I was riding the elevator up to my office a while ago, and the door opened on one of the floors that, for a long
time, seemed like it was used for storage. It was a bleak, despairing place with poor light and sparse decor. But a few
weeks ago, I learned that the magazine Travel Savvy, the glossy dedicated
to celebrity travel, had moved in and are in the process of sprucing the place up. Very cool.
I also learned that they were prepping to re-launch themselves into something different. How different? Well, I
stopped by the floor on the way up today and grabbed a copy of the magazine. I’m sitting with it here right now
and it is…well, not bad.
I’d read the earlier iteration of Travel Savvy a few times before, and considered it an above-average glossy with
often entertaining (and sometimes lame) features about celebrity travel. But the new magazine, under stewardship of
Editor-in-Chief Jill Brooke, has now revamped itself to become the David Letterman of magazines. That is, the magazine
will focus on entirely lists, specifically celebrity Top 10 lists related to travel.
Now whether you think such a concept will work for an entire magazine, well, that’s depends on how much you enjoy your
travel information in bite-sized nibblets. But you can’t deny it’s an interesting concept. Taking a look at this
month’s issue I can say this: the list concept is a bit addicting. While I wanted to pooh-pooh such lists as “The top
five polo clubs in Argentina” as elitist and “The top five best seashell beaches” as useless. But I was curiously drawn
to Ray Romano’s list of his top eight restaurants (and glad he snuck Peter Luger’s in there), as well as R. Aidan
Martin’s top ten places to shark dive…which I thought was cool.
They’re not posting much at the site right now (they’d be stupid not to eventually, since people like me will
certainly post interesting lists when we find them), but so far I’m bullish in the new format, and will keep stopping
by to get a free copy as long as they let me. ;-)