travel editor financial times

• 31 January 2024

Travel Editors' 2024 Predictions

Let’s put this simply. Is a repeat of 2023 possible for the travel industry? Four of the nation’s top travel editors discuss what lies in store for 2024, and what challenges may stand in the way of another bumper harvest, following the sector’s epic bounceback last year.

Will the cost of living continue to impact the overall picture? Will sustainability play a bigger role in media output? And what will be deemed ‘hot’, ‘not’, ‘new’ and ‘old’? Watch as our experts deliver their verdicts…

Head of Travel, The Telegraph

Ben began writing about travel in 2001, becoming Travel Editor of The Independent newspaper in 2007 and Head of Travel for The Independent and Independent on Sunday in 2011.

He joined the Telegraph Media Group in 2014 and is responsible for all of the Telegraph’s travel content in print and online.

Cathy Adams

Senior Commissioning Travel Editor, The Times and Sunday Times

Cathy Adams is senior commissioning travel editor at the Times and Sunday Times. She has written about everything from travel to parenting for some of the world’s best newspapers and magazines and was formerly travel editor of The Independent and Evening Standard.

A stint working for an airline magazine in Hong Kong has given her a lifelong love of Asia (and weekend city breaks).

Mark Palmer

Travel Editor, Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday

Mark Palmer is one of the longest serving travel editors in the country, having joined the Daily Mail, the UK’s highest circulation national daily newspaper, some 15 years ago.

He is truly a veteran of Fleet Street, having worked variously at the Evening Standard (Londoner’s Diary), Sunday Telegraph (News Editor) and Daily Express (Executive Editor). 

He is the author of two books – one about football, the other a history of Clarks shoes. He lives in London and the Scottish Borders. His list of banned words for all journalists and PRs is a matter of industry legend.

Tom Robbins

Travel Editor, Financial Times (FT)

Tom Robbins has been Travel Editor of the Financial Times since 2010, prior to which he was travel editor of the Observer and and an investigative reporter at the Sunday Times.

He was named Travel Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2023 and 2019 and at the TravMedia Awards in 2022.

Moderator: Henry Hemming, Global Managing Director, TravMedia

What We'll Cover

Tune in to this unmissable webinar as our panel of four national newspaper travel supremos discuss what destinations and holiday sectors are likely to keep their journalists occupied in 2024.

Following a bumper 2023, we’ll hear how important a part budget will play, and what new and emerging destinations might just serve up a surprise in a busy year ahead. Check your 2024 strategies are aligned with the media’s perspective by joining our panel for this incisive debate. See you there!

Core Topics

• Sustainability
• Travel spends and booking trends
• The General Election
• New products
• Emerging destinations
• Domestic tourism
• Impact of the wider news agenda

Attending TravMedia Meets

TravMedia Meets webinars are free to TravMedia customers who have TravMedia Meets included in their subscription. For non-customers or customers who don’t have TravMedia Meets included in their subscription the cost to attend is £25pp per webinar*

*Non-customers may also be eligible for a free trial with TravMedia. Existing customers who do not have TravMedia Meets included in their subscription may upgrade. Contact Louise Napier for more information.

• +44 (0)20 3440 8915
• [email protected]
• The Ministry, 79-81 Borough Rd, London SE1 1DN

Visit our other Sites

Sign up to hear about future events

Sign-up to be notified of future events.

Diversity and Inclusion

Sustainability, giving back, ft pink 130, our standards, life at ft blog, early careers, stay connected, may 10, 2010, financial times expands pool of top talent.

The Financial Times today announces a series of editorial appointments, including a roster for the new FT Weekend team following Caroline Daniel’s appointment as FT Weekend editor.

Sue Matthias joins as editor of FT Magazine, published with FT Weekend. She is a former assistant editor of the Independent on Sunday and deputy editor of the New Statesman, and was acting editor of the Guardian Weekend Magazine for six months in 2009.

Jane Owen joins as editor of FT Weekend’s House and Home. She is an award-winning author and broadcaster specialising in gardening. She has contributed regularly to the Financial Times and was formerly editor of The Times’ Weekend.

