Photo credit: Susan Portnoy
First of all, we hope you and your families are keeping well during these trying times.
We know you’ve probably read one-too-many COVID-19 announcements from publications and brands by now. But as the travel industry reels from the impact of coronavirus, we wanted to let you know what’s happening with Adventure.com.
We’re a small team over here—two part-time editors in Oliver Pelling and Meera Dattani, and a part-time photo editor, Nicola Bailey. That’s it. We manage every aspect of Adventure.com from writing, commissioning and editing to social media, marketing, partnerships and more. Sometimes we’re even the IT department. And we love it, as we get to share the kinds of stories we love to read, and work with some of the most talented writers and photographers in the business.
But due to a combination of coronavirus-inflicted public health concerns, border closures and travel restrictions, our parent company, Intrepid Group, has been forced to make some difficult decisions over the past few weeks. Adventure.com has not escaped the effect of those decisions.
As such, we’ll be putting Adventure.com on ‘stand-by’ for at least two months, but quite possibly longer.
So we’re going to ‘hibernate’ for a spell, and hope this all blows over sooner rather than later. Rest assured that the site isn’t going anywhere, and is at no risk of being ‘switched off’. We’re just going to take a nap, dream a little dream or two, and come roaring back to life when we have room in our brains to think about travel again.
That said, we hope you continue to read and share Adventure.com stories during this time. Our whole gambit has been to offer our readers a quiet corner of the internet where they can read stories about the world, learn about fascinating people and communities, and hear tales of optimism and innovation. And we reckon our back-catalogue makes for a pretty good pandemic companion.
Maybe you want to ‘travel’ to the wilds of the Yukon in this piece by co-editor Oliver Pelling or see these incredible photos of Kazakh nomads in Mongolia by travel photographer Susan Pornoy. If you’re a ‘reluctant hiker’, dip into this piece about Peru’s Salkantay Trail by co-editor Meera Dattani, see these incredible photos of Burning Man taken by our photo editor Nicola Bailey, or have your heart warmed by tales of the kindness of strangers by adventurer and regular contributor Leon McCarron. And we love this piece by another of our regulars, writer and photographer Lola Akinmade Åkerström, about how the travel industry can make the world more inclusive and accessible.
We’d also like to take this opportunity to thank all our readers for making this publication what it is. We’re lucky to have readers who crave the stories we love to write, and we can’t wait to give you more. We look forward to returning to your airwaves, as soon as COVID-19 has left the room.
Stay healthy, wash your hands, call your loved ones, and with any luck we’ll see you in soon(ish).
Oliver Pelling, Meera Dattani and Nicola Bailey
Adventure.com editors and our photo editor
