip is the key to its success.
Choosing the right route, booking the right hotels, and choosing the best activities is crucial. Nobody wants to fall into tourist traps, make endless queues or have an unpleasant surprise when we arrive at our accommodation.
The mission of the itinéterre travel blog is to you remove the organizational puzzle so that you go on vacation with peace of mind. Follow the guides we have written and plan your vacation quickly, making sure you have made the right choices.
Why can you trust the Itinéterre travel blog?
You can trust our advice mainly because all of our itineraries were written for our loved ones before being published on this blog. The Itinéterre travel blog is written exclusively by locals or expatriates who share on the internet the information they gave to their families or friends when they came to visit them! (To learn more about the history of the blog, read the next paragraph.) Therefore, all tours, hotels, tips and other recommendations have been tested and approved by themselves, their families or their friends! Itinéterre never puts forward places or products that the authors do not know. *
The purpose of Itinéterre is to make you discover a country as if a local were accompanying you.
*Except for luxury hotels. We admit that we have not tested all luxury hotels, but we never put forward a 5 star hotel that we do not know at least by reputation. We are always sure that the high end hotels we recommend are the best. Why ? Because they are recognized as the best by the locals. For example, we were fortunate enough to sleep at Camps Bay Retreat in South Africa during the off-season (that's the advantage of living there!). That's why we recommend it in our article on the best luxury hotels in South Africa. In the same article we also recommend the Belmond Mount Nelson Hotel. And we never slept there! But we booked many massages there and we took many Gin & Tonic on their terrace. Moreover, having lived more than 10 years in South Africa, we know that Mount Nelson is THE LEGENDARY HOTEL in Cape Town. So we know we can recommend it to you without hesitation.
We will never recommend a product or service in which we do not believe.
How was the Itinéterre travel blog born?
Left for 6 months, there are 6 years abroad
Jonathan, the creator of this blog, grew up in the Pyrenees in a small village of 12 inhabitants near Andorra. It is therefore as a native of the South of France that he gives advice on this region that he loves so much.
After studying in Toulouse and Paris, he continued his training for a semester in Dublin. The expatriate life immediately pleases him and he takes the opportunity to visit Ireland from top to bottom. He would return to it 9 times later! A real love story.
Once back in France, he must complete an end-of-study internship. Eager for discovery, he chooses to pack his suitcase again to spend another 6 months abroad. An opportunity will lead him to South Africa. Love at first sight was instantaneous. With the country of course but especially with the one he will marry a few years later!
6 months of internship in Cape Town turned into 6 years of living together at the tip of Africa. Jonathan quickly took a liking to expatriate life. Indeed, living abroad:
- It is the chance to be able to visit a country slowly outside the tourist seasons.
- This is the opportunity to live like a local et soak up their culture.
- It's having the luxury of go off the beaten track and discover the parts the most authentic from the country.
The first itineraries written for loved ones
Jonathan's family and friends came to visit him during his 6 years in South Africa. It is for them that he drew up itineraries according to their expectations:
- A first 10-day itinerary between Cape Town and the Garden Route was planned for his parents and his sister who wanted to discover the country where their son had decided to live.
- Then another 1 month circuit was planned for his French friends who wanted to explore South Africa 100%: from Cape Town to Johannesburg going through the Kruger, Swaziland, St Lucia and Lesotho !
- Then, a one week itinerary around Cape Town was made for the guests of his wedding. Jonathan was keen to offer them the best possible stay as a thank you for traveling to the other side of the world. The circuit was created so that no unmissable visits do not miss: the robben island prison, Cape of good hope, Table Mountain, etc… Everything is there!
- Since then, he hasn't stopped creating circuits for those close to him: 15 days to the Kruger, 17 days with a private reserve, 3 weeks with Swaziland and the East Coast, route suitable for children, another for road trip lovers, a tailor-made tour for friends who prefer motorhomeEtc. ...
The idea of the Itinéterre travel blog
One day, a friend of Jonathan gave him the idea to share on the internet all his precious information collected over the years. If his loved ones feasted on vacation in South Africa, then his information may make many other tourists happy. ! No research work was necessary, it was enough just to layout already existing Word documents. Everything was already there:
- The best activities to do
- Budgets
- The circuits
- Hotels to book
- Recommendations for restaurants and bars
- Etc ...
And all the advice shared has been tested and approved by either Jonathan himself or a loved one! The blog would therefore be a very useful source of reliable information for many travelers who do not know the country and who are lost in the multitude of options.
The idea of sharing his experience on a travel blog pleased Jonathan.
Itinéterre was born two years later.
The creation of the Itinéterre travel blog
Why did it take 2 years to launch the travel blog?
Because Jonathan as well as all the other authors of itinéterre do not live on the income from this site but they have a job that takes most of their week.
He therefore had to find free time between his creative job in advertising, his social life with his wife and friends and his passion for sailing (and the many regattas!). Suffice to say that his weeks are busy!
