Despite the abundant attention paid to analysing and critically discussing travel texts, and the attention to tourism practices, a surprising lacuna exists around the industry that fuels the production and circulation of travel writing and photography. If tourism, as Franklin [2008 Franklin, Adrian. 2008. “The Tourism Ordering.” Civilisations 57: 25–39. doi: 10.4000/civilisations.1288 [CrossRef] . “The Tourism Ordering.” Civilisations 57: 25–39.] has argued, is about the ordering of desire, then questioning how the desire to travel is imagined, experienced and stimulated by producers of travel literature should enable us to address how tourism imaginaries, expectations, powers and practices are reproduced, and by whom. In this article, we argue that close attention to the everyday practices of travel journalism can highlight the kinds of ethical positions, compromises and frameworks that shape the texts that circulate, and in so doing reveal how particular tropes and stereotypes are created and replicated.