When Samantha Brown was hired to host a show on the Travel Channel back in 2000, she was just happy not to be waiting tables anymore. She’s been on the road ever since, though, and 25 years later is hosting her own show for PBS. Samantha Brown’s Places to Love is about to enter its eighth season, and the show is very much sculpted by the lessons Brown has learned over a quarter-century in the game. Namely, she knows now that it’s the people that make the place.
Of the early days of her career, Brown says, “Being on the road 220 days out of the year was just lonely—I was mostly shooting castles, monuments, and cathedrals, which just naturally puts you in the past.” Long walks at the end of long shoot days helped Brown learn how she really likes to travel: instinctively, intuitively, spontaneously, and socially. “The energy of locals doing their everyday thing really filled me up,” she says. “That’s why, for Places to Love, I make sure the focus is on the people, neighborhoods, and places where you can be a part of the community.”
The last time Brown sat down with us for a chat, on an episode of the Women Who Travel podcast back in 2021, she was reflecting on the year prior, which she—and most of us—spent cloistered in our homes. Now that she’s decidedly back out in the world and the cameras are rolling once more, she joined us to talk about how her viewpoint has changed, trends she’s totally called, and more.
At our 2024 Points of View Summit, you mentioned your current approach to producing Places to Love, which involves a lot of boots-on-the-ground scouting. How did you land there?
It started when I was more of a “hired host” for The Travel Channel, and those shows were really centered on showing you the greatest hits, no surprises. Just like: What is the place known for? That’s where we’re going to take you. And that was great. But at the end of the day, I just wondered, What else is there? I actually felt a real loneliness and kind of disconnect with the location, and thought, “I guess I’m really not a traveler.”
