The topic area of “travel talk” was addressed within the framework of recent findings in the social psychological literature on self-disclosure. The structure of the stories was of particular interest Using 10 structured travel stories, a study of the frequency with which people would disclose travel episodes was undertaken. One hundred and fifteen experienced travellers sampled from Australian travel agent listings in five cities were used as subjects. In the first study, subjects were asked to indicate whether they would tell no-one, a select few, or everyone, about a particular holiday episode. Both the valence (positive or negative orientation) and the implicit motivation (coded on a 5-point Maslow-based scale) of the episode were shown to affect disclosure. The second study, nested within the first, concentrated on the characteristics of the travellers' audiences when they nominated that they would tell only a “select few”. Using two ANCOVA analyses, it was shown that clear relationships existed between the structure of the holiday episode (valence, motivation) and the desire to impress an audience. Negative stories in particular were shown to be disclosed only when the audience would be very impressed by the travel tale. Those stories with a higher Maslow-based motivational level also required that the audience would be particularly impressed by the tale before subjects were prepared to disclose that story.