Generous Plymouth parents fund travelling student lifestyles
CrossCountry launches student competition to find travel savvy bloggers
Parents in Plymouth are regularly funding their children’s travel home from university and are willing to pay over the odds to help broaden their horizons.
Over the course of a year Plymouth parents say they spend more than £500 broadening their child’s horizons with more than half (58%) splashing out on travel and holidays.
Research from leading train company CrossCountry also revealed that 54% of Plymouth parents have paid for their child to get home from university, with just under a third (29%) taking on the cost at least three times a year.
Regardless of whether Plymouth parents are feeling the pinch, they’re keen to fund their child’s personal development outside of their education – over a fifth (20%) say they would spend more than £1,000 on a new experience for their offspring.
With less than half (42%) of students from Plymouth frequently visiting different cities and towns around the UK whilst they study, CrossCountry is offering a helping hand to students keen to expand their horizons (and their parents’ purse-strings) by launching a competition to help budding bloggers become published travel writers.
UK students are invited to enter the ‘Student Blogger Competition’ where up to five winners will be selected to become travel bloggers for CrossCountry, receiving a mentoring session with a leading journalist.
Tom Hall, travel writer and Editor of Lonely Planet’s award-winning website is supporting the competition and will be mentoring the five lucky bloggers: “When CrossCountry first approached me about the competition I was eager to help out.
“Working with student writers is something I’ve always wanted to do. I know how tough the industry is and think this programme is a great opportunity for student writers to get ahead of the competition while unlocking the secrets of the UK’s cities to a wider audience.”
Clare Shufflebotham, Partnerships Manager at CrossCountry said: “We know that cash-strapped students have little money to spend on travelling and quite often their parents end up footing the bill. That’s why we developed the exclusive deal for NUS extra card holders to make rail travel more affordable for students.
“We wanted to go one step further and not only offer students a chance to explore other cities and towns along our route but provide them with a tangible opportunity to test their writing abilities and gain invaluable industry advice.”
Fans of the Student Rail Deals Facebook Page can enter the competition by joining the ‘Student Blogger Competition’ event and then providing an example of their writing in the comment box on the event page. This can be something the entrant has written especially for the competition or an existing piece of writing. The competition closes at 5pm on Thursday 31 October 2013.
