tax GARY NEILL k,not a perk


and PRs while influencers charge for this. The consequence is a growing drift from journalism towards marketing, with PRs increasingly demanding guaranteed coverage and greater control over copy, eroding editorial independence. Windsor says many travel writers cannot make the economics work and are being forced into other roles or out of the sector. Mary Novakovich is a veteran travel journalist who has been


producing travel articles since 1999 when she filed her first feature for The Independent on Sunday. She says the debate around tax and hosted travel cannot be separated from the long-term collapse in freelance rates. “I was being paid around 20p a word in the late 1990s and


that rate hasn’t really changed,” she says. “What has changed is the word count, which has steadily dropped.” In real terms, she argues, travel journalism has suffered one of the steepest pay declines in the media, with workloads increasing as fees stagnate. Against that backdrop, she believes attempts to apply benefit-in-kind taxation to hosted trips risk pushing an already fragile profession further toward collapse.


An enabler, not a gift Annie Bennett, who has been writing about Spain since the 1990s for The Telegraph and other national titles, agrees. She rejects the idea that complimentary travel constitutes a gift, arguing that it is provided by tourist boards to enable commissioned journalism. “I may be a travel writer, but I can’t remember the last time


I had a holiday,” she says. She rarely attends group press trips now, which she finds financially unviable, preferring targeted research trips which she often part funds herself. Hugh Collins of Julia Spence PR argues that the crisis in travel


journalism can be solved. Freelance writers, he says, are being priced out of the profession by stagnant fees and unreimbursed costs, narrowing the pool to those who live near airports or can afford to subsidise their work. Julia Spence PR’s Inntravel media support


scheme is designed to counter this by covering basic expenses such as airport transport and meals. These costs, Collins says, are modest but materially affect


a writer’s net income. Supporting journalists is not virtue signalling but ecosystem maintenance. With no professional writers, travel coverage degrades into marketing, damaging credibility for destinations and brands alike.


From a commercial perspective, he argues, widening the pool of experienced journalists improves outcomes for everyone. Quality coverage depends on writers who can afford to do the job properly. Travel journalist and influencer Fran Bridgewater notes


that most travel writers earn modest annual incomes while the notional value of hosted trips can easily exceed their total earnings. Without clearer thresholds or proportional treatment, she warns, writers may increasingly be forced to decline work simply because they cannot afford to accept it. Former BBC staffer and now cultural content creator


Catherine Boardman, who runs Cultural Wednesdays, says regulators are becoming far more alert to disclosure and transparency across all forms of content creation. She argues that while genuinely work-related press trips should not be taxable, experiences that amount to free holidays, particularly where companions are included, may create benefits in kind that must be declared. Crucially, she says, this scrutiny should not apply only to influencers.


What is at stake Travel journalism remains popular with readers and influential within the industry, yet its economic foundations have steadily eroded. If tax enforcement is applied without nuance, writers


warn, the result may not be greater fairness but further consolidation, with only those able to subsidise their work continuing in the field. The danger, many argue, is that in attempting to regulate a fast-growing creator economy, policymakers may undermine one of the few remaining areas of specialist journalism that still relies on first-hand reporting.


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