/ 17 April 2007

The catch-up game

<Media24's wonder child <i>Weg</i>, the country's first travel glossy in Afrikaans, is certainly putting pressure on the competition. But old hand <i>Getaway</i> remains the advertisers' favourite - for now. Kalay Vani-Nair reports.

I have not been on an overseas holiday for almost four years, but I feel like I travel often.

Skiing in Salzburg or touring wine farms in Chile. I’ve done it all but have never left home.

This is the wonder of travel magazines. Glossy brochures might do it for some but I prefer reading publications that offer slightly more substance than stories about celebrities and their “preferred destinations”.

South Africa’s travel magazine offering has exploded in the last year.

Getaway magazine’s hold on the market could well be under threat. It remains the advertiser’s favourite but its circulation figures are slipping.

The new kid on the newsstand, Weg, boasts a circulation figure of 98,917 (ABC, Jan – March 2006) and its English twin Go! sold 23,500 copies of its January issue, says publisher John Relihan. That should soon give it a combined circulation of more than 120,000. According to the July – September 2006 ABCs, Weg / Go!‘s joint circulation stood at 113,278.

Getaway‘s circulation stands at 68,905 – it has lost 10,000 readers. Its new Afrikaans twin, Wegbreek, sold 30,072 copies between July and September 2006. This gives the two Ramsay, Son & Parker travel titles a joint circulation of nearly 100,000 – however their publisher made a business decision not to sell the two products as one entity to advertisers.

Getaway pulled in over R50-million in advertising in the last 12 months. Weg attracted just over R16-million. It’s higher than Wegbreek‘s R10-million but isn’t anywhere close to the kind of revenue Getaway is pulling in.

The readers might love Weg but for the advertisers Getaway is still king.

Janet Proudfoot of AC Nielsen attributes this to Getaway‘s long standing dominance of the sector.

Getaway magazine is popular with advertisers because it is well-established, well-known and credible,” says Proudfoot.

She attributes Getaway‘s slipping circulation figures to a public that is testing out the new arrivals.

“Readers are choosing one publication, they can’t buy both. This is what happens to the number one player when there are new offerings.”

She says while advertisers still find Getaway a dependable option at this stage, readers are lapping up Weg‘s alternative style and language.

“They are talking to Afrikaners in their own language. Afrikaners who might have read Getaway have moved over to Weg and they are unlikely to move back.”

It appears Getaway‘s foray into the Afrikaans market was just too little too late.

Wegbreek‘s ad revenue is at R10,752,622 and its AMPS is estimated at 100,000, while Weg‘s AMPS is 215,000. Readership figures for Go are not yet available.

Getaway and Wegbreek publisher Stirling Kotze believes a combined set of circulation figures, as is the case with Weg / Go! , benefit only the media owner, while the advertisers are pushed into a corner.

“It is naïve to think that most advertisers benefit from translated, combined circulation magazines. The two markets are almost always very different and the second ad is normally forced upon the advertisers through some sort of ‘deal’.”

But Media 24 disagrees. Relihan says advertisers had reservations in the beginning but have accepted that Weg and Go are addressing one audience in their language of choice.

“We firmly believe editorial content remains the deciding factor – it is spot on and the reader has a choice – Afrikaans or English.”

But Proudfoot says advertisers are not happy with the situation and it could be some time before they are.

Advertisers aside, in the current economic climate travel magazines are going to have to work hard to retain readers.

Debt-ridden South Africans will have to cut their spending and luxuries such as magazines are usually the first items to leave the shopping trolley.

Proudfoot says readers also have the option of pull-out travel sections in newspapers and the internet.

“People might not buy newspapers specifically for travel information but they will read it, making it harder for the magazine’s to attract and keep them.”

The market might be saturated but the current players aren’t worried. They live by the maxim that in good times people travel and in bad times people read about travel.