Guides' future looks healthy

From our perspective, the future of the printed guide looks very healthy, principally because we're not reliant on the more traditional forms of distribution and sales (Caterer, 26 October, page 12).

Our online and direct-mail database guide sales increase steadily each year, and now far exceed our copy sales in retail bookshops.

In addition, we've just transported several tons of our four consumer guides to more than 50 countries and three continents for display in 55,000 bedrooms in more than 1,200 hotels, resorts, inns and spas recommended for 2007. The considerable annual freight cost is more than compensated by the response and awareness generated by an estimated readership of 13 million affluent, international travellers who refer to our guides every day, as paying guests.

Full-page advertisements in glossy consumer magazines including Condé Nast Traveller, both here and in America, together with worldwide PR, promote our guide sales and our website, www.johansens.com.

In our view, the secret is to give the consumer a choice, and by getting the balance right between printed guides and the internet, the two will work in harmony, the one promoting the other.

Andrew Warren
Managing director, Condé Nast Johansens

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