Ayurveda and Health Tourism
Overview
Ayurveda and Health Tourism is an English-language quarterly magazine published from Kochi, Kerala, by FM Media Technologies Pvt. Ltd. As its title states, it works at the meeting point of two subjects: Ayurveda, the traditional Indian system of health and healing, and the travel industry that has grown around wellness — visitors coming to Kerala and to India for treatment, rejuvenation and a healthier way of living. Its website categorises its material under headings that map that territory precisely: articles, health tourism, yoga, interviews, news and events, physician's diary, beauty, food, natural and herbal topics, global Ayurveda, stories and nature.
The magazine presents itself as a resource on Indian wellness practices — Ayurveda, yoga, lifestyle, medicines, food, diet and meditation — and each issue of the quarterly is connected with one or more major international or national events. It has been recognised within its home state, winning the Kerala Tourism Award for 2014-2015 as the best tourism-related magazine in Kerala, and its website has been ranked first among Ayurveda magazines on the web in a Feedspot survey.
Publisher and Editorial Home
The magazine is printed, published and owned by Benny Thomas of FM Media Technologies Pvt. Ltd., and Thomas serves as its editor and publisher. Mastheads in recent issues name C. Gouridasan Nair as group editor, responsible for selection of news under the Press and Registration of Books Act, and list a director of international operations, reflecting the magazine's outward-facing, visitor-oriented readership. An editorial consultant from Cambridge University, Dr Madan Thangavelu, has also been named on the masthead.
Its Kochi addresses tell a small history of the operation. Earlier issues gave the corporate office as FM Media Technologies Pvt. Ltd. at Relcon Retreat, Prasanthi Nagar, Edapally, Kochi, while later issues place the corporate office at Penta Square, opposite Kavitha Theatre, M. G. Road, Kochi, with printing carried out in the city. Kochi is a fitting home: it is Kerala's commercial capital and the gateway through which most international wellness visitors to the state arrive.
Registration, Volumes and Continuity
The magazine's issues carry the identifiers of an established Indian periodical. Its RNI registration number, printed in its mastheads, is KERENG/2006/20510, and its ISSN is 2582-4511. Its volume numbering runs consistently with a mid-2000s start: volume 17 issue 4 covered October to December 2022, and volume 18 issue 2 covered August to October 2023.
The publisher's own account, published when its website topped a Feedspot ranking, stated that the magazine had been consistently providing information on its subjects for the past fifteen years. Editorial staff records give a sense of the working rhythm behind that continuity: the magazine's editorial coordination involved planning content for each quarterly release, collecting articles from subject experts, editing and proofreading, conducting interviews with eminent personalities suited to the content, writing book reviews and advertorials, and updating the website and social media handles — a cycle repeated across nearly eighteen issues in one coordinator's tenure alone.
Language and Subject Area
The magazine is published in English, a deliberate choice for a title aimed simultaneously at Indian wellness practitioners and at the international health tourist. Its subject area begins with Ayurveda itself — its principles, treatments and practitioners — and extends through yoga, lifestyle, medicines, food, diet and meditation, the cluster of practices the publisher groups together as the Indian wellness tradition.
The 'health tourism' half of the title is treated as an industry subject in its own right. The magazine covers the resorts, hospitals and retreats that receive wellness travellers, the associations that organise the sector — it reported, for example, on the Ayurveda Promotion Society and its plans to bring some 200 specialist buyers from around the world to Kerala properties — and the events and policy developments, from health department milestones to AYUSH ministry initiatives, that shape the business of healing travel.
Content and Regular Features
An issue of Ayurveda and Health Tourism typically combines a cover story with interviews, practitioner writing and sector news. The October–December 2022 issue, for example, led on global healthcare realigning its focus and Ayurveda scaling new frontiers in the USA, Italy and Germany, carried an interview feature with Ramesh Vangal, and included articles on Ayurveda then and now, the emerging prospects of Ayurvedic education in India and Ayurveda and global wellness. The August–October 2023 issue took as its cover theme the classical Ayurvedic dictum of maintaining the health of the healthy and relieving the disorders of the afflicted.
