Telling Readers Where to Go

By Nancy R. Gibbs

First, never leave home without a golf ball. It will fit the drain in the vast majority of the world's hotel sinks that come without a plug. Also, start filling the tub immediately if you hear gunshots. One of the things that goes first and fast in insurrections and civil wars is the water supply. But travel is not all grim. When in Bali, do not pass up the free-lance masseuses on Kuta Beach. And if you happen into Peshawar, make straight for Salateen's and try the leg of lamb, "a treat of international renown."

Such is the advice from Trips, which premiered on newsstands last week, pledging that it is for "those who are weary of travel magazines and wary of their authority." By now the reading public may be wearier and warier than ever, since in the past seven months three major new magazines have shoved into an already crowded baggage rack full of travel publications. If there is a common theme to the new celebrators of get-up-and-go, it is that tourists are to be despised but travelers are to be exalted. The magazines, of course, promise to reveal the difference.

The other common theme is that there is money to be made telling people where to go. The idea is not new. Several U.S. periodicals devoted to the journeying reader emerged at the turn of the century, including the forefather of what is today's Travel-Holiday, owned by the Reader's Digest. That magazine now has a circulation of 800,000 and remains a sedate, middlebrow Howard Johnson's sort of enterprise. The new action is exemplified by the current industry leader, American Express's upscale Travel & Leisure, a 17-year-old that is still growing briskly, with a circulation of 1.1 million and advertising revenues of $39.5 million. The host of followers has been drawn by the decade-long boom in the U.S. travel industry. This year Americans heading abroad are expected to lay out $32.9 billion (up 14% despite the unfavorable exchange rate in many countries), and close to ten times that amount will be spent on domestic trips. Only food and cars get a bigger wedge out of the U.S. consumers' wallet.

The first of the newcomer flock arrived in 1985 with European Travel & Life, an album of life-styles of the rich and shameless now owned by Rupert Murdoch. Writers scout the perfect half-timbered inns of Normandy, poke into isolated Sardinian coves, or try for par on a Scottish golf course. Most issues include pictures of food you can smell off the page. "We take you to places you wouldn't see," explains Editor in Chief David Breul, "and introduce you to people you wouldn't meet." There seems to be no shortage of vicarious voyagers: circulation has risen 70%, to 290,000 in the past year.

At the other end of the market, for people with less time to plan and less money to spend, Fairchild Publications offers Travel Today!, which debuted this winter on East Coast newsstands as an instant, if uncritical, source of news on cheap airfares, hotel rates, package tours and where to spend a long weekend just about anyplace in the world. With its short deadline and weekly frequency, the magazine sacrifices some of the gloss common in the field in order to have the latest information for the fast-growing ranks of short-trip takers and long weekenders.

Last September the Conde Nast empire, publisher of Vanity Fair, Vogue and Gourmet, among others, spent $40 million launching the upmarket Traveler for those who prefer to go where there are civil ways and no civil wars. Under former Times of London Editor Harold Evans, Traveler (circ. 853,490) boasts of its "muscle and vision" -- ratings of not only the world's best restaurants but also the worst, stories more analytical than promotional. Evans touts his magazine's "truth in travel" policy and sniffs at competitor Travel & Leisure as "one seamless travelogue, where all headwaiters bow."

The final entrant, apparently, in the current surge of voyaging voyeurs, Trips is trying a different style and message. Call it discomfort chic. Published by the khaki-clothing chain Banana Republic, Trips is for the wanderlusty adventurer accustomed to sharing hotel space with all manner of wildlife. Editor in Chief and Banana Republic Founder Mel Ziegler, a former newspaper reporter, dismisses most travel writing as "dull and antiseptic" and describes his entry as the equivalent of a "bunch of friends at a dinner table swapping really good travel tales." The inaugural issue has more ads for Jeeps than jewels, and few ads of any kind that do not reek of adventure and natural fibers.

Taken together, the new magazines have pushed out the boundaries of traditional travel writing by including information for impulse travelers as well as careful planners and offering, in some cases at least, a critical view of the industry. Traveler, the best new entry, has produced some trenchant investigative pieces on the qualifications of the lordly Michelin guides and the destruction of the Tongass rain forest in Alaska. But in the new sensibility, Traveler included, the spirit of travel porn persists with such seductive stories as "How to Shop Like a Princess," "Ballooning over Newport" and "The Almost-Too-Good Life at La Costa."

There are also some troubles in paradise. Lawyers for Conde Nast's Traveler will be appearing in Manhattan federal court this week to respond to a lawsuit by National Geographic's quarterly Traveler charging that the overall appearance of Evans' magazine is strikingly similar to National Geographic's publication. At Trips, Ziegler denies that hard times in the parent clothing chain will trim the magazine's sails. And industry analysts still wonder if the market can soak up so many go-go competitors -- particularly since travel- related companies put only one-fifth of their ad budgets into travel magazines.

Traveler Publisher Ronald Galotti is not concerned. "We're evolving into a group of people who believe we are entitled to some downtime or vacation time," he says. "We're talking about self-indulgence and self-entitlement for that 40-year-old." In other words, a new adage: You can't go broke (or so the new travel publishers hope) overestimating the indulgence of the American people.

With reporting by Jeanne McDowell and Naushad S. Mehta/New York