Announcing Travel Lemming Passport, our premium subscription. Here’s why, plus a special gift for you.

Today marks an important turning point in the history of Travel Lemming. As the founder of this site, I’ll explain why this is such a big deal in a minute. But first let’s get to the news and our holiday gift for you …

Today we are launching Travel Lemming Passport, a new premium subscription service that unlocks ad-free access to our library of 1,500+ travel guides. Soon, Passport holders will also get exclusive content and special discounts.

The subscription normally costs $29 per year.

But we’re giving you your first year free (for a limited time only).

Claiming your free Passport is easy. You don’t even need to enter to a credit card — just go here, enter the coupon code LEMMING, and sign up.

You can even sign up with your Google account if you want, so you don’t have to remember another username and password.

It won’t be free for long, so you might as well claim your free Passport while you can.

After you do that, grab a cup of your favorite beverage, and come back here to learn why this is such a historic day for Travel Lemming, and about the big things we have planned for Passport members …

To survive the “Age of AI,” we need you to come directly to Travel Lemming.

Look, I’ll give it to you straight: the Internet is changing fast.

Artificial intelligence is frankly destroying the business model of independent human-driven publications like Travel Lemming.

Despite these headwinds, Travel Lemming is still committed to creating content by people, for people.

Our guides are all written by our team of knowledgeable locals and experts.

We visit the destinations we write about, we touch the products we review, and we work hard to write the type of guide we’d give to our own friends and family. Our commitment to quality human-first content is written into our strict editorial guidelines.

But producing “content by humans, for humans” is an increasingly lonely mission, and it is getting harder to find human-written guides on the Internet.

To illustrate, let me ask you this:

When you need to plan a trip, where do you start?

If you are like most people, your answer probably involves a search engine.

And, indeed, search engines used to be a place you could go to find bloggers like us when you needed a travel guide.

These days, whether you know it or not, search engines are filling up with AI-generated garbage.

Spammers use AI tools to rip off our content with touch of a button, spitting out “guides” at 1/100th the cost of the original human-written guides their content is ripped from.

But it’s not just these shady AI spammers we have to worry about. Even large publications are attracted to the cost-savings of AI-generated content. Sports Illustrated, for example, recently admitted to using fake AI authors to pump out loads of content fast.

Meanwhile, other major newspapers are “renting” out their sites to “parasite” spammers, who pump out loads of low quality AI-generated content that’s published under that newspaper’s brand name.

As I tweeted recently, parasites have been taking over search results in the travel space lately, sometimes even selling adult services in their AI-generated travel guides!

But, if you can believe it, it actually gets (much) worse than that.

Because the search engines themselves are now getting into the AI content game.

You see, search engines are starting to insert AI chatbot answers right at the top of your search results. Microsoft has already done it with their Bing search engine, and Google is slowly rolling out their own AI chatbot in search results.

And guess where those AI chatbots get their content from?

Yep, they are taking it straight from the original content creators, sometimes word-for-word and often without any attribution at all!

Why are they doing this?

Well, quite simply, they want you to never leave their platform. That means they can take for themselves all the revenue that used to go to support real publications and content creators!

The big tech companies think that in three years everyone will be using AI assistants to plan their travels, and they want to be the ones controlling (and profiting from) those AI assistants.

Soon, the entire Internet will be jammed with content written by an AI, all trained on content taken from real creators like us.

And, look, maybe some of you want that. If you want to rely on an AI to plan out all your future trips for you, you’re probably going to get that wish soon enough.

But we’re hoping at least some of you still value travel advice from real humans.

Except, here’s the thing:

With so much AI content flooding the Internet, it may soon become impossible for you to find content from real human creators on search engines.

The bottom line is that we are to survive this age of AI, we need to readers to come directly to our website.

Yes, we need readers like you to actually type “travellemming.com” into your browser’s address bar.

Or you can bookmark our site.

Or you could specifically search for Travel Lemming’s guides when you do go to search engines.

However you do it, we need you to specifically seek our content out for your trip planning.

And so we want to make it as easy and attractive as possible for you …

With Travel Lemming Passport, we are shifting to model of direct reader support.

For seven years, Travel Lemming has been a free and independent reader-supported travel guide.

But, to date, that support has been mostly indirect.

Quite simply, we make money through revenue from display ads and affiliate commissions.

But we’ve listened to feedback from our readers, and we totally get that many of you find the display ads to be annoying.

You told us you love our style of honest, practical travel guides. And you love that our creators are knowledgeable locals and travel experts.

You just don’t love the distraction of the display ads.

And, again, we get it.

There’s just one problem: creating quality content by humans for humans isn’t cheap. And, at least right now, running display ads is currently what pays our creators and our bills.

By offering a premium subscription, we’re offering readers a way to support the publication while enjoying our guides free from the distraction of ads.

We don’t expect you to get your wallet out right away, though, which is why we’re letting our existing readers get a free year to try out Travel Lemming Passport.

We’ll give you a year free. Give us a year to prove that your Travel Lemming Passport is worth 8 cents per day.

We’re planning to charge $29 per year for Travel Lemming Passport.

That works out to about 8 cents per day.

Or, you can think about it this way: just one of those physical old school travel guidebooks costs roughly the same as one year of Travel Lemming Passport.

With Travel Lemming Passport, you’ll instantly get ad-free access to 1,500+ travel guides.

Travel Lemming has detailed guides to most major cities in the United States, plus many popular destinations in Mexico, Canada, Europe, and around the world.

Seriously, browse our menu or try searching our site from the search bar in our menu or homepage. You’ll probably find a guide to the place you’re thinking of traveling next!

But ad-free access to our travel guide library is just the start of what we have planned.

Travel Lemming Passport holders will get special discounts on our products and services, like our newly launched ebook store and our soon-to-be-announced group tours to Mexico (side note: you can sign up for our tour waitlist here to be the first to know when we announce).

But, wait, there’s more coming.

Soon, we’ll be publishing exclusive content accessible only to our Travel Lemming Passport holders. Think insider guides with our best travel secrets, advice columns where you can seek personalized advice from our team of experts, and unique pieces of content you won’t find elsewhere.

We’re even considering launching in person meetups in our most popular cities.

Ultimately, the direction we take Travel Lemming Passport will be driven by feedback and guidance from our Passport holders.

We want to give you a free Passport for your first year, then spend that year working hard to deliver value so we can earn your re-subscription.

So claim your free Passport now.

Then just respond to the sign up email you’ll get to let us know how we can make Travel Lemming Passport worth it for you!

Thank you for reading all this way. With the support of loyal readers like you, I know Travel Lemming will continue to thrive in the years ahead. We look forward to helping you plan some amazing trips!