It was therefore little by little that the project took shape and the blog still operates like this today.
After Africa, make way for Asia!
Jonathan is recruited in Singapore after 6 years in South Africa.
Neither he nor his wife know South East Asia. They see the opportunity to live a new expat experience. So they pack their bags and go on an adventure again. Once there, the culture shock is important. They discover a very small country full of charm but very different from Cape Town: the great African spaces are replaced by large skyscrapers and the wild savannah by an urban jungle! Despite this, they will adapt quickly: Singaporeans are very welcoming and the country welcomes many expatriates like them. Singapore is a bit like a youth hostel: there are all nationalities!
The expansion of the travel blog
Jonathan and his wife have been in Singapore for 4 years now and have travel to South East Asia. Indeed, Singapore is very well placed to go on vacation in the region easily. The city-state is located 20 minutes by car from Malaysia, an hour by plane from Borneo or Indonesia, two hours by plane from Thailand, Cambodia or Laos, and only three hours from Vietnam, Burma or Bali.
They therefore take advantage of all the opportunities for a long weekend to escape. Their knowledge of the region was put to good use by their relatives who came to visit them. As Singapore can be visited in 3 days maximum, Jonathan prepared itineraries for them to continue their holidays in other surrounding countries. (Bali and Vietnam being at the top of the requests!)
This new source of information will soon be added to the site to be useful to as many people as possible. But as usual, it will take time! 😊 Be patient ...
New authors join the traveling adventure
Singapore welcomes a lot of expatriates. In his agency, Jonathan works with Italians, English, Germans, Swedes, Belgians, Swiss, Poles, Indians, Filipinos, Malaysians, Indonesians, Thais, Australians, Americans, Uruguayans, Brazilians, Peruvians and of course Singaporeans.
One of the local trends is to ask natives for route advice to visit their country of origin. Jonathan therefore wrote tours for friends wishing to visit France: Paris of course, but also the region where he was born: the Pyrenees from the Basque coast to the Mediterranean. Conversely, he received Itinerary recommendations filled with tips for visiting Southeast Asia written by natives.
It was by observing this custom of mutual aid that Jonathan had the idea of using it to enrich the content of his itinéterre travel blog. Working as a copywriter for an advertising agency, he meets many other expat copywriters who enjoy writing in their spare time. He therefore suggested that they share with itinéterre readers all the information about their country of origin that they have already written for their friends (circuits, budget, visit, advice, etc.)
This new wave of information should be published soon but we ask you to be patient as we do everything in our free time!
The continuation of the itinéterre travel blog adventure
Maintain a travel blog as traveling takes a long time. But the feedback from our readers is so positive that we want to continue to be of service to them. We are therefore going to publish articles little by little. As we have not lived all over the world, we cannot offer you itineraries for all destinations. We are committed to keeping the spirit of the site intact: tours written by locals or expatriates with their advice to ensure you make the best choices. The arrival of new editors met in Singapore will allow the site to offer even more quality content in accordance with our editorial line. Do not hesitate to subscribe to our newsletter to receive all our new articles.
How to support the Itinéterre travel blog?
If you like our travel blog or if you find our information useful, you can support us very easily. Indeed, the links on the blog to online reservation sites are affiliate links. This means that each time you book by clicking on our links, a small commission (2 to 3%) is returned to us. You do not pay more because the commission is deducted from the margin of the reservation site (you can do the test by clicking on our links and going directly to the reservation site and you will see that they are the same prices). So to support us, do not book your vacation directly on commercial sites but through our links! It won't cost you anything and it allows us to pay the fixed costs of the blog:
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Important: We do not live on the income from this site.
They are too small to pay us a salary and are used to pay fixed costs like hosting the blog. Moreover, all our recommendations have been tested and approved by us or by our relatives. We do not write about tours, excursions, hotels, restaurants or other products without having experienced it. What we advise you, we recommended it before you to our friends.
Q&A:
All photos (or other content from the Itinéterre travel blog) are protected by the right to intellectual property. If you want to use one of our photos, ask us for permission by contacting us through our online form.
No, our content cannot be used for commercial purposes by a third party. However, you can add a link to our article on your site or share it on your social networks.
We are always looking for expatriates or locals who want to share their knowledge. If you would like to contribute to our travel blog, send us an email via our Contact form by telling us in which country you live.
You can write to us to give us your feedback or comments via our contact page. We will be happy to get back to you as quickly as possible. On the other hand, if you contact us to have information on a destination, we recommend that you first read our articles. Very often the answer is already there (you can also use the search bar at the top of the home page)!
99,9% of the recommendations of the Itinéterre travel blog come from the personal experiences of the authors - and not from collaborations or partnerships. But even if our editors live in the country they write for, they may not know your company. That is why we are open to all your suggestions. We will be happy to highlight your brand if it brings added value to readers of this blog. Contact us !
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