The Week That Was #1

~ Here for your browsing please I offer a roundup of the some of the more interesting travel related stories that have come to my attention over the past week.

America’s Top Summer Music Festivals

Though the economy may have hit a low note, it seems that people are still willing to pay for a music high. In fact, most music festivals may not be feeling the fiscal pinch; festival producers across the country say ticket sales are just as high as last year, if not better.

Ken Weinstein, who represents Bonnaroo, one of the largest and most famous summer festivals, says, "Bonnaroo offers fans four of the best days of their lives, during which they are not only allowed but required to forget the recession and all the unfortunate things going on in the world.” Click here to view a slide show of the some of the top summer festivals…

Eight great trips that give back

You don't have to wear a hair shirt and dig a well to give back when you travel. Here are eight great trips that connect you with the world, and each time you frequent these locations you support the self-sufficiency and the economy of the local people. Click here to read more…

Book your own cruise? One do-it-yourselfer tells his secrets

by Ron Saia writing for Tripso.Com

Ron Saia has been on over 45 cruises, written articles about cruising and helped many people who have never cruised before prepare and experience a great cruise vacation. He’s not a travel agent. He’s a do-it-yourself serial cruiser. This post focuses on getting a great deal.

The key is to start by getting a great price for your cruise vacation. Book way in advance — anywhere from eight months to a year — or select from special discounted cruises. Click here to read more…

WikiTravel: How did this slip under my radar?

Wikitravel (similar to the open source Wikipedia) is a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable worldwide travel guide. So far there are 21,648 destination guides and other articles written and edited by Wikitravellers from around the globe. You can check out the Help page to see how you can edit any page right now, or the Project page for more information about Wikitravel and getting involved.

Author Shelley Seale on children living in the slums of India

Very few people haven’t heard of the Oscar-winning movie, Slumdog Millionaire. The story follows two young brothers as they grow up in and survive the slums of Mumbai, India. In order to show the reality of life for poverty-stricken Indian children, many scenes in the movie were actually filmed in the Mumbai slums. But in true Hollywood fashion, the ending was heartwarming goodness. The ending for the real children of these slums is not so pretty. Click here to read more…

Hotel bedbug horror degenerates into a war of words

by Christopher Elliott writing on Tripso.Com

The Stanley Hotel is an historic resort in Estes Park, Colo., perhaps best known for inspiring Stephen King to write his horror masterpiece The Shining. And also, bedbugs — if Julie Kobayashi has her way. Get those images of Jack Nicholson typing “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” out of your head. This spat reminded me more of the recent exchange between Elizabeth Becton and McBee Strategic. In other words, it degenerated into a needless but not uninteresting war of words.

IMAGE: View of the River Murray

Photographer: Jim Lesses

In Review: OUTBACK Magazine Website

~ Yesterday’s In Review: OUTBACK Magazine entry examined the April/May 2009 issue of OUTBACK, the glossy bi-monthly magazine of the R.M. Williams Publishing company. Today, I thought I’d take a look at the magazine’s website.

The OUTBACK magazine website is well laid out and functional, making it very easy to find your way around the site. Pages load quickly, and most information can be accessed in a few mouse clicks.

Regrettably, that’s about as good as it gets.

There is a great Story archive in 27 searchable categories starting with Adventure and finishing with Utes. However, only the opening paragraphs of each feature article are included on the site. If you want to read the full article you must subscribe to the magazine or purchase the back issue containing the full article you are interested in.

The Shop Online section lets you order a subscription to the magazine: 1 Year (6 issues) $49.00*, or 2 Years (12 issues) $90.00*. (international prices are also listed on the site). You can purchase a small range of merchandise, or order back issues of OUTBACK from this section of the site as well.

Under the Events tab you will find a calendar of events for every Australian state and territory. Or maybe I should say, you won’t find such a listing, because sadly, this feature of the site is not being maintained to its full potential, and is all but useless.

Today, when I checked each of the links to see what events were taking place across the country, only New South Wales (with two events), and Tasmania (one event) were listed. Apparently nothing else of note was happening across the whole of Australia. On the other hand, looking at the April/May 2009 issue of OUTBACK shows 27 events across the country in its Watch Out For… section. Clearly, someone is not doing their job properly.

I think it’s fair to say the site is there solely to promote and help sell the magazine. In and of itself, this is not a bad thing, but in this day and (internet) age, when your website is competing with literally thousands of other online travel related magazines and portals, you have to work a whole lot harder to give visitors a reason to come back. Or do you? I’m thinking out loud, now, you understand.

