Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park

And So It Begins

by Jon Mohatt

 Hello, my name is Jon and I would like to welcome you to Travel Brainstorm where I hope you and I have many travel inspirations and ideas!  I came up with my blog name, Travel Brainstorm, while thinking about what it is that I would like this blog to become.  I hope for this site to develop into a location where people from all over the world interact on travel related inspirations and ideas.  These inspirations may be great travel deals, trip ideas, how to save some money, how to earn loyalty points and reviews of awesome travel related products, services and sites.  By encouraging interaction through blog entries and comments, I hope to make it possible for people to know if a travel deal is really a good value or just another average priced trip, whether or not a product is as great as the advertisements make it out to be or if folks should really spend their hard earned money visiting a place that they have heard so much about.  In other words, I want this site to be a place where people will want to gather to obtain knowledge and not just read ads or the same old repeated information.

I know there are thousands of travel related sites so I hope to provide some unique information and help direct people to other travel sites if they are a best of breed or best in class.  One thing that I have found to be true is that there is a large online community that loves to travel and share their experiences with others.  I hope to encourage and create more of this wonderful sharing of information.

I am truly excited to finally be starting my own blog on a topic that I enjoy greatly, all things travel.  Although I will write trip reports when my family and/or I go to exciting places that I feel others may find interesting, I also want to provide reviews of travel related sites, products and services and interview others that have a lot more knowledge of the industry than I could ever hope to have.  If you are like me, you want the greatest value for your dollar.  I am not a frugal person, but I am value oriented!  I will pay a premium price if I am receiving a premium service or quality product.  To me, it is all about the value of what I’m receiving, so I hope I can guide people towards some great quality travel products at an awesome price.  I also love a great deal and the use of loyalty programs and points to extend my travel dollars.  I have received many upgrades and free rooms from the use of points and find that this is a great way to travel better than one may be able to otherwise.  So be expecting announcements when I see or hear about great loyalty point opportunities or reward redemptions.  There are many great values obtained this way.

As a final note, I do love to take pictures as I am an amateur photographer so I will sprinkle my entries with some of my favorites.  The one below was taken of Lake McDonald this last summer (2013) while visiting Glacier National Park in Montana.

Thanks for checking out my initial blog entry!  Happy travels.

– Jon