"Travel does not have to be bucket list big to count."

TV host and travel expert Samantha Brown recently spoke these words at the Travel & Adventure Show in Atlanta, Georgia in early March.

It's a sentiment everyone should keep in mind, especially during these current times of coronavirus hysteria.

You can still travel, and you don't need to break the bank in the process.

Brown has a wealth of travel knowledge, having been to over 250 cities in 62 countries. The Emmy award-winning host of "Samantha Brown's Places to Love" has done over 200 hours of travel shows on television and 14 different series.

In a recent interview with TravelPulse, Brown shares when she uses a travel agent, her TV show "Places to Love" and more.

TravelPulse: How important is it to you to fit these travel shows into your busy travel schedule and to talk travel / meet your fans?

Samantha Brown: It's really imperative actually, and I look forward to it every year. I wasn't able to do as many as I wanted to this year just because we have our shooting schedule, but I love it. I love these (shows). You know social media can kind of warp your perspective, that's not really who your true fans are, but when they show up, it's my way of really meeting the people who have watched me for many years.

It's also my way of understanding what people are really thinking about, what they're really concerned about with travel. So just like anything, there's nothing better than face to face time with people

TP: Have you been getting a lot of Coronavirus questions lately?

SB: You know it's interesting, at the Atlanta show, I thought because that was kind of doomsday, that's the weekend that everything broke, that wow this is more serious than we thought, I had planned to go on and to say 'hey you know, there's been a lot in the news, I'll tell you where I get my info.'

I had like my coronavirus speech spiel, and there was just something about the awesome energy of the crowd that I just realized no one's really thinking about that now and then no one asked me any questions about it, they just wanted to know about travel. That doesn't mean it's not on people's mind, I think people are just still so passionate about travel that it wasn't something that they wanted to talk about.

I plan on traveling to Europe next week, if all goes well and if the flights aren't canceled and if the countries don't shut down, and so I plan to have a lot more questions about it when I'm actually traveling.

TP: So here at TravelPulse, our core audience is travel agents and advisors - I'm curious, what's your experience with travel agents? Do you have one, have you used one before? What's your overall view on agents and advisors and their role in the travel industry today?

SB: I love travel agents. Where I really interface with them is with my work on HSN, whenever I go down to Florida my travel agent just handles everything and all I have to say is I'm coming and they book my flight, my cars, my hotel and put on a nice itinerary. If there any changes they make me aware of it and so in that regard it's just seamless travel for me, which is really important because I do so many different levels of travel that just having it taken care of by somebody else and not having to think about it it's really wonderful. So that's how I use a travel agent personally.

What I really enjoy about travel agents and I feel like their real talent and their real purpose for people has become even more accentuated is just there's just so much information out there about travel, and it is really hard to get through all that information. There's just like a tsunami of information, and you know, it might be easy to book a flight, but then everything else becomes really difficult. And when there are so many crowdsourced reviews and it's just like weed whacking. And I always joke that you know you start down the road of planning your own travel and you start Googling things and hours later you come up for air and you're even less convinced about what you should do.

And I'm always asked, 'is there a website that you go to, is there something you do or someone that knows exactly what to do and they know my fears, and they know my budget, is there a website that that'll filter all what I want to do and just give me a perfect vacation?' And I'm like yeah - it's called a travel agent. Just call one up!

I think the idea of having someone on your side who is an advocate for you, who cares about you, who understands what makes you, you, and what type of travel you want to have is just absolutely invaluable. I think, actually I know, that people are becoming much more aware and appreciative of travel agents as a whole.

TP: Absolutely yeah, and I think they're having a crazy time right now with all the coronavirus situation going on.

SB: Sure, they're busy. They really are, and the people who booked through a travel agent are probably feeling a little less stressed.

TP: You've completed filming for 3 full seasons on Places to Love. What's something most travelers may not know about the show, but should?

SB: What people should know is we really bring the art of the conversation back. Because so much of travel and travel shows these days are just sort of like hit and runs of these really quick hits about a place, and it's always about that host experience. But it's rarely about the person who created that experience, and so "Places to Love" is really about the people who create the experiences that we as travelers get to show up and have.

And when you understand the hard work and the passion that goes behind these wonderful moments we get to have in travel, I think we appreciate them more. And then we have more of an experience that really resonates in our lives deeply, so it's a very personal look at not just the experience of travel but the people behind that experience.

TP: At the ATL Travel Show, you mentioned episode 1 of Season 4 would be in Quebec. Can you share when the new season would potentially air?

SB: Gosh, well the coronavirus could derail us (filming) a bit, but I don't think it will. But (it will air) in January. Our seasons always come out in January of the new year, so January 2021 (for Season 4).

