Live Q&A with Gary Bembridge: Your Travel Questions Answered

I was recently a guest on Bill Panoff of Porthole Magazine’s Live on Friday. It was wonderful to share some of my cruise experiences over the years and to give a bit more history on how I got started with Tips for Travellers.

The live Q&A was recorded for YouTube and you can watch it in full here, but I wanted to take some excerpts from the Q&A and share them with you around how I got started and what advice I would give to others that are also thinking of starting their own YouTube channel and documenting their travels and adventures.

Below is a small snippet but as I said, you can experience my interview in full by clicking the link above. You can also listen to it as a podcast!

Welcome Tips for Travellers: Your Travel Questions Answered

Bill

Welcome to another Cruise Control with yours truly. And today, we are very, privileged and honoured to have with us Gary Bembridge, affectionately known to many as Tips For Travellers.

Currently, Gary has 425,000 subscribers on YouTube.

Today, we’re going to catch up with Gary and go over all the latest adventures he’s had in the past and get his take on cruising. And if you have any comments, we’re going to bring you in, and you’ll have a chance to leave your comments with Gary and to chat online. So, without further ado, all the way from the UK across the pond as they would say, Gary Bembridge. Gary, how are you?

Gary

Very good. Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Bill

It’s great to see you. I know you were just in our part of a world on a cruise ship. Is that right?

Gary

Yeah. I did 2 cruises one was on Symphony of the Seas, and then almost like the opposite extreme, I was on Oceania Vista. So, I did 6-night, Symphony of the Seas, a 7-night Oceania Vista. So yeah.

Group Cruises: Your Travel Questions Answered

Bill

And coming up soon, you have your first group cruise, for example. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Gary

Yeah. So, this year, I’m doing 2 group cruises. My first is due to set sail very soon, out of your neighbourhood – Fort Lauderdale. So, yeah, that’s that my first group cruise. It is for patrons and channel members. I thought for my first group cruise, I’d keep it small and so there’s about 32 people on that one, so that will be exciting.

Then my 2nd group cruise is in September, which is on Celebrity to Canada and New England. Up to now we’ve got, I think, 82 people on that one.

Bill

So, this is an opportunity for your followers and your fans to get up close and personal and to meet you and to sail with you. What a great experience.

Gary

Hopefully, that’s what people think afterwards. Yeah.

Where Did It All Start: Your Travel Questions Answered

Bill

How did it all start? How did your passion for cruising begin, and when did it start?

Gary

Bill, I mean, it started kind of by accident. I was one of those people who had never really planned to go cruising, I thought cruising wasn’t for me. I was invited to go and give a talk, at a conference that was being held on a cruise ship. There’s a company called Richmond Events that used to charter ships and run these marketing conferences. At the time, I was the Marketing Director in the UK for Johnson and Johnson, and they asked me to go and be one of the speakers. So, I thought, oh, I’ll go, you know, a chance to go and see what it’s like. But I wasn’t expecting to like it.

That was in 2005. I went on and within an hour of being on the ship, I was like, wow, this is amazing. Then when we set sail. I thought this is incredible. And so, from then onwards, I got hooked. I came back, said to my partner, right, we’re going on a cruise. Going to go on a little taster cruise, but then we booked the old QE2 to do transatlantic. It took off from there.

Bill

How soon after that with Johnson and Johnson did you quit your full-time job and start as Tips For Travellers?

Gary

Well, Bill, my plan had always been when I started working that I was going retire when I was 55. That was always my plan. I decided that when I was in my twenties. Obviously, being with a big corporation, that’s an advantage. I was there for 24 years or something, so I could take early retirement. I retired in 2012.

At the time, I had a blog, podcast, and the YouTube channel. It was only probably about 2017/18 when I thought that I’m really going to focus on this because I love making the videos. And I thought, the way that you can make money was clearly YouTube versus the other platforms. I decided I was going to focus on YouTube. I sort of brought over my marketing thinking to that, so a focus on the consumer, decide what’s different about me, look at the data. So, it’s probably since 2018/19 that I really focused on weekly videos, that kind of stuff.

Bill

Gary, apart from your robust, and I mean robust, number of, subscribers, 400,000 plus. You hit a milestone recently with the number of views on YouTube. Tell us about that.

Gary

Yeah. So recently I hit 150,000,000 all time views. Which is sort of a bit surreal. It’s hard to get your head around that.

Tips for Travellers Success: Your Travel Questions Answered

Bill

What do you what do you attribute to your success? Why do people gravitate towards you?

Gary

I don’t know. I mean, when people ask me about starting a YouTube channel my point is always you need to decide why you’re doing it? And are you doing it for yourself because you just want to document stuff you’re doing and if people watch then that’s a bonus? Or do you really want to do it for a viewer? So, you must look at who am I doing this for? And if you want to build it big, you must really think about it like a business. You need to think about the consumer.

Who’s my consumer? What do they want? And can you give it to them. So, that is the most important thing. Then you must think about what is going to make you unique and different.

I recently gave the example of Icon of the Seas to someone who asked em about growing a channel

On Icon of the Seas earlier cruises, there were a whole bunch of vloggers and bloggers onboard. Imagine, you know, there’s 200 and something odd YouTube channels out there. My point is, imagine all 200 of those go on Icon of the Seas. Probably of the 200, there’s a strong chance that most of them are going to make and do the same content, cover the same territory, say the same things. So, you need to think about what is it that you’re doing differently. It might be you’re talking to someone with mobility issues, or it’s an older audience, or it’s a younger audience, or it’s whatever. You must be very clear about what it is.

Then on a very simple, practical level you must look at the data. You need to obsess with the data and watch time. So, every video you make, you need to see how long people are watching it. Look at the graph that shows the deterioration of that, and you need to figure out how do I make sure that people are watching as long as possible.

Because YouTube will recommend videos that people watch. Crudely.

Bill

Well, whatever you’re doing, your recipe for success is spot on, and congratulations for the enormous success over the years. And for our followers that want follow you. Tips for Travellers on YouTube, but how about on the other social, platforms?

Gary

Just search for Tips for Travellers or Tips for Travelers and you’ll find me.

First-Time Cruiser: Your Travel Questions Answered

Bill

If there’s one piece of advice, Gary, that you can give to a first-time cruiser before setting sail, what would that be?

Gary

The thing I always say to first timers is you’ve got to make sure that you’re going on the right cruise line. Because if you go on the wrong cruise line, you won’t like cruising. If you go on the right cruise line, you’ll be hooked forever. So, getting on the right cruise line for me is the absolute most critical thing. And, of course, then the second thing is to watch Tips for Travellers. But, seriously, the most important thing is getting on the right cruise line.

I’ll often steer them towards a travel agent as well because YouTube channels, blogs, that sort of stuff is helpful, but having a travel agent is priceless. I’ll give you an example. My sister-in-law, I’ve been trying for 20 years to get her to go on a cruise. And she was, like, I’m not going to cruise. I don’t want go on a cruise. And then her husband post COVID was much more nervous about flying.

Now I’m not a big fan of P&O Cruises, but I knew they would love it. I got them to go on P&O, and now they’ve got, I think, it’s, like, 7 cruises booked. It was the right cruise line, had the right kind of people, it had the right kind of price. Everything about it was right.

Bill

Gary, what a great pleasure. Congratulations again on all your success in hitting that milestone. Gary, look forward to many more of these and maybe one in person during your next visit to, Florida.

Gary

Thanks very much.