About Me

Intelligent Travel Editor: Janelle Nanos

IT was launched in the spring of 2006 by Traveler staffers Emily King and Jessie Johnston under the name Inside Traveler. At the time, the blog shed light on the inner workings of National Geographic Traveler, sharing travel tales from the magazine's staff and contributors, and travel news and tips we loved but couldn't fit into the print edition. On March 1, 2007, not-yet-one-year-old IT won Best Travel Blog in the first ever Travvies (travel blog awards).

Shortly after IT's first birthday and a brief hiatus for remodeling, IT relaunched at the end of June 2007 with a new look, a new focus, and a new name to match. The blog that was launched as Inside Traveler kept the IT. But now IT meant something truer to National Geographic Traveler's mission: Intelligent Travel.

Intelligent Travel is about exploring the intersection of authentic and sustainable travel. We want to showcase the essence of place, what's unique and original, what locals cherish most about where they live. And we want to highlight places, practices, and people that are on the front lines of sustainable travel—travel that preserves places’ essential uniqueness for future generations.

Our mission is rooted in what the National Geographic Society stands for: inspiring people to care about the planet. Traveler and IT also want you to experience and enjoy the planet. We want to help you journey with greater sensitivity to the impact your trip has on a place and its inhabitants.

Sometimes we celebrate, sometimes we criticize. But we always try to heighten awareness about what's really important about travel: finding great places, experiencing them fully, and leaving them no worse for your visit.

Intelligent Travel set out to pursue its new mission with a full bag of tricks both old and new. We kept the best parts of the the original IT (great writing, reports from Traveler staff and contributors, reader input) and added a ton of things readers (and we bloggers) had wanted for a while: photos, comments, thematic and geographic categories, our very own RSS feed, a search engine, and a pretty logo.

Check IT out.