Condé Nast Traveler Debuts Global Issue
Like Vogue and GQ, Condé Nast Traveler is the latest Condé Nast publication to launch a global issue, with U.S., U.K., Italy, Spain, the Middle East, India editions and China all participating.
The shared editorial initiative, set to launch online on Sept. 1, shines the spotlight on 100 locals in 100 countries, asking them what they most love about where they come from. That list includes 28-year-old Senegal-born French chef Mory Sacko and Guatemalan actor María Mercedes Coroy.
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“These are not travel industry people. They’re not experts in the travel space. They’re regular people that you would love to meet if you went to a particular country,” said Divia Thani, Condé Nast Traveler’s global editorial director. “People all over the world are in some form now returning to travel in different phases in different places, of course. Everyone has travel on their minds more than anything.”
As well as marking a tentative return to travel with a new tag line “the world made local,” the collaboration also ties into the fact that Condé has been looking to streamline its editions after merging U.S. and international operations just two years ago as part of cost saving efforts.
At Condé Nast Traveler, the U.S. and the U.K. have been collaborating since 2018, but in December it was among a number of titles to be given a global editorial director to “enable the brands to create the best version of each global story or piece of content and distribute it in customized ways for each local edition.”
“The timing of our global integration aligns really well with where we find ourselves in the world and it set this up really nicely,” added Jesse Ashlock, Condé Nast Traveler’s U.S. editor, added of the global collaboration issue. “In more practical terms it was a way to get our feet wet for working together down the road. It’s not by any stretch a one off. It’s the start of how we’re going to be dong things going forward.”
As for what type of content the site has been producing of late, Ashlock told WWD that there’s still a greater percentage of news coverage than before the pandemic, but the appetite for general travel content is returning. When the pandemic first hit, Condé Nast Traveler had to quickly pivot into two categories: in-depth COVID-19 coverage as it related to travel (up to date information on all the new rules and regulations) and pure armchair escapism.
“As the trajectory of the pandemic ebbs and flows there’s a lot of news coverage to be delivered for travelers,” he said. “But what has been true for nearly a year now has been that core destination evergreen content has performed well again and that’s picked up as travel has resumed. So we’re leaning into that well, while making sure that everyone’s informed about the news that they need to know.”
According to data provided by Condé Nast, site traffic was up 11 percent year-on-year in July.
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