We're fairly confident that the Travel magazine you're holding in your hands is the biggest weekly newspaper travel magazine in the world right now. I'll buy you a beer if you're the first person to prove me wrong.
By biggest, I'm saying 60 pages (tabloid size) in print - I doubt there'd be a bigger one being produced by any newspaper in the world this week. Not so long ago, Travel was a 12-pager. Did you notice how Travel overwhelmed the front section of the paper in which it was contained this morning? The heavy thud it made when it hit the kitchen table? Good - be sure to mention those things to my bosses if you should bump into any of them. COUGH! - pay rise - COUGH!
Newspapers get big when there are more ads in them. I'd love to tell you that the reason Travel is so big and packed full of ads is simply because the editorial staff are so awesome (which, of course, we are - especially Shandelle Battersby and Eli Orzessek) and the ad sales team are so brilliant (they are too, particularly Sandy Kilgour and Dan Mollard). But there's another thing going on, and it's bigger than our staff, the Travel magazine and newspapers in general.
The travel sector isn't so much booming as blasting into space (literally, if Richard Branson has his way). On these shores, it has replaced the Sacred Dairy Cow as our biggest earner.
A very wise man said to me last week that "travel is the new real estate". It's a subject advertisers want to talk about and readers want to dive into. Not just in these pages, but on TV and radio, too. You'll be seeing more of travel - and a lot more of Travel.
