New York Times Travel Show 2013: Vivaa Explores Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua & Oaxaca
In January 2013, destinations from around the world came together in New York City for the 10th annual New York Times Travel Show at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.
The three-day event, held January 18–20, 2013, featured nearly 500 exhibitors representing more than 150 countries, with tourism boards, travel companies, culinary experiences, cultural presentations and destination showcases filling the exhibition floor.
Julianspromos was there with Sheniele “Vivaa” Dodson hosting the coverage while Julian C. Hackett shot and edited the footage.
Four surviving videos take viewers through very different destinations: Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua & Barbuda and Oaxaca, Mexico.
Sheniele “Vivaa” Dodson hosting Julianspromos coverage at the 2013 New York Times Travel Show in New York City.
Around the World Without Leaving New York
The New York Times Travel Show was designed to make one convention floor feel like a trip around the world.
Visitors could move from Caribbean tourism booths to Mexico, Europe, Asia and destinations throughout the United States while sampling food, meeting travel representatives and learning about places they might visit next.
For Vivaa, that meant a very different type of assignment from the Soca concerts, fêtes and artist interviews that had defined much of Julianspromos’ early video coverage.
Instead of moving from performer to performer, she moved from destination to destination.
Jamaica with Christopher Dobson
Jamaica was one of the Caribbean destinations represented in the surviving coverage.
Vivaa spoke with Christopher Dobson about Jamaican tourism, giving viewers a look at the island beyond its music and entertainment culture.
The segment allowed a familiar Caribbean destination to be approached from a different angle — travel, attractions and the experience of visiting Jamaica itself.
Barbados Tourism
Barbados also received its own feature.
For Julianspromos’ Caribbean audience, Barbados was already familiar through Soca, Crop Over and Bajan artists.
At the Travel Show, however, the island became the destination rather than the soundtrack.
Vivaa’s coverage focused on tourism and what Barbados offered travelers, adding another side of Caribbean culture to the surviving archive.
Antigua & Barbuda: Travel, Tourism and Food
The Antigua & Barbuda segment brought together destination promotion, conversation and food.
The surviving footage shows Vivaa engaging directly with representatives at the booth and exploring what the twin-island destination was presenting to visitors at the show.
That combination of tourism and food fit naturally into an event where travel was being experienced through much more than brochures.
A Taste of Oaxaca, Mexico
One of the most interesting surviving segments takes the coverage outside the Caribbean entirely.
At the Oaxaca, Mexico display, Vivaa explored tourism and mezcal, introducing Julianspromos viewers to a destination and culture that sat well outside the platform’s usual entertainment coverage of the period.
The New York Times Travel Show was known for combining destination exhibits with culinary demonstrations, tastings and international food and drink experiences, making the Oaxaca feature a natural fit for the event.
Vivaa Takes on Travel
What makes the four videos enjoyable together is the change in pace from one segment to the next.
One moment Vivaa is discussing Jamaica.
Then Barbados.
Then Antigua & Barbuda.
Then she is learning about mezcal from Oaxaca.
The common thread is curiosity.
Rather than treating the Travel Show like one long formal interview, the surviving footage follows Vivaa as she discovers what different destinations are presenting and brings the audience along with her.
Six Images From the Travel Show
The current Julianspromos archive also preserves six images from the assignment.
The images capture Vivaa interviewing representatives, exploring exhibitor booths and presenting from inside the Javits Center exhibition floor.
For the featured image, I would use the shot of Vivaa facing the camera with the New York Times Travel Show branding visible behind her. It communicates the event instantly and works better as a page hero than one of the tighter booth-interview frames.
Beyond Music and Carnival
The Travel Show did represent a meaningful expansion for Julianspromos, but that history works better after the reader has actually experienced the coverage.
By early 2013, most of the platform’s surviving media archive was closely tied to Caribbean entertainment: artists, Soca, Carnival, concerts and nightlife.
The New York Times Travel Show showed another possibility.
A Caribbean-focused media platform could still talk about the Caribbean while also covering travel, food, tourism and international culture.
And Oaxaca demonstrated that the format could stretch even further.
From the Julianspromos Archives
The surviving New York Times Travel Show collection captures a different side of early Julianspromos media coverage.
Across four videos, Sheniele “Vivaa” Dodson moves through Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua & Barbuda and Oaxaca, speaking with tourism representatives, tasting new experiences and introducing viewers to destinations rather than performers.
All four videos were uploaded on January 24, 2013, with the coverage hosted by Vivaa and shot and edited by Julian C. Hackett.
