Huffington Post Launches New Travel Section. Will It Work?

[Kaleel Sakakeeny]

From NMT Images

Huffington Post Launches Travel Section


In saying that some of her happiest moments as well her most "enriching and enlightening moments have come through travel," Arianna Huffington, editor in chief of the Huffington Post, announced late last week that the Huffington Post launched a new travel section, HuffPost Travel.
The new on line feature will be headed by Kate Auletta, daughter of well-known New Yorker writer and author, Ken Auletta

The site is good, as far as it goes. It's full of vivid images, and boasts a good mix of content ranging from Best Nude Beaches to articles on being a vegetarian in Germany to "A Guide to Eating, Living and Shopping in Italy."

However, all the content is apparently aggregated from other sources, many of them text heavy, and word dense, leaving me, at least with the feeling that the section lacks originality, focus and any sense of "voice."

But it's early days.

Still, the problem may lie in Huffington's promise that the new travel section will be a "one stop shop" offering travel news, tips and advice, deals, reviews, blogs and photographs.

If, as she says, she wants the new travel section to cover all aspects of travel from 'the glorious to the maddening," then it would be difficult to establish a reliable focus.

We'll see.

HuffPost has increasingly been moving closer and closer to becoming an internet newspaper with its own journalists carrying out their own assignments, so adding travel is in keeping with HuffPost's trend in adding other sections like food (always very popular), the arts, and media.

Since travel is considered by many a necessity, not a luxury and the travel industry spends billions in advertising, the move to a travel section is, from an advertising point of view, a good one.

A 2008 Nielsen Wire report said that spending by the industry was 3.9 billion dollars with 11.4% of ad dollars in travel being spent in on line advertising, according to financial site MileStone..

One travel writer writing on a professional site said HuffPost Travel is yet again another example of how user-generated content and aggregators are draining readers and profits from newspaper travel sections.

HuffPost has done a good job in leveraging the opportunities offered by social media. They launched an 'all Twitter version' of its site in April, and as part of their larger convergence plan, maybe their travel section will work.

Editor Kate Auletta says she's interested in talking to travel bloggers, photographers and writers interested in contributing to HuffPost Travel.