Tom Robbins joins the Financial Times as travel editor in June. He was previously travel editor at the Observer and helped shape Escape into a multi-award winning section. Before joining the Observer, Robbins worked for the Sunday Times, where he launched the Driving section.

Further appointments include James Crabtree, who will be joining the FT as comment editor. Crabtree is currently deputy editor of Prospect magazine and is a prolific writer and contributor to publications in the UK and the US.

Leslie Hook joins the FT in June as Beijing Correspondent. She was a leader writer for the WSJ in Hong Kong and previously worked for the Far Eastern Economic Review as a Princeton in Asia Fellow

Edward Hadas will be joining the FT as assistant Lex editor, based in London. He will report into John Authers who was recently appointed editor of Lex. Hadas is currently assistant editor at Reuters Breakingviews, the financial commentary service. Stuart Kirk, based in New York, becomes deputy Lex editor.

Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, said: “I am delighted that Sue Matthias, Jane Owen and Tom Robbins are joining FT Weekend under Caroline Daniel’s leadership. They are all top-drawer talent and will strengthen our position as the erudite and eclectic weekend read in Britain and around the world. I am also pleased to welcome James Crabtree and Edward Hadas, both of whom will add to our intellectual firepower on Lex and the comment pages.”

For further information, please contact:

Kristina Eriksson, Financial Times, +44 20 7873 4961 or  [email protected]

About the Financial Times:

The Financial Times, one of the world’s leading business news organisations, is recognised internationally for its authority, integrity and accuracy. Providing essential news, comment, data and analysis for the global business community, the newspaper, printed at 23 print sites across the globe, has a daily circulation of 401,286 (ABC figures March 2010), while FT.com has over 2 million registered users and 126,281 digital subscribers. The FT has a combined print and online average daily readership of 1.9 million people worldwide (PwC audited figures, November 2009).

Copyright  The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

• Work & Careers
• Life & Arts

Letters to the Editor

We welcome readers’ letters via email and post. Read our submission guidelines .

From Malcolm Levitt, London SE13, UK

From Chander Shekhar Dogra, Jalandhar, Punjab, India

From Joachim Remde, Former German Diplomat; Former Africa Editor, Die Welt, London W4, UK

From Martin Bjornberg, Chief Financial Officer, Handelsbanken UK, London E1, UK

From Thomas Mayer, Founding Director, Flossbach von Storch Research Institute, Cologne, Germany

From Tushar Garg, Scientist, India’s National Innovation Foundation, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India; Former Associate, Goldman Sachs

From Daniela Miccoli, LNG Analyst, Bravo Tankers, Geneva, Switzerland

From James Kirkpatrick, Professor Jochen Runde MBA Scholar for South African Nationals, University of Cambridge, UK

From Alex Hammond-Chambers, Edinburgh, UK

From Angus Neill, London SW1, UK

From Kenneth Lee and others

From Stéphane Magnan, Issy, France

From William W Chip, Washington, DC, US

From Stefan Simanowitz, Former Press Officer, ANC Western Cape (1992-94), London NW3, UK

From Sarang Shidore, Director, Global South Programme, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Washington, DC, US

From Charles White-Thomson, Senior Fellow, Adam Smith Institute, London SW1, UK

From Sally Macdonald, Stevington, Bedfordshire, UK

From James Arnell, Partner, ​Charterhouse Capital Partners, ​​London SW1, UK

From Piotr Arak, Chief Economist, VeloBank, Warsaw, Poland

From Robert Skidelsky, House of Lords, London SW1, UK

From Professor Richard Rose, University of Strathclyde, UK; Visiting Fellow European University Institute, Florence; Wissenschaftszentrum, Berlin

From Valeriya Vitkova, Senior Lec­turer in Cor­por­ate Fin­ance, Bayes Busi­ness School, Lon­don EC1, UK

From Stefan Ger­lach, Chief Eco­nom­ist, EFG Bank, Zurich, Switzer­land; Former Deputy Gov­ernor, Cent­ral Bank of Ire­land, 2011-2015

From Ros­ario A Iaconis, Adjunct Pro­fessor, Social Sci­ences Depart­ment, Suf­folk County Com­munity Col­lege, Mineola, NY, US

From Daniel Amini, Lon­don NW4, UK

International Edition

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

BULLETIN BOARD

We’re Reimagining Our Travel Journalism. Tell Us What You’d Like to See.