Maybe it is enough to attract potential subscribers to the physical magazine, and be happy with that – as long as they actually subscribe. After all, if the purpose of the site is to promote the magazine, then it is probably doing a reasonable job. Although, clearly there are areas that need to be addressed, such as the underwhelming Events section, and it wouldn’t hurt to republish selected articles in full – even if they are twelve months old – but beyond that, who knows?

Personally, I believe the best advertising and promotion for the magazine – is the magazine itself. As my review yesterday indicated, it is well written, informative, and worth reading for the insight one can gain into life in the Australian bush. And you can't ask for more than that.

*Unless otherwise noted, all prices quoted are in Australian dollars.

In Review: OUTBACK Magazine

~ Ok, having tried my hand at a couple of book reviews over the past month or so, I’m now going to turn my attention to magazines. Not just any magazines of course, but to those specifically dealing with travel and tourism; colourful locations and off-road adventures; and luxury vacations and backpacker budgets. And believe me, there are plenty of them.

Take a trip to your local newsagent, and you will find titles like Australian Traveller, Get Lost! Travel Magazine, On The Road, Travel + Leisure, Australian Coast & Country, Australian Caravan+RV, Arrivals + Departures, Vacations and Travel, Caravanning Australia, Postcards Magazine, and Way2go, to name just a small selection.

For this first magazine review I have selected the April/May 2009 edition of OUTBACK magazine.

Yes, yes, I know it’s almost July, but I had intended to review the magazine when I bought it a month or so ago. Unfortunately, I’m only just getting around to doing it. However, for the purposes of this review it doesn’t really matter, since I’m looking at the overall quality of the publication, not the timeliness or otherwise of the contents. So can I get back to my review now? Thank you.

OUTBACK – or should it be R.M. Williams OUTBACK, is a bi-monthly magazine owned by R.M. Williams Publishing. R.M. Williams itself is now owned by the Cowley family. However, before R.M. Williams simply became a privately owned company, the name belonged to a real person, Reginald Murray Williams (for more info see Footnote).

OUTBACK was launched in September 1998 to celebrate the Australian outback. In its relatively short history the magazine has caught the attention of people far and wide, and according to the circulation graph published on the OUTBACK website, was increasing its readership with each passing year (the average readership per issue for Jan-Dec 2006, was 232,000).

It’s not hard to see why. The subjects the magazine likes to showcase are as different as the outback itself: station owners, jackaroos, stockmen, travel and hospitality operators, pilots, doctors, miners, fishermen, in fact, anyone who has a close involvement with the outback.

This glossy, large format publication is printed on high quality paper, and is aimed straight at the coffee table demographic. That is, readers who are seen as “…upmarket and middle market, primarily in the 30-55 age group”; and also according to the website, “…people who identify with R.M. Williams, the man and the products, and what this represents to Australia and Australians.”

Having said that, the magazine is a great read, and as you might expect is filled with wonderful photography, illustrating stories in this issue as diverse as water conservation (Water: A New Reality); station life (Home Where The Heart Is), keeping young people on the land (Positive Future’s), and the new ‘sport’ of geocaching (Hide and Seek), which utilises GPS (Global Positioning Systems) to “track down secret caches stashed around the globe”.

The April/May 2009 edition also included a Boys From the Bush At War photo essay; Flocking North which looked at some of Australia’s rarest and most beautiful birds; and numerous other departments.

Feature articles are well written, and each writer is given plenty of space to explore their chosen topic fully and comprehensively. For example, the main feature in this issue, Water: A New Reality is spread over 12 pages.

There is an extensive Letters section, and readers can also contribute to the monthly Poem page. In addition, readers can submit their own photographs for monthly sections headed, Mailboxes, Dogs, Boots, and Bush Kids. Each image and accompanying story published (200 words or less) is rewarded with a $100 R.M. Williams gift voucher. By the way, the writer of the published poem also receives a similar gift voucher, while the writer of the Letter of The Month wins an Akubra hat. And finally, readers can also send in a bush yarn, funny story or joke to the Laugh Lines page where “The entry that makes us laugh the most wins a Waeco Cool-Ice icebox valued at AU$209.”

At a cover price of AU$8.95 and running to 156 pages, “…OUTBACK represents all that is powerful and positive about the outback - the people, places, events and experiences that are making outback Australia one of the most favoured tourism destinations on earth.”

Footnote: Information supplied courtesy of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Reginald Murray Williams AO, CMG, (May 24, 1908-November 4, 2003) was an Australian bushman and entrepreneur who rose from a swagman, to a millionaire widely known as just 'R.M.' He was born at Belalie North near Jamestown, 200 kilometres north of Adelaide, into a pioneering settler family working and training horses. R.M. had many adventures in Australia's rugged outback as a bushman, and became famous for creating a uniquely Australian style of bush wear recognized world wide. He was married twice, had ten children, and left an enduring contribution to the Australian identity.