With its 10TH anniversary issue approaching, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel is trying to truly live

With its 10TH anniversary issue approaching, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel is trying to truly live up to its tagline, "Vacations for Real People," by using reader-generated content almost entirely in its June issue.
With its 10TH anniversary issue approaching, Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel is trying to truly live up to its tagline, "Vacations for Real People," by using reader-generated content almost entirely in its June issue.
Budget Travel editor-in-chief Erik Torkells says that he chose to dedicate almost the entire anniversary issue to its 324 reader-contributors, showing the collaborative relationship the magazine has with them.
"People want advice from other travelers; the Internet made us all [the] more used to participating in the conversation," he says. "[Print] magazines forget there are other ways to do that. Magazines had traditionally vacation rentals in oahu hawaii been us talking to them, now it's us talking to each other."
The magazine's June issue, as well as its forthcoming social networking site, represents a significant move toward creating an infrastructure where readers can contribute content and commentary to a larger community, according to Adam Nelson, CEO of Workhouse Publicity, Budget Travel's AOR.
"For Budget Travel , this is an excellent gimmick, and I mean that in the best sense," says Gene Colter, editorial director at Peppercom and a former news editor at The Wall Street Journal . "This special issue is... attracting and exciting its reader base, which is... interested in reading stories about other travelers."
However, Colter is skeptical of luxury travel publications, such as Travel Leisure , using reader-generated vacation rentals in oahu hawaii content because readers of these magazines typically seek expert analysis, rather than camaraderie within content.
Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Public Relations Advertising, likens "the user-generated magazine model to open-source vacation rentals in oahu hawaii technology, where developers and users can create innovations and ideas together."
Also, Jennings vacation rentals in oahu hawaii adds, a user-generated issue enables readers to help build the brand and a product they would like to see on shelves, creating a "portal of information with intelligence and market research."
vacation rentals in oahu hawaii The dynamic between readers and the names on the publication's masthead changes with the reader-generated content, says Manny Otiko, senior media relations associate at WunderMarx Public Relations, who also notes the consistency of the magazine's content might be under closer vacation rentals in oahu hawaii inspection.
Colter adds, "Who's to know if the submitted work is coming from PR professionals. For a service publication, vacation rentals in oahu hawaii the potential for PR professionals attempting to find more media placements is possible."
Torkells emphasizes that Budget Travel paid its contributors regular fees (even providing writers more than usual for travel expenses), requested occupations for feature pitches, and spent as much time, if not more, editing the 10th anniversary issue.