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death was self-inflicted
Slit wrists discounting ad pages as the third title
By Jeff Bercovici
In announcing the closure of Travel Holiday yesterday, Hachette Filipacchi Media attempted to lay the blame at the feet of a travel sector that is suffering from the twin ills of a sluggish economy and “global uncertainty” surrounding the war on terror.
As an explanation, it sounds logical enough. But don’t go drawing any conclusions about the travel category from yesterday’s shutdown, say competing publishers.
It was only Travel Holiday that was weak; travel sector advertising, they say, has proven surprisingly resilient.
“We’ve seen just the opposite,” says Lisa Hughes, vice president and publisher of Conde Nast Traveler. “I think it’s a very strong ad climate for us.”
Travel advertising bottomed out in the months following the Sept. 11 attacks, but it began rebounding last May and has been surging ever since, says Hughes. Conde Nast Traveler’s May 2003 issue is its 12th in a row to be up in pages over the previous year’s.
“Certainly we’re in a challenging marketplace, but as a matter of fact I’m having an incredible year,” agrees Travel & Leisure publisher Ellen Asmodeo.
Through May, Travel & Leisure is up 34 percent over last year in pages, and its share of the market has increased, says Asmodeo.
From an advertising standpoint, the war in Iraq was a virtual non-issue, she says; the handful of advertisers who canceled commitments in the May issue, which closed as fighting got underway in mid-March, were back in time for the June issue.
“There was some hesitation, but I think a lot of that was over fast,” she says.
Both Conde Nast Traveler and Travel & Leisure carry considerably more non-endemic advertising than Travel Holiday, but travel-sector advertising, too, has been growing.
Conde Nast Traveler says its cruise ship business is up 50 percent this year, its airline business up 17 percent, and its tours business up 72 percent.
According to the Publishers Information Bureau, overall advertising for hotels, resorts and public transportation rose 17.7 percent to $168.3 million in the first quarter of 2003.
So what, exactly, killed Travel Holiday?
In large part, it appears to have been a flawed strategy that relied on gaining market share by offering deep discounts on its ad rates.
“I think there were a few shenanigans going on with the rate card that the industry knows about,” says Hughes.
“They played the wrong game of discounting to increase paging, and you can’t win that way,” says Asmodeo.
It also had to contend with the disadvantage of being the third book in the category at a time when many advertisers have chosen to reduce the number of books they’re running in.
“There’s been a big segmentation in every magazine category, and the leading marketers are going to go with a lead-book strategy,” says Hughes. “I think Travel Holiday’s a casualty of that.”
April 24, 2003© 2003 Media Life
-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
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