Edinburgh, Scotland - Where to travel first when quarantine restrictions lighten enough for international voyage?
The Scottish capital of Edinburgh is the first choice of the American association CityRoom.com, whose members (mostly journalists and tourism entrepreneurs) have prominence in the arenas of food, wine, books, publishing, and travel writing. The association launched a revamped website this summer and now plans to feature only one city per season - rather than the dozens of cities they previously featured simultaneously; which, the group says, "would be inappropriate in this time of COVID-19 when ethical travel should involve as few destinations, and little traffic in-between them, as possible."
In the past, a 'bucket-list' mentality was popular among travelers and the agencies who catered to them. "We [future travelers] will have more enriching experiences," CityRoom says, "while reducing cross-cultural infections, if we focus each of our trips on one city - even on one neighborhood - and learn all that it has to teach us."
To encourage travelers to adopt this 'ethical-travel' approach in the coming era, CityRoom will devote the entire issue of its next newsletter - a co-production with Travel Writers' Network - to discovering Edinburgh.
"Ethical travel should involve as few destinations, and little traffic in-between them, as possible."
The issue will be available the 15th of August through their website at www.cityroom.com.
It is uncertain which demographic of tourist will flock to the Scottish capital after this highly-concentrated, monopolitan promotional effort, as the CityRoom Newsletter is primarily B2B and is geared towards promoting via Domino-effect.
"We promote to the promoters," says CityRoom. "Our audience are the travel writers and publishers who will take our message, first about Edinburgh, next about Budapest, Istanbul, Biarritz, and so on, and run with it in their own creative ways; so that we [CityRoom] are simply planting the seed of an outcome for a city of the future that may be of profound and global significance."
*** Call for Submissions for August's Edinburgh Issue: CityRoom pays writers for accepted work (upon publication). Submit articles, stories, novels, poems, photos, or original art, that celebrate the Scottish city of Edinburgh to editors@cityroom.com (Previously-published material is accepted. Only submit material to which you hold the copyright. All submissions considered, yet priority is given to current members of CityRoom. Join at www.cityroom.com/join ).***