Podcast
Podcast
Episode 24: Shaping the Global Travel Narrative with Condé Nast Traveler
From localized yet collaborative media strategy to emerging travel trends like off-season exploration, global travel storytelling continues to evolve with Condé Nast Traveler leading the conversation.
On a rainy day in December during the start of ILTM week in Cannes, France, I was joined by Erin Florio, Global Features Director at Condé Nast Traveler, for a conversation about how travelers are seeking deeper, more immersive experiences and how the changing media landscape continues to influence the way we discover new destinations.
Condé Nast Traveler spans the globe, with eight different markets including the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Germany, Spain, Italy, China, and the Middle East. While each market is authentically localized, they work together to ensure Condé Nast as a whole is telling the right stories in the right way, finding areas where each market can collaborate, be efficient and be sure that the content being produced is best serving both global and local audiences. In addition to the local markets, they find featured stories through worldwide contributors, as well as through well-cultivated relationships with the travel industry.
“We get to tell the stories of travel and we really get to shape people’s opinions of travel, which is a lot of fun.”
Experience-based travel continues to reign supreme as the leading trend in the industry. People are not wanting to travel in a bubble, but rather be immersed in their destination. An emerging trend is a big push towards off-season travel, especially to cooler climate destinations in the summertime. Travelers are going to locations that used to be very hyper pegged to a certain season and instead opting for exploration at a different time of the year, often creating an easier travel experience with less crowds and lower prices.
Erin grew up moving from place to place, an experience that sparked a lifelong curiosity about the world. Travel has always come naturally to her—she approaches personal and professional trip planning with equal enthusiasm—and that mindset extends into her parenting. She’s intentional about instilling a love of travel in her two young children, encouraging them to see the world with openness and wonder. For Erin, the mark of a great traveler is the willingness to embrace the unfamiliar, whether that means tasting new cuisines, picking up a few local phrases, or simply saying yes to something outside one’s comfort zone while exploring a new destination.
The media landscape has changed significantly over the years. When print was the primary platform, brands had complete control over the narrative. Now, with the rise of other digital platforms, the audience gets there first, and the brands have to meet them where they’re at. Condé Nast is constantly working to have the foresight of where the cultural conversation is headed and having their audience follow. Social media is a great example of the shifting landscape. It used to be used in an auxiliary way to capture an audience to drive traffic to a website or print magazine. Now, it needs to be its own high performing platform with original content, using it as its own standalone space to amplify the best and smartest voices in the world. They find that partnering with local experts (rather than the traditional “influencer”) is most impactful and tends to produce the most authentic content to inspire audiences.
The annual Reader’s Choice Awards gets so much attention and engagement for the brand. For those not familiar with it, once a year Condé Nast Traveler releases the results of an audience polled survey (from roughly around 700,000 participants) where they vote on their favorite brands, experiences, cities, and destinations in travel. A surprise this year? Columbus, Ohio landing on a top 10 list of places to travel in the United States. Another unexpected highlight was the rise of train travel, with the availability of iconic train journeys becoming available on pretty much every continent. Sport tourism and sport travel—espeically with the Winter Olympics and the FIFA World Cup coming up, plus the rise in popularity of F1—is really opening a new segment of the market. It’s another way of tapping into the locality of a destination, similarly to food. Folks visiting New Zealand may not be going primarily for a rugby match, but adding one to their itinerary makes for a unique element to their trip that feels truly authentic.
Erin sees Condé Nast Traveler’s value proposition as the ultimate source of trust for people planning their vacations, helping pre and post travel to craft memorable journeys from the planning phase through to booking. As an authority herself on travel, Erin shared a few of her favorite hotels and destinations. Hotel Nord-Pinus Tanger in Morocco is one, featuring impeccably sourced interiors that cultivate a one-of-a-kind sense of place in a boutique setting. The Four Seasons Surf Club in Miami is another, with fantastic food and beverage offerings and beautiful common spaces for guests to enjoy.
To wrap up our conversation, I finished with LTI’s rapid fire questions. For personal travel, Erin and her family are headed to New Zealand for two weeks in April. Looking back at travel in the past, Erin reflects on how nice it was to meet your loved ones at the gate in airports. She bemoans the invention of the selfie-stick, which has cut out that lovely moment of connection strangers used to have when asking each other to take a picture. For future innovation in travel, she would love airlines to offer a business class seat for the price of an economy one, as well as a really accurate, real-time translation system.
Thank you, Erin, for joining me on this episode of Luxury Travel Innovators. The full episode is available to listen to and watch on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Youtube.
