“This summer, I am visiting France”. This is the mention that now appears in the description of the Instagram account of the star of travel bloggers, Bruno Maltor. Like others, the Covid-19 pandemic has forced him to swap long-haul destinations for Auvergne, the Rhône Valley, Touraine or Corsica, whose landscapes have invaded social networks in recent weeks.
“In an exceptional situation, an exceptional device,” notes Nanette Maupertuis, director of the Ile de Beauté Tourism Agency. To ensure an increased digital presence, Corsica's communication budget has been increased and doubled, from 2 to 4 million euros. Élise and Max, the blogger couple behind the Bestjobers site, also went there after having surveyed the Lyon region and New Aquitaine while Camille, alias L'oiseau Rose, set down in Provencal Colorado.
A 180-degree turn for these content creators, who usually prefer trips to the four corners of the globe, often with tight timings. If the tourist offices abroad must rethink their promotion strategies, subscribers seem to be delighted with these adjustments: “Thank you for discovering this village near us”, “We are lucky to live in a country as magnificent "," The dream is within reach ", write three of them in the comments of a cliché posted on the Instagram account of the Bestjobers in Collonges-la-Rouge, in Corrèze.
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Confinement requires, the vlogger (video blogger) Patrick Baud, was also forced to find an alternative to his “strange stopovers”, during which he usually travels in global metropolises to virtually show his subscribers urban curiosities. His new concept: Stopovers at home, on Google Street View, in search of cultural and architectural quirks. His community responded, so much so that the YouTuber decided to continue this format. "The confinement is over, but I find it really fun so I decided to continue," he announced in his video on May 19.
Adventure at your fingertips
For Amanda and Camille, the people of Bordeaux behind Un duvet pour deux, the health crisis had no impact on their content. “Since the creation of the blog in 2014, we have always shown that we can do great things close to home, without having to fly. We have seen bloggers massively campaigning for France in recent weeks, but we did not wait for the Covid for that, ” they assert . On their blog, the Pyrenees, the Bordeaux region, Corrèze and the Alps are featured in dense and detailed articles.
“A few years ago, just taking a plane was emotional. When I was little I kept my boarding passes like a treasure , Amanda recalls. Today we are going to Barcelona for the weekend. ” The couple believe they have a real responsibility on how to convey another way of traveling and raise awareness through their blog, without ever giving lessons. "We still sometimes go to faraway countries, but we choose extreme regions with little exposure so as not to contribute to mass tourism."
Soft mobility is recommended for each excursion: night trains, cycling, or hiking. “Over the years, we have understood that what makes a trip unique is often going beyond one's limits. When you have to manage the pain, the galleys, the hard knocks, the meetings are often intense and the satisfaction increased tenfold. Finally, we were doing micro-adventures long before this term became widespread, ” laughs Camille.
Read also: Micro-adventure, another way to travel in France
The micro-adventure, Amélie Deloffre did not wait for the sanitary and environmental upheavals to make it her specialty. Spokesperson for another way of consuming discovery on its site 2 jours pour vivre, it has been offering ideas for sports weekends departing from Paris for three years. "I intend to reconnect city dwellers to a more sober way of life, to the real pleasures of life that we find outside, without 4G, which cost nothing but make people deeply happy," explains the 33-year-old Parisian.
His articles, compiled in a book published in 2019 ( 2 jours pour vivre , Gallimard editions), show the adventure from an uninhibited, incredible angle, without fuss and terribly invigorating. Its community feeds itself through a Facebook group: "The weekend incubator", where hiking and mountain biking enthusiasts meet, to discuss, exchange tips or equipment and offer group itineraries. .
On her latest publication, Amélie Deloffre explains why the advent of the micro-adventure is false good news. “This way of traveling is on the rise and the Covid is only strengthening the trend. Businesses are being created to meet these new needs and we are perhaps in the process of participating in distorting what we find formidable ”she regrets. If she considers that travel bloggers have their share of responsibility in mass tourism, she concedes that it is difficult to stop her activity overnight. “There are big financial issues behind a blog. Creators have often taken years to build their community and it's comfortable to have a salary to travel. This has something to slow down the change of course, ” she concludes.
The difficulty of reinventing yourself
The courageous decision, the vlogger Alex Vizeo took it on November 1, 2019. “I 'm quitting my dream job,” he explained, facing the camera, in a video as raw as when he began in 2011. “J ' have always considered that travel should not be a parenthesis in life, but a springboard. When I started my blog, I wanted to show the youngest that leaving with a backpack was an intensive course for the future, to learn to adapt to all situations ” , he explains. Its relaxed style is seductive, the number of subscribers is soaring. He became one of the most influential French people in the sector and is now followed by 110,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel. “When I received a first call from a tourist office offering to make a video while being paid, a world opened up to me. At the time, influence wasn't a topic, I didn't even know I could get paid for it, ” he recalls.
The proposals multiply and Alex Vizeo begins to link the destinations: China, Mongolia, Indonesia, Papua, New Caledonia, Costa Rica, Canada, Japan ... But as the rhythm intensifies, the flame diminishes. “I realized that something was wrong when I started shifting my alarm clock before starting a day. I felt that it did not make me vibrate so much, that I had reached the end of a cycle. ” Constantly reinventing oneself, creating new formats from one country to another, leaving relentlessly between two planes… These challenges have become increasingly difficult to manage. Alex Vizeo admits it, he sometimes over-consumed travel, even if it means leaving aside a few environmental principles and being punctually pointed out by his subscribers for his ecological contradictions, "rightly".
Read also: What to see, read or listen to when traveling from your sofa?
“One morning, I had the click. I took my cam to announce that I was quitting. Nobody knew about it. ” The video had the effect of a bomb, the number of reactions reached record highs. “What was hardest was to end a life that I have always dreamed of, that I took a long time to build, which required sacrifices from me. But by draining thousands of subscribers in preserved places, I said to myself that I had perhaps done anything for 6/7 years ” , recognizes the ex-blogger, now reconverted in the personal branding , a strategy for showcasing a person, "to help people do their dream job after showing them how to achieve it".
When they started out in the late 2000s, travel bloggers would distill their advice from experienced travelers to rare readers, following a haphazard pace as they journeyed along. The backpackers were gleaning information there they could not find in the guide books, whose only value held in trust in the one who delivered. But new marketing issues and audience research have disturbed this fragile balance. “The standardization of content is a shame , concedes Alex Vizeo. When our community grows, we build our travel programs with our partners, we improve our SEO, the speed of the site, etc. This leaves much less room for amateurs who find some crazy nuggets. ”
Professionalisation, by creating a race for quality and aesthetics, would it have killed the very essence of the travel blog? It remains for the new generation to rediscover a sometimes forgotten authenticity and the desire to share. Without expecting anything in return.
