The award-winning editorial and design team responsible for the longtime favorite TravelAge West has broadened its offerings with a new publication. Family Getaways will focus on the growing family-travel market and will provide its travel-agent readers with inspiration, onsite reviews, packages, sales tools, products and more.
“As the father of two and an avid traveler, I am excited to be heading up Family Getaways,” said Ken Shapiro, Editor-in-Chief. “Over the past several years, the travel industry has witnessed significant growth in the family-travel segment, and today, family travel is more akin to small-group travel — with people of various ages and differing interests all traveling together. Our goal at Family Getaways is to provide our readers with tools and inspiration to increase this aspect of their business.”
The quarterly, b-to-b publication will be distributed nationally to readers of TravelAge West and its sister publication Travel Weekly, both owned by parent company Northstar Travel Media, LLC.
According to Shapiro, the tone of Family Getaways will be more entertaining than most trade magazines, although it will still have important information for agents.
“Some of the stories will be straight-forward trade articles, some are loaded with tips, still others are just plain fun — stories that are great to forward on to agents’ clients,” said Shapiro.
This year, the magazine’s issue dates are Feb. 2, May 11, Aug. 3 and Nov. 9.
Also in the works are two Web sites related to Family Getaways. FamilyGetawaysAgent.com will be designed with travel agents in mind, while FamilyGetawaysMagazine.com will be a consumer site. FamilyGetawaysMagazine.com is being developed with assistance from ProfessionalTravelGuide.com (PTG). Both family-travel sites are scheduled to debut in March 2009.
“It’s really exciting to be able to bring these products into the market,” said Shapiro. “We feel strongly that this is a growing segment and, given our team’s success in the past with TravelAge West, we feel we can do something really special with the Family Getaways brand.”
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TravelAge West is the leading trade magazine for travel agents and the travel industry in the 14 western states. Serving its 26,000 readers for 40 years, the biweekly magazine is a main source of news and product information for the region’s agents and travel executives. TravelAge West is a part of Northstar Travel Media LLC, a worldwide provider of information, news and data for the travel and hospitality industry. In addition to TravelAge West and Family Getaways, Northstar’s portfolio of directories, periodicals and destination information services includes Travel Weekly, Hotel and Travel Index Worldwide, BTP24, Official Meeting Facilities Guide, Intelliguide Corporate, STAR Service Online, Weissmann Reports, Meetings and Conventions, T&E and Travel Professional. Northstar Travel Media is based in Secaucus, N.J.
