About Archipelago
Archipelago is a travel media brand that blends the depth of a guidebook, the inspiration of a travel magazine and the trusted knowledge of a friend to create useful, intriguing travel writing. The aim is for readers to arrive enlightened.
The reason why Archipelago exists? Trip planning has become hight stakes, but the content doesn’t always match.
Get a trip wrong and it costs you big. Two weeks of hard-earned leave and a small fortune, gone. And there are no refunds. Yet most travel writing shows you a place on its best day, written by someone on a free press trip, and possibly with something to sell, or worse, by AI.
Archipelago does the opposite. Content is extremely well-researched, even if the writer has visited, unbiased and beholden to nobody. You’ll hear about the rip-off taxi from the airport to the dodgy seafood shack that turns out to be the best meal of your trip – and everything in-between. The focus is always on collective consensus over personal experience, meaning you can draw your own conclusion when you get there.
All the distractions have been removed too. No annoying banner adverts, no photos, no video. Just words, doing the job pictures can't, telling you what a place is really like, and every recommendation earns its place. Marco Polo didn’t need stock photos to spin a great yarn.
If you love to plan but have no patience for the noise, you’re in the right place. Read on, subscribe, and make trip planning decisions with confidence. You can also learn more about the Archipelago brand in our FAQs section.
Founder
The content you read on Archipelago has been written, possibly edited, and always approved by me, Phil Brown. I am a content writer and digital marketer with a decade across various agencies and industries, but travel is my true passion. I fully support myself, pay for the upkeep of the website, and the excellent writers who contribute to our archives, newsletter, journal and much more.
Approach
Archipelago offers a slightly alternative approach to travel writing that isn’t all about how amazing the trip was:
Research-first writing
Archipelago isn’t a travel blog. Even if the author of a piece has visited somewhere, the emphasis is always on unbiased, research-heavy and facts-first coverage. There’s more value in arriving informed and drawing your own conclusions, rather than hearing the opinion of another travel influencer on a paid press trip.
A Deeper Dive
Why should you have to rely on top-level AI summaries, pointless social captions and repetitive 500 word formats when you’re spending a small fortune on travel? Archipelago articles question the norms, look for the obscure and deliver takes that have been seriously thought about.
No Distractions
You’ll notice there are no adverts, photos or videos across the Archipelago brand. That’s on purpose. If you’re tired of doomscrolling, then our long-form writing is the perfect antidote.
Coverage
Archipelago covers the famous places you think you already understand, and the ones you've barely heard of.
This means going beyond the obvious, looking for the places where you probably haven’t thought to go, and being honest about whether they’re actually worth a visit, even if they’re trending on social media. You’ll always get the honest, unbiased story, even if that’s contrarian at times.
You can earn more about the Archipelago approach to writing and reporting in the Editorial Policy.
Support Archipelago
Creating a high quality, trusted brand is a serious challenge in the AI and Google era, especially for an independent publisher that doesn’t focus on SEO keywords or photographs.
If you see value in honest, useful, human writing, reporting and journalism, there are several ways to support Archipelago.
The free option is to share our stories with your network, post them to your social media feeds and generally help us promote our approach to travel writing. You’ll find share symbols across all articles.
There’s also the completely free weekly newsletter, and it really helps if you subscribe to that.
You can also help to pay writers, develop content and keep the site running by subscribing to Archipelago+, include access to our enhanced monthly newsletter, packed with exclusive new content, and our quarterly magazine-style journal with dozens of brand new stories, interviews, essays and long reads.
Get Started
Now you get what we’re trying to achieve, it’s time to dive in and start planning. But before you do that, we recommend subscribing to both our weekly Newsletter and our quarterly Journal, both packed with fresh writing and the latest updates from our correspondents, writers, tour guides and content partners.