The website's category structure shows the regular departments behind such issues: a physician's diary, beauty and food sections, herbal and natural topics, stories, nature writing and a global Ayurveda section that follows the system's spread abroad. The magazine carries a standing disclaimer that its information is provided for research and education purposes only, is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, and that readers with a medical condition should consult a physician — an important marker of its position as a magazine about a medical tradition rather than a substitute for medical care.
Frequency, Price and Formats
The magazine is quarterly, a frequency its registration statements and subscription listings consistently record. Cover prices printed on recent issues are Rs 100 in India, US$5 and AED 18, a pricing pattern that itself maps the magazine's markets: Indian readers, international readers and the Gulf region, from which Kerala draws many visitors and where many Malayalis live and work. A later 2023 issue added a euro price of €5.50 alongside the rupee, dollar and dirham prices.
Print remains the magazine's founding format, sold by subscription through magazine subscription services as a print-version, Indian-edition quarterly, and full issues are also posted as PDFs on its own website. The website at ayurvedamagazine.org functions as the magazine's daily face, carrying news, events and articles between quarterly issues.
International Presence and Events
Few Indian niche magazines travel as much as this one. The publisher records that the magazine is a regular participant in international tourism and health exhibitions including WTM London, ITB Berlin and Singapore, the Arab Travel Mart in Dubai, MITT Moscow, the World Ayurveda Congress, Oman Health, FITUR Madrid and IMTEC, and that each quarterly issue is connected with one or more major international or national events, with copies made available at them; an upcoming issue in 2019, for instance, was announced as available at ITB Berlin that March.
Distribution followed the same outward pattern early in the magazine's life: an editor's note in a 2010 issue reported that the magazine was available in most European countries and the United States, and that with that issue it would also be available in Korea; the same issue noted the magazine's role as official magazine of a global Ayurveda summit organised in Kochi by the CII, the Department of Ayush and the Government of Kerala. Its mastheads have carried business associates across India — Kolkata, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Thiruvananthapuram and Chennai — and in Oman, matching the geography of Ayurveda's travelling public.
Recognition
The magazine's clearest honours have come from tourism and from the web. It won the Kerala Tourism Award for the year 2014-2015 in the category of Best Tourism Related Magazine in Kerala; the award was presented by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to Benny Thomas, the magazine's editor and publisher, at a function in Kozhikode, an occasion the magazine reported under the headline that it had 'bagged' the state tourism award. Issues of the magazine carry the line 'Winner of the best tourism magazine award from Department of Tourism, Govt. of Kerala' on their covers.
Online, the magazine's website was listed first among the best Ayurveda magazines on the web in a Feedspot ranking based on Google reputation and search ranking, influence and popularity on social media, quality and consistency of posts and expert review, ahead of nirog.com and simpleayurveda.com in second and third place. The publisher attributed the position to the site's work to educate, inspire and empower readers with frequent updates and high-quality information.
Audience and Role
The magazine addresses two audiences at once. The first is the wellness profession: Ayurveda practitioners and physicians, resort and hospital operators, health tourism facilitators and the officials and associations who promote Kerala and India as healing destinations. The second is the prospective wellness traveller, in India or abroad, deciding where to go and what a treatment, a diet or a yoga practice involves. Content is pitched to serve both — interviews and industry news for the profession, explanatory features on Ayurveda, food, beauty and lifestyle for the traveller.
Its role in its field is promotional as much as journalistic. Based in the state that has made Ayurveda the centrepiece of its tourism identity, the magazine documents Kerala's wellness sector, carries its case to the world's travel trade fairs, and provides a printed and online showcase in which the sector can present itself to the international market.
How to Read and Subscribe
Readers can follow Ayurveda and Health Tourism through its website, ayurvedamagazine.org, which publishes articles, interviews, news and events across its category sections and posts full PDF editions of the quarterly. Print subscriptions for Indian subscribers have been offered through magazine subscription services, which list the title as an English quarterly in the healthcare and medical industry category, and the magazine can be contacted through its Kochi corporate office and its editor's email address given in each issue.
Whether approached in print at a travel fair, as a PDF from its website or through its daily online articles, the magazine offers a single sustained view of its subject: Ayurveda not only as an ancient system of medicine, but as a living industry of resorts, practitioners, travellers and ideas, reported from Kochi, where that industry has its best-known home.
