Top Ten Travel Brochure Clichés
Travel brochures are meant to be descriptive guides that tell you everything you need to know about a destination. A travel brochure should paint a picture of an area or hotel using meaningful, specific language, backed up by concrete examples and beautiful images. Unfortunately, all too often this isn’t the case, travel brochures are more often than not full of meaningless, waffling copy that doesn’t really communicate anything and only serves to waste time.
In fact, when travel companies say one thing, they often mean something totally different, such is the language of sales. Here are ten of the most common travel brochure clichés, and what they really mean.
Blue Skies, Golden sands and Azure seas…
The standard issue, cookie-cutter introduction to any luxury destination with a beach, and possibly the most common home to the word azure, this trio of adjectives has become soclichéd it’s virtually lost all meaning.
Translation: The weather is generally better than the UK, and the beaches don’t consist of sharp pebbles and sewage water
Picturesque Views…
A given for most hotels with a balcony, problem is, picturesque is subjective and the people that write holiday brochures may actually enjoy overlooking a pool full of pasty binge drinkers and hyper-active kids
Translation: If your hotel or apartment has a balcony is doesn’t back onto a sheer rock face
Sample some of the local delicacies…
Food is a big part of any holiday and including the local delicacies in the description of a destination is an absolute must, even if these delicacies consist of badly-done English food intended to please unadventurous holidaymakers
Translation: If you get tired of the re-heated hotel buffet, venture into town where you’ll find inedible interpretations of food from other nations.
Enjoy a Warm Tropical climate…
Tropical is a little ambiguous, we usually take it to mean warm, the only countries with tropical climates, that is, countries located in tropic of Cancer are located just North of the equator.
Translation: It might be stiflingly warm, but you’ll get a guaranteed rain shower almost everyday.
Verdant, Rolling Hills…
Verdant. Another word that you’ll only see when someone’s trying to pedal a holiday.
Translation: You hotel or apartment is in a remote location, surrounded by lush, dense forest that’s treacherous at best to navigate through
Located in a Lively Area…
It makes sense that a travel brochure should denote busier, more densely populated areas from more secluded, quiet enclaves, but lively is commonly used word but is far too subtle for most resorts
Translation: Your apartment is slap bang in the middle of a noisy, vulgar strip of bars where you’ll be disturbed all day and night by youths vomiting, fornicating and riding quad bikes
Off the Beaten Track…
An odd analogy that conjours up images of a remote dirt road in a jungle, but is actually intended to mean the opposite of lively
Translation: Anything off the beaten track is miles from civilisation, and will cost you hundreds of pounds to get there and back
Friendly Locals…
An honorary accolade awarded to almost every country by travel companies, indeed if tour operators were to offer packages to 1930s Nazi Germany, they’d probably still describe the locals as friendly.
Translation: The locals will attempt to sell you shoddy, useless goods at every available opportunity, sometimes at a gunpoint
In the Beating Hear of the city…
An emotive phrase that’s far too often utilised when talking about a sleepy backwater settlement
Translation: Located in the dodgy part of town, it might be right in the epicentre but it’s crawling with drug dealers and prostitutes
Joe is a travel blogger who tries to avoid using clichés at all costs. He’s looking forward to his luxury family holidays this year, though he won’t be staying ‘off the beaten track’ or ‘basking in the tropical climate’! He’s going with Sovereign Luxury Travel, one of the premier luxury holiday companies.
Photo by state-records-nsw
About the Author
Andrea Guerriero Hi, I'm Andrea, a travel blogger, web programmer, seo apprentice and amateur photographer based in Milan. I love reading, I love music. I love to travel but only if I leave on a mission! I've been traveling through most of Europe and I love writing about it. I love photography, especially as a way to document experiences, places, events. My Nikon D300 camera is always with me, and it helps me in sharing my life with the rest of the world. Getting in touch with new people, different life styles and foreign traditions, and write about it, is all I can ask for.
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