A place in the sun - Caribbean Travel & Life magazine's management strategies

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Feb 15, 1993 by Suzanne Zelkowitz

Caribbean Travel & Life was launched seven years ago on the hunch that people who return to the same region year after year to vacation might make a receptive market for a travel magazine. It didn't take long, though, to see that if the title wanted to make it big in its destination travel niche, it would have to think small.

All along, the challenge facing the Silver Spring, Maryland-based magazine has been that many of its endemic advertising prospects--in particular, the Caribbean-based, locally owned hotels and small businesses that cater to tourists--have had little, if any, experience in marketing themselves through print.

Increasingly, the magazine's solution has centered around a multi-tiered marketing approach that provides a variety of advertising options and support geared to luring small- and medium-size advertisers.

"We've really tried to position ourselves as marketing partners with the region," says publisher Patricia B. Fox.

Two years ago, for example, the bimonthly hired an advertising production manager who now creates many of the display ads (the majority of which are fractionals) at no extra charge to the advertisers. What's more, businesses that appear in the "Caribbean Hotel Guide," a special section within the classifieds that includes one-ninth-page displays, receive free reader service and billing on publication.

"Our advertisers tend to run one-sixth, one-third and half-pages," notes associate publisher Joseph N. DiMarino Jr. "We have to make our magazine as friendly as possible for them."

Caribbean Travel & Life is "sensitive to hoteliers who don't have big budgets," states Kate DeLeva, media director at New York City-based Greengage Associates, whose clients include the Virgin Islands Tourist Board. DeLeva says the magazine has helped the Tourist Board achieve a bigger presence in the title without extra cost by cooping ads. When the Tourist Board placed a one-page ad, for example, DiMarino was able to pull together four pages of individual Virgin Islands advertisers to make up a five-page package, giving more clout to those involved.

DeLeva praises Caribbean Travel & Life for its role as an idea bank. She notes another instance involving the Tourist Board in which the magazine came up with a proposal for a brochure on St. Croix that was tipped into its distribution to travel agents.

Last year, in an effort to capitalize on the growing market for villa rentals, the title expanded its hotel guide to encompass villa listings and introduced a "Caribbean Vacation Rentals" section, which features four-color, one-sixth-page display ads.

DiMarino says it's ideas like these that helped Caribbean Travel & Life weather the recession. After experiencing a very strong 1991, when ad pages jumped from 268 to 325, the magazine came in again at 325 in 1992--although DiMarino is quick to point out that last year's performance was better than it appears because 1991's totals included 23 pages from an annual guide that was not repeated in 1992. Although Fox declines to discuss revenue figures for the privately held title, she is projecting "a healthy profit" for this year.

Remnants of the annual could still be seen last year and again in January of this year in the form of two special ad sections that tapped into the company's role as contract publisher of two in-flight publications. Last year's version, "The Bahamas Duty Free Shopping Guide," ran in Caribbean Travel & Life and Latitudes South, the in-flight publication for American Airlines subsidiary, American Eagle.

The guide was also overprinted as a stand-alone and used by American Eagle to promote its routes, and by the Bahamas Tourist Board--which turned it into a giveaway to travel agents and potential visitors.

This year, Caribbean Travel & Life teamed up with travel trade magazine Travel Agent to produce a special ad section for TradeWind, the in-flight of ALM airlines. Caribbean Travel & Life created the editorial for "A Primer to Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao," while both magazines worked together on the sales end. The section then appeared in all three magazines and was overprinted as a promotion piece for ALM.

With the help of outside reps, DiMarino's small ad sales department (in addition to the ad production manager, there's an assistant and a classifieds manager) compiles research on the Caribbean from sources such as the Caribbean Tourism Association, the Caribbean Hotel Association and various trade titles. The information is then offered free to advertisers big and small. One notable taker, AT&T, used the department's data on hotel revenue from guest phone charges to pitch its direct-access services to hotels.

Not surprisingly, the magazine has also come up with some clever tactics to promote itself. For the cost of a few thousand dollars, Caribbean Travel & Life produced a giveaway booklet on hotel marketing that was distributed to 2,500 attendees at the annual Caribbean Hotel Industry Conference. And when Hurricane Hugo hit in 1989, the magazine's own report--a 16-page insert including status listings for all area hotels plus an update on those spots most affected by the storm--was overprinted and then sent free of charge to local tourist boards.