Our new Travel editor, Amy Virshup, says she will be rebooting our travel journalism for the digital age. Send her your suggestions or ask a question here.

By Amy Virshup

I am thrilled to be The Times’s new Travel editor, taking over a department that has offered great writing and photography to Times readers for decades. As I look to reboot our travel journalism for the digital age, there are a few big themes I am thinking about, all aimed at helping our readers travel the world better, more knowledgeably and with more understanding.

[[Leave your feedback and questions for Amy on her plans for our travel coverage in the comments.]]

One is how we tell stories. The classic storytelling mode in travel writing (not just at The Times, but pretty much everywhere) is the first-person travelogue, in which someone parachutes into a location and brings back the tale of the journey. That has resulted in some wonderful writing and terrific insights into far-flung places. But it made more sense when travel was harder, when most people were never going to take that trip to Patagonia or the Australian outback, so the writer really was the reader’s window into a different world.

Now, people can much more easily visit places themselves, and they don’t necessarily want our take on a place; they want the tools to discover it for themselves and find their own take on it.

There will always be room for well-written pieces of discovery — I recommend our recent story about walking the periphery of Paris , for instance — but in general I want to take the word “I” out of our coverage.

People also increasingly want an “authentic” take on a place. When they travel, they want to feel as if they are slipping into the lives of the locals, not standing outside that life looking in. That, as much as saving money, is one prime reason behind the incredible growth in the sharing economy of Airbnb, VRBO and the like.

Those places, unlike hotels, give you the opportunity to really live in a neighborhood and partake of its charms — shopping at the grocery store, finding “your” bakery where you can pick up croissants each morning, or going for a run in the local park.

To tap into that hunger, I am looking at using more writers who actually live in the places readers want to visit.

We hear from locals all the time when we write stories about where they live, and often they want to tell us what we missed. That’s partly a result of the expansion of The Times’s readership around the world and also thanks to the strength of social media.

Years ago, if we wrote about Los Angeles, for instance, few people there would read it. Even if they did, if they found what we wrote lacking, the only way we would know is if they wrote a letter to the editor. These days, they take to Twitter and we hear them loud and clear.

As Travel editor, I want to harness that energy to amplify our coverage. One writer and one story can’t tell everything about a place, but if we can add readers’ voices and knowledge to what we do, we can get a fuller picture. And that’s what we all want.

Let’s get started. What suggestions do you have for our Travel desk? What kinds of travel tips would be useful to you? What do you think we’ve been missing? Please leave your suggestions and any questions you might have for me in the comments section.

Portrait by Earl Wilson/The New York Times

A note to readers who are not subscribers: This article from the Reader Center does not count toward your monthly free article limit.

Follow the @ReaderCenter on Twitter for more coverage highlighting your perspectives and experiences and for insight into how we work.

How It Works

Find out how Roxhill can streamline and revolutionise the way you work.

Media Requests & Alerts

Stay informed of journalist moves, topic coverage and Twitter activity with alerts.

• Journalist Profile Search

See who’s writing about the issues relevant to you via sector, topic and socials.

List Building

Build accurate press lists and stay GDPR compliant with our built-in GDPR tools.

Distribution

Share your next story with the right people, at the right time.

Evaluate, analyse and compare media activity to stay on top of trends.

PR Opportunities

Search and find over 2000 targeted lifestyle PR opportunities for your clients.

Roxhill Mobile - Web App

Take your most important journalist look-up tool on the go.

See how we compare to other providers

Ensure you’re not missing those all-important commissions due to an outdated system.

We are the fastest-growing media database. See why so many are switching!

Roxhill has had a makeover!

The same Roxhill you know and love, but with a fresh, more intuitive design.

Log into your account to see what changes we’ve made.

