An Interview With Claudia Laroye, Canadian Travel Writer and Blogger

Claudia Laroye is an award-winning freelance writer, author, and content creator living in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is the Founding Editor of the award-winning Claudia Travels travel site (formerly The Travelling Mom), and Deputy Editor at Vacay.ca and Vacay Network. Her writing has scored awards from TMAC and NATJA. 

What got you started in travel writing and when did you feel like you were starting to find success at it?

I began my travel writing journey with my family travel blog, thetravellingmom.ca, back in 2009. It certainly seems like a long time ago now. What started as a passionate hobby quickly became a regular activity within a short time, as I enjoyed writing about our family travel adventures and meeting fellow travel writers at events like TBEX in Vancouver in 2011 and many travel conferences since then. I slowly entered the world of freelance writing around 2013, and would say that today, I divide my time between freelance travel journalism and content creation.

In terms of measuring success, I feel that around 2014, things really started taking off in terms of my travel writing with invitations from DMOs and opportunities to write for different publications, as well as for my blog. It’s been busy since that time, for which I’m grateful, given the roller coaster of change in travel writing and blogging over that time.

You started a family travel blog back then and then eventually ran into the problem that most traveling moms do: your kids grew up. How did you adjust to that with your branding and content?

Yes, I began my family travel blog in 2009 when my kids were 9 and 11! They’re now young adults and while I am a mom and still traveling, writing about strollers and car seats and visiting Nickelodeon resorts is no longer my life.

I realized around 2018 that a brand change was needed given how life had changed, so I initiated a rebrand to claudiatravels.com in 2020 and transitioned my writing focus to better reflect my interests and lifestyle. I still write about family travel as I still do some family travel, but I’ve branched out into writing more about adventure, women’s solo travel, 50+ travel, and lifestyle subjects.

What is the Vacay project you work on and how did that get started?

I began writing travel articles for Canadian digital magazine Vacay.ca in 2018. Publisher Adrian Brijbassi asked me to become a Deputy Editor in 2020, as he was planning a year-long travel sabbatical with his family. Unfortunately, the pandemic cut his sabbatical short, but I’ve had the fortune of remaining involved in an editorial role, working on its annual “Best Places to Travel in Canada” feature and writing articles for the magazine.

Like me, you used the non-travel downtime we went through for a while to work on a book. Tell us about A Gelato a Day.

One of the unintended positive consequences of the pandemic period was my book project. I had signed my book contract for A Gelato a Day in January 2020, and had started to approach colleagues about submitting stories for the family travel anthology, when the world as we knew it stopped in March of that year. The upside was that I had a book project to work on during that time, and my travel colleagues were equally grounded. So they had time to write or polish stories to contribute to the anthology, which they would not have otherwise had in a regular travel year. It was a weird serendipity.

A Gelato a Day is a collection of 20 true tales of the good, the bad, and the not-so-ugly of the family travel experience. To read these stories is to travel along on family road and hiking trips, venture deep into the Amazon jungle, high into the mountains of Bhutan, wander the maze of Casablanca’s streets, and meet civil rights heroes in the American South—connecting with parents and kids in places both far-flung and familiar. The stories transport readers across borders, the time-space continuum, and reinforce that the connections we make with our loved ones while on the road, air, or at sea are critical and priceless.

I’m proud to note that A Gelato a Day won Bronze at the 2022 NATJA Awards. And that writer Andrew McCarthy graciously noted that it contains ‘insightful, funny and stories’ in his blurb.

What are your principal income streams and how have those changed over time?

My main income streams are divided between content creation projects, freelance contracts, and affiliate income. Things have changed so much since those early blogging days, including technology and social media platforms. It’s been a learning curve to keep up with it all over the years, and pivot according to Google’s whims and what social media platform is ascendent in a given year.

For many reasons, I stopped posting on my Twitter account in late 2023, after nearly 120,000 tweets over 15 years. There’s nothing so constant as change, and I will continue to roll with change (yes, I’m on TikTok) as long as I’m still passionate about what I do.

What advice would you give to a person trying to enter the crowded travel blogging space right now for the first time?

My advice would be to learn and pay attention to SEO, to write with authenticity and personality, and to read Eats, Shoots & Leaves before writing a single word. I am a stickler for proper punctuation. ;)

Claudia Laroye is an award-winning freelance writer, author, and content creator living in Vancouver, British Columbia. She writes about adventure, family, wellness, and sustainable travel for a variety of online and print outlets around the world. These include AFAR, Time, the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Vancouver Sun, Air Canada enRoute, Saturday Evening Post, Explore magazine, and the Vacay Canada network. Her award-winning travel anthology, A Gelato a Day, was published in fall of 2022. Get it here at Amazon Canada or Amazon USA. It’s also available for Kobo readers.