"What's the purpose of your visit?" That's usually the first thing we hear when crossing a border. The answer can greatly colour the expectations you have about your upcoming stay. In fact, travelling for business and travelling for pleasure can affect your mindset regardless of whether you're visiting a foreign country or making a domestic trip.

Similarly, advertisers promoting travel for pleasure and those who service business travellers--or business travel planners--have different advertising objectives and, accordingly, must adopt different tones and tactics if they want to connect with the right targets. The Globe serves both types of marketers with a wide range of media properties that can be combined in a variety of ways for maximum reach and effectiveness.



Regardless of travellers' agendas, there are certain amenities all of them need: means of transport, accommodations and food. Companies in all of these categories--airlines, rail services, cruise ships, bus, limo and car rental agencies, lodging companies from small-town bed and breakfasts to major chains to high-end boutique hotels and restaurants all clearly benefit from communicating the amenities they offer. Of course, there are plenty of other businesses that benefit from tourism even though they aren't strictly speaking considered part of the industry--museums and similar attractions, sports arenas and ticket vendors, to name just a few.

Of course, the travel industry also includes retail and on-line travel agents, wholesalers, tour operators and others who sell tourist packages. These opportunities range from traditional trips like family vacations, weekend getaways, city excursions and explorations of natural wonders to more exotic niche categories like eco-tours, adventure packages, wine and culinary journeys, and spa retreats. As consumers become more global in their outlook and more demanding about the kinds of travel experiences they want to engage in, vacation marketers are responding with increasingly more sophisticated options.

Just as vacation marketers vie for tourist dollars, so too do cities, provinces, states, countries as well as a variety of tourist boards and travel associations. Each of these organizations, whether government-based or professional affiliations, needs to compete with others by trumpeting its respective sites, attractions and venues.

Of course, boards, associations and governments also compete for business travel dollars. While they may showcase the same sorts of amenities they promote for vacation travel, they must also draw attention to others, like conference facilities, or highlight attractions like golf courses in different ways.


Similarly, airlines, hotels and other traditional travel marketers must adopt a different tone when trying to reach business travellers, who typically have more pragmatic mindsets and very specific ideas about what they want to accomplish during their trips--even if those goals include a few rounds on the greens.

The Globe runs compelling travel editorial twice a week in our paper.

Our Saturday travel section is where armchair travellers add new destinations to their must-see lists. It contains a diverse mix of stories that cover travel ideas that range from simple getaways to more exotic destinations like those profiled in our Expedition Planet Earth column. Other features, like our recent Brave New World story, explain the increasing complexity of travel in the 21st century, while regular columns like Deals, which uncovers vacation bargains, Travel Blog, which chronicles tales from the road, and the bimonthly Shopping Atlas fuel the travel dreams of weekend readers.

Wednesday includes the popular Executive Class profile, in which well-known, seasoned business travellers share their tips. It also includes Readers' Choice--a regular survey of out-of-the-way, overlooked destinations that offer visitors rich, one-of-a-kind experiences--as well as Sleepover, a review of hotels around the world. The Metro edition of our Travel section also runs Weekends, which GTA readers plan quick and easy ways to unwind.

All of our newspaper content is repurposed on the Travel hub of our website, and categorized so that visitor can easily locate past articles by activity or destination. This on-line property is ideal for advertisers who want to reach consumers actively researching personal and business trips--especially those plan to make their arrangements and pay for them on-line.

Airlines, hotels, conference facilities and tourist boards who want to elevate their brands can benefit from a presence in In Conference magazine, a title that surveys North America's top locations for business meetings and conventions for conference planners and business travellers.

Finally, The Globe runs several newspaper special reports throughout the year, giving marketers a wide variety of ways to precisely target customers for the services they offer.