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Categories
| Mongoose sees good prospects in Arabic travel guide |
| Media & Advertising | |||
| Written by Kathleen Tan | |||
| Thursday, 13 August 2009 11:13 | |||
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Mongoose editorial director Matthew Bellotti said the publication, which was targeted at Middle Eastern tourists, would be well received because “there are no fewer people who want to read quality magazines, especially in a market that is affluent”. “In a recession, advertisers are going to keep their hands in their pockets and are more inclined towards high-quality products so our response is to offer more choices and value to people,” he said in a recent phone interview. Citing tourist arrival statistics from Tourism Malaysia, Bellotti said Malaysia was in a strong position to capitalise on the Middle Eastern tourist market, which is worth RM2 billion annually. Last year, 265,000 Middle Eastern tourists visited Malaysia, and 300,000 arrivals are expected this year. With an initial print run of 10,000 copies, the 160-page annual travel guide consists mostly of long feature articles on shopping, halal eateries and tourist destinations. Bellotti said the biggest challenge in producing al-musafir was the different grammar structures of English and Arabic. Translation work began last year with help from Pusat Bahasa Arab to translate English feature articles written by freelance writers, he said. Marketing efforts to promote the publication have been minimal as Mongoose has concentrated on getting the right distributors to reach the target market. The magazine is being sold at RM40 locally at airports and newsstands while 5,000 copies would be made available in the Gulf countries via Tourism Malaysia offices and airports with Malaysia-bound flights for the equivalent price. Belotti said Mongoose would consider publishing al-musafir as a bi-monthly or quarterly in future, depending on its success in the first year. The first issue of the magazine has a total of 20 pages of advertisements, ranging from restaurants and tourist attractions to hotels and car rental services. Bellotti expressed confidence that the response from advertisers would be better next year as the magazine gains prominence in the market. According to Nielsen figures, magazine adex has been among the hardest hit in this downturn, declining by 11% from January to June this year compared with the same year-ago period. Omnicom Media Group managing director Andreas Vogiatzakis said magazines are usually the first media to be hit by cuts in adex because of their relatively higher costs compared with newspapers and online media. Good quality content that is relevant would determine a magazine’s survival in the current downturn, he said. “Magazines can be a very personal medium, depending on the target audience. If the content is relevant to the target audience, they will buy the magazine. What drives adex, at the end of the day, is consumer demand,” he said. “The upside of launching a magazine in a downturn would be to test the waters but the publisher must have the funds to sustain the magazine because magazine ads are slow to pick up at the moment,” said Vogiatzakis. Besides al-musafir, Mongoose also publishes Expatriate Lifestyle, Time Out Kuala Lumpur and Royal Selangor Golf Club’s membership magazine The Circular. This article appeared on the Media & Advertising page, The Edge Financial Daily, August 13, 2009.
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