TP: When does the thinking process begin for putting a new season together and picking the destinations? When you're filming Season 3 are you already planning Season 4?

SB: Yes, it's a very strange place to be when you're like putting the final touches on an episode and then you're just starting the editing process of another episode and now you're into the pre-production of the first episode of season 4, just kind of finding the places, just creatively it's a really difficult place to be.

But yeah, so this year we knew we wanted to do winter destinations and really add them to our portfolio of shows because most of the places that I go to are warm weather or you know temperate weather so it's nice. But the winter is a great time to travel, it's this whole season of travel that kind of gets overlooked because it is the winter, so Quebec city was just the first on the list. I mean you've got this great city, wonderful history, and one that just absolutely loves snow and cold. And you can imagine that not many people do really embrace cold and snow but they do in a wonderful way. It's just a fantastic episode. Loved being there. We started (filming) that in February and it'll air in January (of next year).

And then hopefully, fingers crossed, we're going to London and Austria next Wednesday.

TP: When not traveling for work, what is Samantha Brown's favorite way to travel?

SB: I love road trips. I've always loved the car, ever since I was 15 and a half years old got my learners permit. I just get so excited about being in a car, I love it.

TP: I'm a new dad now - my wife just gave birth to our first child a month ago - I'd love to know what's your top family travel advice?

SB: Having kids and traveling with kids, especially young ones, was a real eye-opener and so I really try to base a lot of my advice on just bringing that stress down of the parents going to the airport. Because it is stressful, and not only do you have the stress of hoping the child, the babies or the toddler doesn't, you know, freak out because they're on the plane but also you have the other passengers and their judgmental-ness and that sort of thing. So, I always thought the best way to create a calm with a child, and it doesn't matter what age, is to not use the pre-board to go on first. Or you're there with your partner or your wife and they go in first to use the pre-board to kind of set up shop, but then you wait with the baby or toddler until the very last zone is called.

My husband and I would do that. I would wait at the gate with the kids and I would just wear them out. I have bubbles, I would blow bubbles, so they'd jump in place and jump up and down or have a balloon, it doesn't go far when you whack it. And you're just working out the kid because you're keeping them in the gate, and then as the last zone is called, I'd bring on the kids we would put them in their car seats and then the plane would take off in 10 minutes.

So, there's a few things that that does, especially with babies. You're taking a baby and you're bringing them into this plane and there's so much stress in a plane on during the boarding process. There are people shoving big bags over your head and the baby is taking that in, and then when you finally get to a cruising altitude of 30,000 feet and everyone's relaxed, that's when the baby releases that stress. And so, my feeling is you're putting this young child or even a baby at a time where at the highest stress point of any of your travel is going to be there, so remove them from that.

Also, if you use the pre-board you are now sitting down for 45 minutes more than the actual flight time. So, if you have a two-year-old or one year old, that becomes really important because they don't want to sit and they become antsy. We rarely use the pre-board to bring on the kids immediately, and we used car seats as well always, I never held them on my lap. So that's my big plane advice. I totally understand people why you have a lap baby because it's expensive to buy a seat, but we found because we had twins, we didn't have a choice, because it's just like a too much.

TP: As an experienced travel TV show host, what advice do you have on pitching show ideas to networks? How would one get started in that? It's one thing to have an idea, but where to go from there?

Yeah, I mean ideas are really cheap and if it's an idea for travel show is probably been pitched 10 times. What a person should do if they really feel strongly about their idea is proof of concept. Whether it's a sizzle reel, like a three-minute reel that sees that host and that pitch in action, or a full show. That's what we had to do to prove to PBS that we could do a show, is actually have a full 30-minute show as our proof of concept.

So, if an idea is cheap, you have to show that you do that idea better than anybody else. So that's the first step, and then a lot of it is knowing production companies. That's the way into television networks, with production companies. So you have to have a production company and that might sound really daunting but if you start to watch shows that you really like, see who produced that and if you like their style then reach out to them and say 'I have an idea and here's a sizzle.'

I think sizzle comes first, you proving you can do it and then you have to find someone who can literally produce it for you, hire all the staff, have the insurance in place and that sort of thing. And they're the ones who have direct contact with networks.

I think the cheaper way to do it, maybe a longer road but still there and always being creative, is to create your own content and have your own YouTube channel. And hopefully, that begins to get an audience and then you can prove to a network or production company like not only am I doing this idea of mine, I've implemented it and people like it. I got the feedback, I had this many people, this many impressions watching the show - the two minute, three-minute video that I did, let's turn it into a show. So there's a few ways you can approach it.

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