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cheap vacations
Budget Travel, guide to sniffing out the best deals
By Jamie L. Jones
Most travel magazines are irrepressibly imaginary, with pictures of people lolling on the beach and eating in luxurious resort restaurants, seemingly without a care.
It only makes sense. Vacationing, or at least the idea of vacationing, is all about escape.
Why ruin the picture with stories about stalking for the best airfare or how to haggle down the price of a room?
The answer, according to Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel magazine, is because in the real world in which we all live getting the best price is often what really matters, especially when we are escaping on a vacation.
In sum, escape once you get there, not when you are planning your trip.
The magazine’s covers tell the whole story.
Coverlines scream like hawkers at a carnival: "All-Inclusive Resorts for Less Than Living at Home," "Sensational Honeymoon Bargains: Here Saves the Bride!" and "Stripped-Down Club Meds: $360."
If you are looking for a story on finding the best spa in Tahiti, don’t look for it in the pages of Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel. It doesn’t profile the best of the best but rather the cheapest of the cheap.
"You’re not going to read about a writer’s wonderful experiences hanging in a hammock and sipping margaritas," says Budget Travel publisher Nancy Telliho.
"Since the inception of the magazine, it was very much the editorial mission statement of the book to be service journalism in the area of travel."
In these tough times, with the travel industry especially ailing in the wake of the terrorist attacks, travel magazines as a category are feeling the hurt more than many other categories.
But in comparison to its competitors, Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel may be better positioned to withstand the ad slowdown that is expected to extend well into 2002, or so Telliho thinks.
Major advertisers may slip from the magazine’s heavily endemic travel base, but Telliho notes that the magazine carries many of the smaller and local travel advertisers and that they appear to be willing to hang in.
That, in combination with a direct-response ad strategy, Telliho believes, will buoy the magazine through the ad slump.
Meanwhile, the magazine plans to up its rate base from 400,000 to 450,000 with the January issue and will increase its frequency from bimonthly to 10 times a year starting in September 2002.
The phrase "budget travel" conjures images of backpacks, bus travel and youth hostels, but Budget Travel magazine does not carry the youth-heavy audience one might expect.
The median reader age is 49.7, and the over-55 crowd is the magazine’s largest reader group, according to a 2000 MRI survey.
That puts the magazine well within the range of other travel magazines in terms of reader age.
"We’re not for a backpacker audience," says Telliho. "We’re writing for the mass American population that’s taking one to two vacations a year."
In terms of reader income, Budget Travel ranks predictably lower on the scale, with an average household income of $66,554. Household income for more upscale titles like Travel + Leisure or Condé Nast Traveler hovers closer to the $80,000 mark.
Ad pages and revenue at Budget Travel are a cut below figures in the more upscale travel books. But the magazine is ahead of the luxury titles in year-to-date increases.
Ad pages at Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel Magazine are up 30.3 percent year-to-date over last year, from 328.5 to 428.1, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. Revenue increased 47.2 percent in the same period, from $5,973,000 to $8,793,449.
Hachette’s Travel Holiday has been performing nearly as well. Ad pages are up 25.4 percent year-to-date over last year, from 471 to 590.7. Ad revenue at Travel Holiday is up 24.5 percent, to $26,174,960.
Ad pages at American Express Publishing’s Travel + Leisure are off 1 percent year-to-date over last year, to 1,237. Revenue still increased 4.5 percent year-to-date, to $81,469,172.
Condé Nast Traveler is off 6.3 percent in ad pages year-to-date, to 1034.2. Ad revenue is up 2 percent year-to-date over last year, to $56,653,628.
Of those travel magazines, Budget Travel carries the largest percentage of travel advertising, at 70 percent, according to Telliho. Several national airlines, cruise lines and hotel chains advertise in Budget Travel, but the majority of travel advertisers come from regional tourist boards.
In non-endemic advertising, Budget Travel carries some automotive, pharmaceutical and tobacco advertisers but none of the luxury retail advertisers that fill the pages in the more upscale titles.
The magazine’s strength is in direct-response advertising, says Telliho, and she believes the strategy will serve it well through the slowdown.
"What happens in this kind of economy is that people become very direct-response oriented, and we have a highly responsive audience," says Telliho.
"If advertisers are switching away from branding and moving toward direct-response messages, we are very uniquely situated to accommodate them."
Budget Travel launched three years ago, and critics credit its largely successful start to the Arthur Frommer brand name. Frommer, known for his guide books and syndicated travel column, still serves as the magazine’s editorial director.
Newsweek bought the title in January of 2000, initiating a distribution partnership that Telliho credits with helping to double newsstand sales.
Budget Travel has a total circulation of 518,000, with newsstand sales of 57,000, or 11 percent of total paid circulation, according to the June 2001 circulation report.
October 25, 2001
© 2001 Media Life-
Jamie L. Jones is a staff writer for Media Life.
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