Inc. Healthcare, Social & Education Charities

Inc. Universities, Colleges, Academies & Schools

Fashion & Beauty

Inc. Fashion Trends, Cosmetics, & Salons

Inc. Banking, Insurance, Accountancy & Money

Inc. Health, Biotech & Pharmaceutical

Inc. Energy, Transport & Manufacturing

Media & Publishing

Inc. Broadcasting, Media Agencies and Publishing

Inc. Residential, Commercial & Construction

Public Sector

Inc. Government, Defence & the NHS

Inc. Luxury Goods & Supermarkets

Inc. Computing, Big Tech & Home Technology

Travel, Food & Drink

Inc. Sustainability, Tourism & Food Festivals

Event Types

Roxhill Meets...

Roxhill Briefing

Q&A Sessions

Virtual Speed Pitching

Speed Pitching Live

Spotlight On...

Roxhill Club

Featured Event

Roxhill Meets... Financial Times HTSP

Grab your tickets for our Roxhill Meets session with Beatrice on Thursday 16th May at 9am, book your tickets now before it’s too late!

Book tickets

Upcoming Events

View all upcoming events

Webinar Replays

• Pitching Guides
• PR Insights
• Newsletters

Tomorrow’s Business news, delivered to your inbox today.

Your daily lifestyle insights from our four A-list journalists.

View all Pitching Guides

Meet the Team

Work with us

Why Choose Us

How We Compare

Our Clients

Success Stories

Top tips for Travel PRs from Tom Robbins, Travel Editor at the Financial Times

In the hot seat:.

Tom Robbins:  Travel Editor at the Financial Times

Previous A week at The Guardian with Jess Cartner-Morley,...

Next In the hot seat – Ryan Weeks, Fintech...

Similar Posts

Get started with roxhill's pr and media database today.

PR & Media Database​

• Media Lists Building​
• Press Release Distribution
• Media Request & Alerts
• PR Trend Analysis

Popular Posts

• Start-up guide for PRs
• Pitch Like a Pro Cheatsheets
• How & What to Pitch to CNBC
• Pitch to UK Business Desks
• Pitch to UK Glossy Supplements

Demo Roxhill's PR & Media Database

• Trial Roxhill's PR and Media Database tools and compare it your current service provider.

We use cookies to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. Accept cookie settings by clicking the button. You can view our Cookie Policy or Privacy Policy .

Booking tops Q1 profit estimates on robust international travel demand

• Medium Text

Sign up here.

Reporting by Aishwarya Jain; Editing by Pooja Desai

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. New Tab , opens new tab

Business Chevron

Exclusive: Glencore studying an approach for Anglo American, sources say

Commodities group Glencore is studying an approach for Anglo American , two sources said, a development that could spark a bidding war for the 107-year old mining company.

Accessibility Links

Duncan Craig

Former travel editor.

Duncan Craig is the former travel editor of The Times and The Sunday Times.

• Work & Careers
• Life & Arts

Become an FT subscriber

Try unlimited access Only $1 for 4 weeks

Then $75 per month. Complete digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. Cancel anytime during your trial.

• Global news & analysis
• Expert opinion
• Special features
• FirstFT newsletter
• Videos & Podcasts
• Android & iOS app
• FT Edit app
• 10 gift articles per month

Explore more offers.

Standard digital.

• FT Digital Edition

Premium Digital

Print + premium digital, weekend print + standard digital, weekend print + premium digital.

Today's FT newspaper for easy reading on any device. This does not include ft.com or FT App access.

• Global news & analysis
• Exclusive FT analysis
• FT App on Android & iOS
• FirstFT: the day's biggest stories
• 20+ curated newsletters
• Follow topics & set alerts with myFT
• FT Videos & Podcasts
• 20 monthly gift articles to share
• Lex: FT's flagship investment column
• 15+ Premium newsletters by leading experts
• FT Digital Edition: our digitised print edition
• Weekday Print Edition
• Videos & Podcasts
• Premium newsletters
• 10 additional gift articles per month
• FT Weekend Print delivery
• Everything in Standard Digital
• Everything in Premium Digital

Essential digital access to quality FT journalism on any device. Pay a year upfront and save 20%.

• 10 monthly gift articles to share
• Everything in Print

Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders. Pay a year upfront and save 20%.

Terms & Conditions apply

Explore our full range of subscriptions.

Why the ft.

See why over a million readers pay to read the Financial Times.

International Edition