Language ‘incredibly powerful’ in shaping perceptions of destinations and experiences

Delegates at Aspire’s Leaders of Luxury conference were urged to “be aware” of how they use language, as it’s an “incredibly powerful” tool that shapes “our entire experience of the world”.

Speaking during a session on social impact and the effect travel can have on people and places, marketing director at tour operator Jacada Travel Jessie Brechin-Leman said: “The way that you talk about a place, a destination, an experience frames that for the person that you’re talking to, so you have an awful lot of power.”

She said that, as an industry, we “need to do better”, and encouraged attendees to “use that position of power for good”.

When describing travel experiences, whether that be in marketing collateral or when speaking to clients, things to be aware of include “appropriative vocabulary, elitist statements and geographical nuances”, including how we spell the names of places and whether we’re using the local spelling or the anglicised version.

Brechin-Leman also urged the audience to be particularly careful when describing customs, culture and people, as well as “the darker parts of a destination’s history”.

“For you it might feel very objective, very far away and maybe something you learnt about at school or through a newspaper. For the people in that destination often it might be something that is within living memory that has a lot more nuance than we’ve maybe grasped,” she said.

To ensure we’re describing these aspects respectfully and accurately, we should “look at the words and think, ‘what am I actually trying to get across? How could I make this better for the person digesting it?’”

Brechin-Leman said: “Paint a more vivid picture by requiring yourself to actually think about what you’re wanting to say.”

She also encouraged awareness of how the word ‘colonial’ is used. While things can be “objectively colonial”, the problem, according to Brechin-Leman, comes when “we start to conflate colonial as an objective adjective with colonial as a positive adjective”.

Social impact projects are another example of a travel experience that requires nuance when being described.

Instead of emphasising negative stereotypes and why people at the centre of social enterprise projects may need support, we should “reframe it and talk about the good that is being done and the people behind the stories”.

Brechin-Leman said: “If we talk about the positivity, it becomes something exciting and worth celebrating, which people are actually more likely to support.”

She urged delegates from across the industry to ask themselves “could I express this in a better way? Would I like to be described this way?” and give themselves “one minute more to do a better job”.