Travel

Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars For the $250,000+ a year club January 7, 2003

Subscription Term Name: 1 year

Travel magazines have never catered to the common man, instead preferring the rarified air found around those living in million dollar homes and driving Porsches with model numbers we've never heard of before. "Travel + Leisure" is no exception to this rule.

One would think that the editors would have toned down the chic and trendy during the economic downturn, but instead they seem to have ratcheted up the lust level another notch. A quick scan of the price tags attached to the luxuries described within "T+L's" pages will find most of the recommendations to be out of reach of mortal men. And don't get me going on the ads, either.

This is not to say that "T+L" is a bad magazine. If your idea of a family vacation is Monte Carlo, then it works beautifully. It does a wonderful job making people's mouths water over what is offered out there in the big, beautiful world. But if your idea of a getaway is Gatlinburg, you'll get nothing but a case of envy reading this magazine.

As for the actual content of the magazine, it suffers from "USA Today" syndrome: limited, perfunctory articles. The content resembles nothing more than a hodgepodge of tidbits. Many magazines today have this problem, though. Blame it on short attention spans. Or possibly that the world is a big place and too much specificity on one location would make the mag less useful for a broad audience. But with the demographic of "T+L", I think the target audience would appreciate knowing more.

"T+L" certainly has some plusses, with the best being the photography. This is a handsome magazine. But it is a "B-level" handsome and not an "A". There are more elite magazines that look even better.

In the long run, though, the negatives outweigh the positives. One of my biggest beefs with "T+L" is the sheer onslaught of ads. A random flip through its pages will almost always land you on an ad rather than actual useful content. Given that ad revenue at magazines is down, I guess a plethora of ads is a sign of the magazine's health, but still. Don't we buy magazines to read articles that are useful?

As far as competition, Conde Nast's "Traveler" comes to mind. Having read the two, I think I might lean toward "Traveler" as the superior magazine. My admittedly faulty memory has me remembering that it has a tad more depth in its articles and a higher "signal to noise ratio" of content to ads than "T+L".

If you are a daydreamer, get "T+L" simply for the "what-if" possibilities. But if you are like me, save the money you would have spent on "T+L" and use it to get away for a couple days with the Mrs. to a nice, local B