The article “Why I travel lone and you should too” is more persuasive and applicable to its target
audience then the article of “Home on the water: Toronto men living out his dream aboard a historic
ferry in Toronto harbour”. Both articles illustrate unique life styles and they also try to convince their
readers to explore those life styles. One is trying to convince people to travel alone while the other one
shows the unique and exciting life style of living on a boat that people can explore. The article “Why I
travel along and you should too” is more effective because the story written by the solo traveler’s own
perspective, the author uses convincing statistics in her article and the author shares her personal life
changing experience that are more easily applicable to general audience.
The first reason that “Why I travel alone and you should too” is more convincing is that the article is
written by the solo traveler herself while the article “Home on the water: Toronto men living out his
dream aboard a historic ferry in Toronto harbour” is written by a reporter. Since the former article is
written by the solo traveler herself, she can best share her experience with that audience. It is like she is
telling her experience face to face when she describes the fresh air and beautiful mountain and village
view she saw in Norway in her article (Serednicki, 2019), and the audiences are more easily picturing
themselves seeing whatever she was seeing. On the other hand, the story of living on a boat was written
by a observer, the reporter. Although the article shares some conversations with the boat owner, it is
very difficult to draw a imaginary picture with the audiences when this story is told by a observer, not
the participator. Therefore the perspective of the travel alone article makes the article more effective on
convincing its audience.
The second reason that the article of travel alone is more effective is that the author also provides some
convincing statistics to draw audiences’ attention. As the author mentions in the travel alone article, a
pull conducted in 2018 showed that 41% of Canadians had traveled alone (Serednicki, 2019). The author
also lists the evidence provided by HostelWorld that solo traveling booking had increased dramatically
from 2015 to 2017. All those convincing numbers are showing the audiences that solo traveling is
trending and people who have not traveled alone should try. The article of living on a boat also provides
some numbers, but not very convincing to general audience. At the end of the article, the author
mentions that about total of 40 people in Toronto who are enjoying the same lifestyle of living on a boat
(Ghobrial, 2021). The number is not very convincing as 40 is only a very small portion of Toronto’s over
two million population and clearly this lifestyle is not main stream and not suitable for everyone.
Lastly, the author of the travel alone article shares her personal life changing experience in the article
that majority of the audiences share. The author shares her sad story that she lost her dad to cancer
when she was 15 (Serednicki, 2019). This life changing event made her to realize that life was too short
and she had to make every second of her life counts and that is why she decided to postpone her
dreams and travel alone. While loosing a loving parent may not happen to everyone, but it is certain
that there are some life changing occasions in everyone’s lives to make them realize that how short life
is. The audiences of the article who share the same experience will more likely to be convinced to try
traveling alone.
In conclusion, the article of “Why I travel alone and you should too” is more effective than the article
“Home on the water: Toronto men living out his dream aboard a historic ferry in Toronto harbour” in
achieving their objectives. Both articles show unique life styles and both try to convince their audiences
to try those lifestyles, however the travel alone article provides the perspective from the solo traveller
herself, which is more convincing. Moreover, the travel alone article also uses very convincing statistical
numbers to show the popularity of traveling alone, and the author also shares her life changing story
that is more easily applicable to general public to convince people to try travel alone before it is too late.