I've noted there are a few writing stories about journeys around the world and I wondered if you considered your own travel essential to this. I got quite annoyed with the number of times I heard someone say back to me 'But you've never been anywhere!' when I said I was writing about backpacking. Yes, it could be perceived as the Bronté approach, but I genuinely felt that if I had been to any of the places I was writing about, my experiences would seep through and colour the otherwise pure fictional tale. I fear I am alone! Have your travels made it in to your work?
I have two friends with bipolar disorder and one with clinical depression. I shouldn't be saying this, but I'm quite sure the inspiration for the man who refuses to go to the doctor despite being mentally ill in my story is, at least in part, inspired by their battles with their families and medical professionals. It was that backdrop which required personal experience. The countries my characters visit are very much incidental to their real journey.
It depends what you are writing about. It certainly helps to visit the places you write about to get a feel for them. To take in the noises, the smells, the motions but it not essential in an age where we have so much literature on almost all places in the world available to us at the click of a button. If you need a scene in Barcelona then you can take enough information about the history, culture and designs from the internet and then presumably you surplant your story and your characters from there.
My novel is a travel book in essence but it is also a piece of Gonzo Journalism where the main body of the book is to a large extent true. For example I visited Kashmir and got caught up in a a two month conflict between Kashmiri Muslims and the Indian army. My experience of Kashmir comes from the events that happened to me such as being shot at, tear gassed and put under house arrest. I saw people killed and their bodies chucked on Rickshaws, the United Nations intervening, BBC camera's everywhere. This is what I was privy to but I still include such things as the botanical gardens, the tomb of Jesus and houseboast and opium fields.
Likewise when I climbed Mount Everest from the Nepalese side I wrote about my ascent to Base Camp and since then I've looked up information to build a better story about my climb but the pivotal moment of that story comes at Lukla airstrip when I witnessed the plane I was supposed to fly on, try to land, fail and smash into a mountain opposite killing all eighteen on board. As you can tell my travel writing experience is different to those that look for a place to put characters in and create more of a story.
I shouldn't really be saying this but I suffer from severe Manic Depression and I write Gonzo, the form that I did my thesis on at University because the author of this genre had the same condition. My travels are never normal because I put myself in stupid danger because I apparantly get a thrill out of it. This first happened to me just after the Israeli/Lebanon war when I got arrested for trying to cross the border between the countries (a demilitarized zone) in a Hertz rental car whilst drunk and stoned. This is why I write such a novel as I am doing. My problem is creating a story arc that is viable and not just a bunch of memoirs.
To sum it up I don't think it matters a great deal where you base your story as long as you gather enough information to make it seem real to the reader. Hamlet was supposedly set in Denmark, right?
I'm quite the opposite really, in that I have woven my fiction around locations I have visited. Either way, as long as your'e enjoying what your'e writing, that's what will shine through. ;-)