The Planet D

The Planet D is a long-established adventure-travel website founded in 2007 by Canadian couple Dave Bouskill and Debra Corbeil. The founders describe the project as emerging from a desire to leave conventional employment and build a life around travel, writing, photography, and exploration. Their background is central to the brand: the site is built around first-hand experiences rather than anonymous destination listings, and the couple positions itself as proof that adventure travel is accessible to ordinary people rather than only elite athletes or wealthy luxury travelers. Their stated mantra, “Adventure is for Everyone,” is reflected throughout the site’s positioning and content.

Editorially, The Planet D combines practical travel publishing with personal storytelling and influencer-led destination marketing. Its main navigation covers destinations, experiences, itineraries, nomadic living, travel tips, budget travel, travel resources, and general travel-blog content. The site publishes extensive city and country guides, lists of things to do, suggested itineraries, packing and planning advice, travel-safety material, accommodation and activity recommendations, and articles about long-term travel and earning money through travel blogging. The current homepage also highlights timely destination content alongside evergreen guides, indicating a hybrid SEO and editorial strategy designed to capture both seasonal search demand and ongoing planning traffic.

The publication’s strongest differentiator is the combination of written travel advice, professional photography, video, and the personal credibility of Dave and Deb. The founders say they have traveled to more than 120 or 130 countries across all seven continents, although the exact figure varies between site pages as the site has been updated over time. Their experience includes physically demanding journeys such as cycling across Africa, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and reaching Everest Base Camp, visiting Antarctica, and undertaking multi-country overland adventures. This gives the site a more experiential identity than a conventional travel-information database. Its visual storytelling is also a major asset: the founders promote award-winning photography, image licensing, social content, and professionally edited video as part of both their editorial output and commercial offering.

The Planet D has developed a credible reputation within the travel-blogging and creator-marketing sector. The site reports that Forbes named Dave and Deb among the world’s top travel influencers, and it highlights two Lowell Thomas Gold Medal wins for Best Travel Blog from the Society of American Travel Writers, Gold awards from the North American Travel Journalists Association, and multiple photography awards. The founders have also appeared in or been featured by outlets including BBC, National Geographic, The Today Show, CTV, CBC Radio, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The Irish Times, Lonely Planet, and other mainstream media. These claims are primarily presented by the publisher itself, but they demonstrate a substantial history of industry recognition and media visibility.

The writing style is accessible, conversational, enthusiastic, and highly visual. Articles commonly mix personal observations with structured lists, practical recommendations, itinerary sections, travel tips, photographs, embedded video, and calls to action. The site is clearly optimized for search discovery, with many evergreen titles such as “best things to do,” destination itineraries, packing lists, and travel-planning guides. That SEO orientation does not make the content purely transactional: first-person anecdotes, couple-focused perspectives, adventure narratives, and photography help differentiate it from mass-produced affiliate travel pages. However, commercial intent is present. The site maintains travel-resource pages containing accommodation, booking, software, hosting, and other recommendations, and its privacy policy discloses third-party advertising and data collection.

For PR and link-building professionals, The Planet D is more valuable as a genuine editorial and creator partnership target than as a routine backlink-placement vendor. The site explicitly states that it does not participate in link exchanges, does not publish company content for free, and does not want unsolicited press releases. It does, however, invite relevant travel bloggers to submit original stories under a contributor page. The stated contributor terms include one contextual link to the author’s personal blog, provided it is relevant, useful to readers, and uses non-competing keywords, plus links to the author’s travel blog and social channels in the bio. The publisher specifically says these guidelines are for individuals and fellow travel bloggers, not copywriters or companies seeking sponsored posts.

Commercially, the site openly markets digital storytelling, brand ambassadorships, destination campaigns, photography, social promotion, video creation, and public speaking. Its work-with-us materials list partnerships with tourism organizations, travel companies, financial brands, technology companies, cruise operators, and travel-insurance businesses. Examples include American Express, Expedia, Allianz Travel, Sony Canada, Tourism Ireland, Ottawa Tourism, Visit California, UnCruise, Quark Expeditions, and other destination or travel-industry clients. This makes the site particularly relevant for tourism boards, hotels, airlines, travel products, outdoor brands, insurance companies, and organizations with a strong visual or experiential story.

The audience appears to be consumer travel readers, especially independent travelers researching destinations, itineraries, adventure activities, photography, travel planning, and nomadic lifestyles. The publisher’s demographic page identifies the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and India as leading countries and says the readership is primarily female with college or graduate-level education. The site also promotes a free five-day email course followed by weekly travel content, while its work-with-us page reports a newsletter audience, although audience figures should be treated as publisher-supplied and may not all reflect current independently audited data.

There is no clear evidence of a major public controversy or recurring editorial dispute in the reviewed materials. The most notable editorial stance is the founders’ emphasis on accessible adventure, responsible brand fit, personal experience, and content that provides value to readers. Their historical media materials state that they accept editorial content and advertising only from brands relevant to their audience. Compared with large travel publishers such as Lonely Planet or Travel + Leisure, The Planet D is smaller and more personality-led, with less institutional reporting but stronger founder identity and creator-campaign flexibility. Compared with other independent travel blogs, it offers an unusually mature mix of SEO content, photography, video, awards, mainstream media credentials, and commercial campaign experience. Its best PR opportunities therefore involve genuinely useful destination stories, expert commentary from Dave or Deb, original travel research, visual campaigns, press trips, and carefully aligned sponsorships—not generic guest posts, unrelated commercial links, or post-publication link edits.