Talking travel

ONE of WA’s most successful travel industry trade titles is launching a spin-off publication aimed at the general travelling public.

Traveltalk Asia-Pacific has been a travel industry staple for more than two decades and is now releasing a retail version.

Indeed, it won the media category of this year’s Tourism Industry Awards.

The trade version of the magazine concentrates on the Asia-Pacific region and its reader profile boasts that it reaches every travel agency in Australia every month.

Managing editor Craig Sinclair said he had received letters from a number of non-industry readers who said they had subscribed to the magazine because they felt it gave them “an insight into the travel industry”.

“They told us they felt that they were getting travel information that wasn’t available to them through other publications. They felt like insiders,” he said.

Travel Talk will be on sale from December 20 but will not be officially launched until January.

“We’ve chosen to launch the retail version of the magazine officially in January because I figure it would be disastrous to try and launch it now with all of the hype of Christmas. It would just get lost,” Mr Sinclair said

The magazine would take much more of a retail focus than its trade-oriented sister publication.

“The whole magazine will be quite pictorial,” Mr Sinclair said.

“We’re doing a piece on understanding travel advisories. That’s a big topic at the moment.

“When the government issues a travel advisory it doesn’t automatically mean you shouldn’t go to the country. It means be careful and a little more watchful.”

Along with the travel stories are about $10,000 worth of give-aways.

The magazine is to be sold from newsagents and some copies will be available from travel agencies. It will run on a quarterly framework and will sell for a cover charge of $3.95.