British Guild of Travel Writers
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The British Guild of Travel Writers Limited is described as a community of accredited writers, photographers, and broadcasters; the trusted body for independent editorial comment and expert content on worldwide travel. The organisation was founded in 1960.
The organisation is managed by a board of directors led currently (2026) by a Joint Chair, Daniel James Clarke and Renate Ruge.
The ten initial subscribers to the Memorandum of Association are automatically members of the new private company. Other members will be admitted in due course, provided that they meet the criteria for membership laid down in the Articles of Association. The antecedent voluntary association made provision for retired members (and others who were no longer professionally active) to retain a connection with BGTW as Associate Members. This category continues, but Associate Members will not be deemed to be members of British Guild of Travel Writers Limited under the terms of the Companies Act 2006.
Scope of members' work
Texts, broadcasts and images created by members of the old voluntary association appear virtually daily in the UK media and on the Internet, and to a lesser extent in non-UK print and broadcast media, with BGTW members reporting on travel and tourism issues from across the world. Many Guild members are established writers of guide books and narrative travel books, others frequently lecture on their specialist areas, while yet others comment critically on the history of travel or travel writing or on contemporary issues in transport and tourism.
BGTW members write about destinations; they write about journeys, and they write about travel issues. The latter routinely include public transport, civil aviation, overland travel, ecotourism, slow travel, travel technology, consumer protection in the travel industry, medical tourism and travel medicine, and the development of and prospects for travel literature.
With the opportunities in travel writing shifting further away from print journalism, a diminishing number of BGTW members would describe themselves as journalists per se. But there are nonetheless still many members contributing to mainstream media. Narrative travel books written by current BGTW members have won the Dolman Best Travel Book Award and the Wales Book of the Year. The BGTW considers applications from those who "weave words with style, take wonderful pics or cut a dash in other travel media genres."[1]
AGM and Yearbook
Until its dissolution in 2015, the association held an annual conference, restricted to members. The association's most recent annual meetings were held in the Scottish Highlands (2007), Malta (2008), York (2009), Tenerife (2010), Mussanah in Oman (2011), Boulogne on the north coast of France (2012), Zakopane in Poland (2013), Weimar in Germany (2014) and Milan (2015).
From 2016 the Company's AGMs are conducted under the rules laid down by the Companies Act 2006, and so restricted strictly to company business; those members not in attendance will be able to take advantage of new arrangements for proxy voting. The first AGM held under the new regulations was held in Tenerife in January 2016. It was funded by Hume Whitehead, a London based public relations company. The Company also held AGMs in Charlestown, SC in 2019 then in the Canary Islands in 2022.
The association's Yearbook was usually published in March each year; it enjoyed circulated widely within the UK travel trade and was also available for purchase by the public. The last yearbook was published in May 2015, carrying the date 2015-2016. It is not known if the new company will continue to publish a yearbook of any kind.