The Unglamorous Reality Of My Review Trips

As longtime OMAAT readers know, I often take trips for the sole purpose of writing about travel experiences, as I try to review airlines, hotels, and lounges. I recently wrapped up a wild review trip, where I flew roughly 26,000 miles over the course of six days.

To the average person, that probably sounds awful. Flying for nearly a week without actually seeing much isn’t the way that most people want to travel. To the average avgeek, maybe it sounds kind of fun, or maybe it doesn’t. I mean, I’m basically spending nearly a week flying first and business class, and sitting around lounges, having some pretty decent food and drinks.

More from OMAAT An Honest Conversation About Blog Monetization, Making Money Online Read more

While I enjoy these trips, I suspect not many people have a sense of just what goes into them, so I figured I’d share, for those who are curious (and if you’re not curious, that’s totally fine too!).

The challenges with my review trips

My review trips aren’t vacations, but rather my goal is to generate as much interesting review content as possible. Yes, I’m not asking for sympathy here — I recognize that my “business trip” lounging around in Singapore Airlines first class probably sounds a bit more fun than the average management consultant working on a project in Fargo in winter, staying at a Hampton Inn.

But I’m not sure it’s necessarily any more relaxing, since there are some things people don’t consider. Let me just cover a few of those.

I’m terrible at sleeping on planes & dealing with jetlag

At home, I’m an amazing sleeper, and I consistently sleep through the night without waking up. When I travel, and particularly when I’m flying, my reality couldn’t be more opposite:

• I’m a horrible airplane sleeper, because I struggle to sleep without perfect conditions, so I struggle with temperature, noise, smells, etc.
• I’m bad at dealing with jetlag, which is especially true when I’m not traveling with my family, since I always have them on my mind

On these review trips, I’m often lucky to get a few hours of sleep per day. For example, on my 16.5-hour EVA Air flight from Houston to Taipei, I got about four hours of sleep, which is quite good for me, actually. With the exception of the last night of this trip where I was in a hotel, that was the most uninterrupted sleep I got on this journey.

I spend a lot of hours at airports on these trips

I do my best to review airport lounges when they’re empty, so I can get the best pictures and respect the privacy of other passengers. To what lengths will I go for that? Well, let me give an example.

For the second portion of my trip, I was on a 4PM Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Singapore. While I would have loved to spend a morning sightseeing in Hong Kong, instead I was at the airport at 4:30AM, as I want to be in lounges the second they open.

Before I arrive at the airport, I set up an itinerary of exactly which lounges I plan on hitting up and when (based on their opening times), and I map out all the walks. So in Hong Kong, I had lounges that I wanted to get pictures of at exactly 5:30AM, 6:30AM, 7AM, and 7:30AM, based on when they were scheduled to open.

I’ll even be the first person standing outside of each of these lounges, so that I can hopefully get the best pictures possible, without anyone in them. And then throughout the day I return to each individual lounge to check out the food and other amenities that I can’t quickly photograph during my first round, and also to get a better sense of the actual average guest experience.

For situations where I can’t be at a lounge right as it opens (like the Etihad Lounge, which is open 24/7), it’s a bit trickier, as I spent most of my eight hour layover revisiting various parts of the lounge, as they emptied out.

Speaking of the Hong Kong mention above, let me keep going with that example. I was at the airport in Hong Kong at 4:30AM for my 4PM flight, which landed in Singapore at 8PM. When I got to Singapore, I had 11 hours at the airport, because I wanted to review The Private Room before my 6:50AM flight to Jakarta the following morning.

The catch is that The Private Room closes nightly from 2:30AM until 5:30AM, and the lounge is emptiest just before it closes. So I ended up spending the entire night in the airport (with just a brief nap in Singapore Airlines’ sorta creepy nap rooms), so that I could get the best pictures possible.

I line up for boarding, and embarrass myself

When I’m reviewing flights, I’ll get to the gate at least 30 minutes before boarding, will scope it out, and then will be that annoying person who lines up so they can be among the first aboard. After all, I want to get the best cabin pictures possible. Then as soon as I board, I basically sprint down the jet bridge (without arousing any suspicion), so that I can hopefully get as much of a “lead” on others as possible, and take pictures from both the front and back of the cabin.

Honestly, I feel so annoying for doing this, because I don’t actually understand people who otherwise line up to board the plane. When I’m not reviewing a flight, I’m exactly the opposite, and would never line up.

I spend endless hours editing pictures

On the average long haul flight that I’m reviewing, I might take 500 pictures. That’s because usually when I try to photograph something, I take a few pictures, so that I can pick the picture that’s the sharpest, has the best lighting, etc.

So on these trips, I literally take many thousands of pictures. Whenever I have a spare moment (like when I’m lining up to board a plane or am waiting for boarding to finish), I’m always on my phone working on these pictures. I pick the best pictures, delete the duplicates, and crop and edit them, so that they’re as good as they can be.

I’m always happy when I can stay up-to-date on this during my journey, because otherwise this becomes a monumental task when I get back home (and writing the actual trip report is a time consuming enough process as is, without having to worry about pictures).

I write a normal amount of content while traveling

While these review trips are ultimately an investment in the blog, I still try to maintain a standard amount of content while I’m traveling (I publish an average of 10 posts per day, give or take). These review trips generate me the most content for the future (when I’m home), but of course I still try to cover all the news and write other stories while traveling.

So whether it’s on a plane, in a lounge, or in my hotel room, I’m usually pecking away on my keyboard, just with a different office view than normal…

Oddly, I really do enjoy these trips, though…

As I said at the beginning of the post, I’m not sharing the details of how I go about all of this because I’m looking for sympathy. Quite to the contrary, I really enjoy these trips, even though I think they sound quite miserable to most. To be honest, that’s probably largely because I take an almost clinical approach to them.

Nowadays I really do struggle with leaving home, since I miss my family any time I go. In my day-to-day life, I’m someone who really values a good night of sleep. But when I take these trips, it’s a totally different story, and my goal is to just get in a nap whenever I can.

I’m usually a zombie for a day or two after returning home from these trips, and briefly question why I subject myself to something like this. But then a week later, I always feel like I’m ready to go again (though nowadays I travel a lot less than I used to).

Lastly, let me emphasize that I wish I could see more of actual destinations on these kinds of trips, but everything comes at an opportunity cost:

• I don’t want to be away from home longer than I have to, given that we have a young son, and I love watching him grow up
• Enjoying destinations would largely come at the expense of trying to review the things I’m hoping to see, and that’s the whole point of these trips
• My top priority is to rest whenever I’m actually tired and able to on these trips, so that I don’t come back home with a cold or more exhausted than I need to be, and can hit the ground running

Fortunately I also take lots of fun non-review trips, where I can actually enjoy destinations more. I’m very happy with the mix.

But even on these review trips, the reality is that the airline industry is my passion. It has been for 15+ years, and hopefully it will be for the next 15+ years. Staying updated on all the latest and greatest changes in the industry is important to me, and firsthand experience matters there.

Bottom line

I spend a lot of time taking review trips and then writing about my experiences, so I figured some people may be curious about the background of what these trips are actually like. If you ever wonder “why was the lounge so empty when you visited” or “why didn’t you go out and explore the city,” hopefully the above sheds some light on that.

With this out of the way, stay tuned, because it’s time to get into the actual reviews. Thanks for reading!