Media

Are you a journalist or editor who would like to write about Grantourismo or who would like access to our expertise and opinions? Here’s how you can find out more about us and how we can help you.

Information

How Grantourismo began and our slow, local and experiential travel philosophy is described on the About Grantourismo page. You can read more about us here: Lara and Terence.

Also browse our site, especially the archives above for our stories on Slow Travel, Local Travel and Experiential Travel. The stories filed under Resources and Series, also above, reveal much about us and our expertise and interests too, especially The Dish, Weekend Eggs and A Year of Asian Cookbooks (Terence’s passion for cooking); Footpath Feasting (our love of street food); Take-Homes (my obsession with tracking down the most quintessential souvenirs of places); and Monday Memories (Terence’s tips and musings from the perspective of a professional photographer).

Email Lara for more information or to do an interview in person, by phone, email, online chat, or Twitter. You can find us on Twitter at twitter.com/gran_tourismo, twitter.com/laradunston and twitter.com/terencecarter. Lara also has a LinkedIn page and this is the Grantourismo facebook page.

Media Coverage

Click through to browse our media coverage and read some of the nice things that have been written about Grantourismo, the interviews we’ve done, guest posts we’ve written about our project, and the many stories in magazines and newspapers and on the web that have resulted from our travels.

From time to time media releases about our projects may be placed at the end of this page. You might also find media releases on the press site of former partners, such as HomeAwayUK.

Interviews

We are available to do interviews about Grantourismo and our grand tours; the history and concept of the Grand Tour as a form of travel; slow and sustainable travel; local travel and the idea of living like locals; experiential travel, educational travel and learning holidays; the notion of ‘giving back’ when travelling, and travelling responsibly and ethically; the destinations we have travelled to and our experiences in those destinations; holiday rentals, vacation rentals, self-catering, and the idea of settling in to places for a while; and a whole range of other related travel topics.

Email Lara to arrange an interview in person, by phone, skype, email, online chat, or Twitter.

Stories & Columns

As widely published travel writers, we can write feature stories and columns, review properties, and interview subjects on topics related to the interests of this site as described above, for magazines, newspapers and websites. We are happy to provide clippings of recently published print stories and links to published work, and to discuss angles and ideas with editors. You can see some of our published stories in Lara’s portfolio and more clippings on Terence’s photography site.

Guest Blog Posts & Q&As

We are continually travelling, however, we would love to participate in Q&As on your blog or write guest posts if and when our travel schedule permits. You’ll find links to examples of Q&As we’ve done under Media Coverage, above. Feel free to email Lara to discuss your ideas.

Editorial Policy

See our Editorial Policy page.

Images

Terence is a professional photographer and can make images available to the media for the purposes of promoting Grantourismo. For other purposes, some of the images you see on Grantourismo may also be available for purchase on Terence’s photography site, where he also has a stock library (more images coming soon). All our images are copyright and our copyright lawyer is on speed-dial. We don’t have very many pretty pictures of ourselves, however, we’re working on it; ask and we’ll see what we can do. Contact Terence to discuss permission to use and purchase images at terence@terencecarterphotography.com.

Advertising

There are a number of opportunities for advertising from relevant advertisers, from banners to advertorial, so please get in touch. We do not accept advertising from companies with no connection or relevance to our site’s content, and we do not accept advertising relating to gambling and casinos or finding nice Thai girls and Russian wives.

If you’d like to collaborate, partner up or be a sponsor and you have a proposal, please visit our About Grantourismo page first and then email us.

Media Releases

As you can see, we rarely issue media releases (we are writers, so we know how annoying it can be to receive them) but when we do, they will go here:

MEDIA RELEASE #2 issued by HomeAwayUK
The end of a Grand Tour and a first of its kind partnership in travel
Thursday, 07 April 2010

This month sees the end of a first of its kind partnership between a travel company and travel writers, which succeeded in creating hot debate among the travel writing community and redefining a new way for travel companies and writers to work together. ‘Grantourismo’, a year-long partnership between writer-photographer team Lara Dunston and Terence Carter and holiday rentals website HomeAway.co.uk, closed with the final allocation of prizes to the winners of the twelfth travel writing contest held on the blog over the last year.

Grantourismo was a yearlong travel experiment aimed at exploring more enriching and meaningful ways of travelling and showing how staying in holiday rentals instead of hotels can facilitate this. Lara and Terence had around two weeks in each ‘home’ they stayed in, enabling them to slow down and travel more sustainably, gain a deeper insight in to the local culture and life (food and cooking being a key theme!), learn and do things and, where possible, give something back to the places they visited.

The Grantourismo blog launched on 1st January 2010 and the couple set off from London in February, following a launch party with canapés and cocktails at their home for that week, a chic penthouse apartment in trendy Battersea. Over the course of the next 12 months the couple visited 34 destinations and travelled 88,417km (54,940 miles) by plane, train, bus, boat and car. They also clocked up 499 blog posts totalling 424,150 words, Terence took some 57,000 photographs and the blog received 70,737 comments.

Lara and Terence stayed in 36 different holiday homes from HomeAway.co.uk, which lists over 200,000 properties worldwide, including a Moroccan Riad, a hut in Kenya, a Grand Canal palazzo in Venice, a conical trullo in Puglia, a Mexican casita, stunning architecturally designed homes and 21 different city apartments.

