State of Travel Media 2016: The Strange Survival of the In-Flight Magazine

This week we launched the latest report in our Skift Trends Reports service, The State of Travel Media 2016.

Below is an excerpt from our Skift Trends Report. Get the full report here to stay ahead of this trend.

You might think in the age of the iPad that companies still producing print in-flight magazines are in trouble. However Ink Global, like many of its competitors, is thriving right now, according to Simon Leslie, the company’s co-founder and global head of sales. “We’ve had a huge shift in the last year,” he said. “Like a mega-improvement. The market has been kind to us.”

Leslie said that many advertisers have recently returned, including Sony and LG. “We can’t put a finger on what’s causing it,” he said. “We think it’s just the general demise of traditional media.”

Given their captive audience, in-flight magazines have a big advantage over the kind sold in newsstands. “There is a different mindset when you’re on a plane,” he said. “You’re away from distractions.” René Steinhaus, an aviation expert at consultant A.T. Kearney in Berlin, agreed, telling Bloomberg last year that “onboard magazines are living print-dinosaurs. While a lot of printed media disappeared in the last few years, onboard magazines are still ‘alive.’ They are a phenomenon.”

Still, it can be a challenge to get passengers to actually open those magazines. Ink’s solution? Scoops. Cindy Crawford announced her retirement from modeling in Ink’s Rhapsody magazine. Samuel L. Jackson also charged that Donald Drumpf had erroneously charged Jackson for a membership at one of Drumpf’s golf country clubs.

While neither story will challenge Bob Woodward’s legacy, they both got pickup in The New York Post and The Daily Mail, among other places.

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