A couple of evenings ago, I had the opportunity to meet David Allan, bbc.com’s travel editor.  Bbc.com launched its new dedicated travel section in August this year.

David’s presentation was an informal one on one with him being asked some questions by his BBC colleague, Phu Trong – Director Digital Sales & Commercial Director.

David began by acknowledging the huge importance of Asia in the travel market citing that a third of all travel spend will come out of Asia by 2020 with China alone representing a huge proportion of this. One the back of this, he promised that we would see him in Asia and Singapore a lot over the coming years.

Phu’s opening questions helped us to get to know David a bit more, when he asked if travel writing was as glamorous as it sounds.  “No,” David replied who went on to describe his journey from writing bar reviews when at college in the US to his impending move to the heart of the BBC in London. David had shared with me earlier that, whilst he could do his job anywhere, he spends a lot of time chatting with the back end developer guys and being in the same time zone makes this easier.

Following the bar review stint in the US, David moved to Dublin with a girlfriend and they thought Dublin could benefit from a Pub Guide. Following several rejection letters from publishers, it was Frommer’s which said that although the specific Dublin-only idea wasn’t something it would go with, could David do a book for the whole of Ireland because they liked the overall proposal?

Following Ireland, David moved to Glasgow and wrote another book for Scotland and, after buying a car, travelled all around the world and lived for a year in Thailand. He ended up in New York as an editor for Fodor’s and, after that, with the New York Times launching the travel vertical.

During the story of David’s background, he was asked by Phu how many places he’s been to and replied that even as someone who has travelled all over the world, he focuses more on the places he still has to visit rather than on the list of those he’s already seen.  “There’s still plenty of South America and a lot of countries in Africa still left to see,” he said.

David sees his new role at the BBC as a unique opportunity to produce an unparalleled online travel destination. With over 7,000 editorial positions and its owning 75% of Lonely Planet, the BBC has the potential to be the largest travel site in the world. The huge amount of content around destinations and venue information that LP contributes complemented with the BBC’s journalistic competency and legacy makes for a potent force.

It was clear that the BBC’s objectivity coupled with LP’s ethos (no junket policy) is important to David and something he sees as a distinguishing quality to the offering. He described the visitors to the site as those looking for independence, and high standards – those international savvy folks looking for authenticity and integrity.

“So”, asked Phu, “how have the 100 or so days since the launch been so far?”  David said that there had been great feedback on design – incidentally a design that has had been specifically catered for access from mobile devices and tablets. 

As a side note I wonder if this represents a new turn in site development?  It’s been the norm so far to make lovely looking ‘normal’ sites and then crappy (in most cases) looking mobile versions.  Here is the BBC producing one version designed for both ‘desktop’ and mobile browsing.

The design is clean and simple; David went on to add, saying that he found a lot of sites a bit cluttered.  I should add that the simple and clean design, however, in no way means a lack of content with many destinations already available and a new one being added every week or so.

The site is also arranged around ‘themes’ – these themes corresponding to how a traveler might describe himself or herself – someone interested in ‘luxury’ or ‘music’ for example.  Indeed, a visit to the site now offers you only two broad menu choices – browse by destination or by theme. Straightforward and simple and a thoughtful nod to the site visitor – “how would you describe yourself? – Here it is”.

David talked about the ‘module’ on the bbc.com homepage as one of the traffic drivers.  Both Facebook and Twitter are also key sources of traffic as well as engagement areas. 

David added something very interesting at this point; that all the BBC travel Twitter updates are done ‘by hand’ – not simply an automated ‘new content’ link updater that looks like an RSS feed.  

This, for me at least, is very interesting and significant.  In a landscape where personality and treating your visitors as human beings is increasingly important, here is one of the world’s largest content creators with levels  of technology and automation at their disposal that everyone else dreams about and they decide to do their twitter updates by hand.  Wonderful.

(Those of you out there who use tools like HootSuite to update your twitter feed from your subscribed RSS feeds every half an hour at exactly the same time might want to take note!  Yes, I know who you are)

A Blog will be added to the site in January that will provide a place for users to add their own content as well as an area where quick and timely reactionary updates can be added following ‘news’ incidents – earthquakes perhaps or coups.  This is one of the site’s key offerings in David’s eyes – having the huge resource of journalists and other on the ground staff such as ‘fixers’ whose skills can be brought to bear on assessing the impact of a situation and its implications on travel specifically.

David concluded, when asked what are his travel hotspots are, by saying that he loves Indonesia, Australia and Burma, adding that he’d like to spend some more time in Indonesia. I urge you all to say hello when you see him because, in addition to being bbc.com’s travel editor and a man with a lot of experience in travel, he’s also a thoroughly warm and likeable bloke.

Featured image credit (Sport success on sunset background): Ockra/iStock