10 Great Media Sites: Travel42

By Charlotte Woolard

Northstar Travel Media in January introduced a Web resource that gives travel agents an advantage over the online consumer research and travel-booking tools that have become the professional planner's biggest competition.

Subscribers to Travel-42.com can generate customized destination, hotel and cruise reports for clients based on three existing Northstar digital products: the STAR Service database of hotels and cruises, Weissmann destination reports and Intelliguide Corporate travel alerts.

“These are professional resources that the consumer cannot access on their own,” said Tripp Wiggins, general manager-Northstar digital products.

Agents deliver client reports via a custom webpage, and reports can be downloaded for offline browsing. A mobile component is in development, and agent-generated reviews, accompanied by a vetting system, also will be added.

Subscribers pay $42 a month to access the site, which is the product of months of Northstar customer meetings and focus groups. It delivers a new interface, as well as back-end improvements to subscription and content management systems.

Northstar began its marketing push in March and has converted more than 95% of existing STAR, Weissmann and Intelliguide customers to Travel42 subscriptions.

“We went out to the audience and found their biggest pain points,” says Tom Cintorino, exec VP-digital media. “We re-engineered the product to meet those needs.”