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[/responsive]The travel industry and the travel writing industry have always had a symbiotic relationship, notes Jeremy Leslie in Svbscription, “each funneling business and inspiration to the other.”
“For travellers – even armchair ones – travel magazines have been a vital starting point to every journey, real or imagined,” Leslie continues. “Originally, they taught an engrossing anthropology lesson, featuring some of the world’s most choice destinations, as told by an elite class of writer.”
One of those magazines was Holiday. As Leslie notes, “Embodying the new dream of cosmopolitan travel, Holiday employed the best writers, photographers and illustrators to sell the idea that travel bettered you.”
It was the golden age of travel, when women wore their best suits and air rage wasn’t imaginable. That age of travel, along with Holiday magazine, went away in the ‘70s, taking much of the glamour of travel – and travel writing – with it.
Now, the magazine is back in print, after taking a 37-year hiatus.
“The title, relaunched in Paris, promised to pick up where the original left off; the new issue was even numbered 373, following on from the last issue,” writes Leslie.
According to Franck Durand, the Paris-based art director who resurrected the brand and is quoted in Leslie’s article, “our fascination for the magazine and the frustration we felt from not being able to find a contemporary equivalent drove us to revive it.”
Holiday joins other travel magazines back on the luxury newsstand, helping to revive the travel writing industry. While the Internet has certainly changed the way we book our travel, read reviews and experience our locations, there is yet room in the market for “that long-lost longform read,” as Leslie puts it.