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business travelers
Marriott hotel-room magazine of recycled stories
By Jeff Bercovici
Editorial quality aside, the logic of using custom-published airline magazines to reach upscale business travelers is impeccable: Catch some well-heeled executive wedged into his seat at 30,000 feet after he's gone through his Wall Street Journal and he's likely to find even an article on art museums in Akron a pretty engaging read.
The issue is whether that same logic can be applied to hotel rooms, where the audience is far less captive.
Unlike airplane passengers, hotel guests are a pretty mobile lot; they can go shopping or sightseeing without risking explosive decompression.
Even if they choose to stay in, most will have cable TV, internet access, and complimentary newspapers to keep them amused, not to mention in-room massages and the Gideon Bible.
With all that in mind, the plan by Marriott International to publish a complimentary magazine for its hotel guests seems something short of a slam dunk.
Then there's the makeup of the magazine: Instead of original editorial, it will largely consist of reprinted features from Time, Fortune, Shape and more than 20 other national titles.
One might well ask: Will jet-lagged businessmen even bother to flip through a magazine full of articles they may have already read?
Wilton Publishing president Douglas John says they will, if only to catch up on the stuff they meant to read but never got around to.
"What we’re really responding to is a desire on the part of business travelers to have a publication like this, which provides them with a very convenient way to access a broad range of articles selected with their interests in mind," says John, whose company will produce and distribute Marriott Insights free of cost to guests at more than 2,000 Marriott-owned hotels.
Warmed-over magazine stories from three months ago may not sound like a terribly compelling read. But in contrast to most custom published magazines, which run the gamut from fair to crummy, readers will at least know what to expect, says John.
"The knowledge that it has appeared in a major highly-regarded publication adds a special value and credibility to the article," he says.
With a distribution of 1 million copies, Washington, D.C.-based Marriott and Connecticut-based Wilton Publishing estimate that the in-room title will be read by 4 million hotel patrons each month, many of them business travelers with a yearly household income between $80,000 and $125,000.
Eighty percent of business travelers stay at a Marriott-owned hotel at least once a year, according to the company’s research.
In this way, Marriott Insights’ audience is likely to resemble those of in-flight magazines such as Hemispheres, published by United Airlines, and World Traveler, published by Northwest Airlines.
As a class, in-flight titles have a higher median household income than any other category of magazines, including business and personal finance.
Marriott Insights will sell ad space within the magazine, with much of the advertising coming from companies that have marketing partnerships with Marriott International, a group that includes AT&T, Visa, Hertz and American Airlines.
But the magazine will not carry any so-called "advertorials"—sponsored sections that blur the line between advertising and editorial—or anything else that might give it the appearance of being a promotional booklet rather than a pleasure read, says John.
No surprise, it will also not accept advertising from other hotel chains.
John says Marriott has put in place arrangements with Time Inc., Weider Publications and other magazine publishers to reprint articles from a wide range of titles that cover news, sports, business and finance, fitness and special interests such as golf, skiing and skin diving.
Because the editors of Marriott Insights won’t get a look at any articles until they’ve already been published, it won’t be able to reprint the stories for at least six to eight weeks after their initial publication date.
Articles reprinted from weeklies like Newsweek and Sports Illustrated are thus more likely to be features than current events stories.
"We’ll be looking for reasonably current articles that will maintain their validity and interest to the reader for a period of three-plus months after their initial publication," says John.
He says the exact mix of articles is currently being determined by focus-group research.
The magazine will also include an editor’s letter, and from time to time it may commission original articles of interest to business travelers on topics that aren’t addressed in other magazines, says John.
July 2, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
- Jeff Bercovici is the senior editor for new media.
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