The couple’s inspiring blog posts, ranging from evocative narratives about their cultural experiences, to practical guides and mouth-watering recipes for local dishes were read by people from 184 countries around the world. Their 3,800+ followers interacted daily with them on Twitter and the blog’s current Alexa ranking is 108,007 globally and 68,989 in the UK, impressive for a site started just over a year ago.

Lara comments, “After a year living in homes around the world, most of them in everyday neighbourhoods, I think we’re going to find it hard to return to hotels. We’ve not only loved having the space, flexibility and privacy a holiday rental offers, but most of all we’ve loved the opportunities it gave us to engage with locals and learn how they live their lives. For us, that’s a far more satisfying way to travel. The trip was transformational.”

Tim Boughton, GM for HomeAway.co.uk said, “The great content Lara and Terence produced for Grantourismo truly showcases the different type of holiday you can enjoy in a real home and provides a fantastic source of inspiration for travellers looking for a more authentic way to travel.”

“Grantourismo essentially gave us two global ambassadors for our service and the travel experience rentals offer, who promoted it every day, online, in social media, and, most importantly, in person to the countless travellers they met along the way. We were delighted with the performance of the blog, but these benefits were immeasurable.”

ENDS -   High resolution photos of the holiday homes and destinations featured on Grantourismo are available on request.

Sarah Chambers , PR Manager, HomeAway.co.uk  Tel: +44 (0) 20 8846 3430
Email: schambers@homeaway.co.uk Twitter: www.twitter.com/HomeAwayUK Skype: sarah_chambers

MEDIA RELEASE #1 issued by HomeAwayUK
In 2010, discover a new way to travel; discover Grantourismo
London, 4th January 2010

HomeAway Holiday-Rentals partners with writers Lara Dunston & Terence Carter to show travellers a more authentic, enriching way to travel

In 2010, globetrotting travel writers Terence Carter and Lara Dunston, in partnership with HomeAway Holiday-Rentals, will swap hotel rooms for holiday homes and embark on a contemporary grand tour of sorts they’re calling Grantourismo. The aim is to slow down, learn and do things, live like locals, and give something back to the places they visit, as they search for a more authentic and enriching way to travel.

Not only will Lara and Terence be chronicling their experiences via a dedicated blog and Twitter page that travellers can interact with (see www.grantourismotravels.com andhttp://twitter.com/gran_tourismo), they will also be available to produce independent articles as they go. Get in touch and read on to find out more.

A huge number of Brits already favour holiday homes over hotels, enjoying the space, privacy, flexibility and authenticity they provide. According to industry analyst Mintel, around one in five people currently holiday in this way and self-catering holidays are rising every year. In 2009, self-catering holidays were forecast to represent over 60% of all overseas holidays and Mintel expects the self catering market to continue to outstrip general holiday growth and exceed 34.3 million breaks by 2011.*

Thanks to the millions of people who own holiday homes worldwide, the choice of rentals is huge, with over 425,000 properties available on the HomeAway sites alone. With this choice, HomeAway rivals the largest hotel chains in the world. The InterContinental Hotel Group, for instance, recently ranked as the worlds largest, with 619,851 rooms. Whatever type of holiday you’re looking for, and whatever type of accommodation, there’s a holiday home to suit.

With Grantourismo, Lara, Terence and HomeAway Holiday-Rentals aim to show how holiday homes provide the perfect solution to today’s travellers’ desires, and the perfect alternative to hotel rooms and resorts. Travellers today are no longer just after a ‘holiday’ of sun, sea and sand, but rather a ‘journey’ where they learn about the local culture, arts, language and people of the places they travel too. A holiday rental is the natural choice for such a trip.

For Lara and Terence, the idea of a ‘grand tour’, a slow, extended journey where they would immerse themselves in the destination had always been appealing. Having already been on the road for over three years, they have called hundreds of hotel rooms ‘home’. But while they have much appreciation for hotels, at every possibility they were quick to trade their swipe cards for door keys and check in to a real ‘home’, albeit a rented one, for a change.

Lara comments, “The contrast between hotels and holiday rentals couldn’t be greater – the chance to really slow down, relax, and take it easy at a holiday rental being the obvious one. There are no breakfast buffet times to wake for, no cocktails to scramble to, and no need to worry about when the kitchen closes. Plus by travelling more slowly, people are also travelling more sustainably – from taking the time to discover local markets and small neighbourhood businesses, to buying and eating local produce instead of expensive imported products. Not only is this kind of travel more sustainable, travellers are also able to learn how to live like locals; which is one of our key aims on this trip.”

Courtney Wylie, General Manager for HomeAway Holiday-Rentals comments, “Here at HomeAway Holiday-Rentals we have stayed in an impressive number of properties between us, discovering for ourselves the benefits of staying in a private home instead of a hotel. Therefore, in 2010 it is our mission, along with Lara and Terry, to help more people discover this unique and liberating way of travelling. Although many people have been holidaying in rentals for years, many are still to try it and yet it caters so well for the millions of travellers today who are looking for a more experiential, more involving holiday, not to mention better value for money.”

Throughout their trip, travellers will be able to interact with Lara and Terence and share their experiences via the Grantourismo blog and Twitter page, as well as on www.HomeAway.co.uk and the company’s Twitter, Flickr and Facebook pages.

To learn more about how you can get involved, if you are interested in interviewing, commissioning or featuring articles from Lara and Terry, please get in touch.

ENDS –
Source of statistics: Mintel Self Catering Holiday Report 2007 and 2009