Travel Weekly

About Travel Weekly

Travel Weekly is the market-leading trade media brand for the UK travel industry, producing the only weekly print magazine for travel professionals alongside a multimedia portfolio of websites, events, jobs boards and social channels. A flagship brand of Jacobs Media — the global voice of the travel and hospitality industries — it serves an audience ranging from frontline travel sellers to chief executives, and its awards ceremonies and conferences are among the most important dates in the industry calendar.

Origins and the Jacobs Media acquisition

Travel Weekly's modern history begins in 2009, when the travel industry entrepreneur Clive Jacobs acquired the Travel Weekly Group — including Travel Weekly itself, its associated brands, websites and events — from Reed Business Information. Jacobs had founded the Holiday Autos Group in 1988, building it into the first car-rental broker in Europe before selling it to lastminute.com for £43 million in 2003. His purchase of the travel trade media business created the foundation of what would become Jacobs Media.

The umbrella brand Jacobs Media Group was launched in 2016, and in 2020 the company was awarded a Queen's Award for Enterprise in recognition of its international growth, having expanded its overseas sales by more than 50 per cent over the preceding three years. The company describes itself as Europe's largest business-to-business multimedia company for the travel and hospitality industries, with offices in London and Dubai and a presence across five continents.

Ownership and leadership

Travel Weekly is owned by Jacobs Media, chaired and majority-owned by its founder Clive Jacobs. The company's UK operation is led by editor-in-chief Lucy Huxley, one of the most experienced editors in travel trade media, and chief executive Stu Parish, who oversees the group's flagship UK trade titles Travel Weekly and The Caterer alongside the luxury-agent title Aspire and the Association of Touring and Adventure Suppliers (Atas). Following a 2023 restructuring, Duncan Horton became group chief executive, heading a new international division, while Parish took an expanded role as UK chief executive.

The group employs approximately 100 people, based in Victoria, London, with a second headquarters opened in Dubai in 2021. Its portfolio alongside Travel Weekly includes The Caterer (formerly Caterer and Hotelkeeper, acquired from Reed Business Information in 2012), Aspire, the travel-technology brand Travolution — which Travel Weekly itself launched 17 years ago — Connections, the B2B meetings and networking brand, and Connecting Travel for the Middle East market.

The magazine and multimedia portfolio

Travel Weekly produces the only weekly print magazine for the travel industry, a distinction that underlines its centrality to the trade. Around it the brand has built a multimedia portfolio spanning print and digital publications, websites, social media channels, jobs boards, email newsletters and video. Its team, which the company says boasts decades of experience in travel, covers the full sweep of industry news: agency and operator developments, airline and cruise stories, regulatory changes, appointments and commercial deals.

The brand's audience stretches from frontline travel sellers — the retail agents who sell holidays day to day — to the chief executives of the country's biggest travel companies. That breadth makes it the essential professional read for a sector that employs hundreds of thousands of people in the UK and contributes tens of billions of pounds to the economy.

Events: awards and conferences

Travel Weekly runs the biggest and most highly regarded events in the UK travel industry, from dazzling showpiece awards ceremonies to full-day conferences and exclusive invitation-only gatherings. The Travel Weekly Globe Travel Awards are the industry's flagship celebration, honouring the best travel companies as voted by agents and suppliers, while its conferences convene senior executives to debate the strategic issues facing the sector.

These events have become institutional fixtures: suppliers sponsor them, winners publicise them, and attendance is treated as a mark of seriousness within the trade. In 2019 the group's brands ran more than 160 events in the UK and overseas, a programme that continued to grow after the pandemic as the industry rebuilt.

Travolution and the digital portfolio

Seventeen years before it became a pillar of the Jacobs Media international division, Travolution was launched by Travel Weekly as a pioneering brand for the digital and travel-technology sectors. It has grown into a leading voice on online travel, covering everything from search and booking technology to the rise of the online travel agencies, and it anchors the group's technology coverage alongside the main Travel Weekly title.

The digital portfolio also includes Connecting Travel, serving the Middle East's fast-growing travel trade, and the Connections brand, which stages immersive B2B networking events for the luxury travel community. Together with Aspire — the community for the luxury travel industry — these brands give Jacobs Media coverage of every segment of the trade, from mass-market package holidays to ultra-luxury bespoke travel.

The Caterer and hospitality coverage

In 2012, three years after acquiring Travel Weekly, Clive Jacobs expanded into hospitality media with the acquisition of The Caterer (formerly Caterer and Hotelkeeper) from Reed Business Information. The Caterer is the leading multimedia brand for the UK hospitality industry, and its addition gave Jacobs Media a matched pair of flagship titles covering the two great consumer-service industries: travel and hospitality.

The group further describes itself as the "global voice for the travel and hospitality industries," a positioning that reflects the increasingly blurred boundaries between the two sectors as hotels, airlines, cruise lines and tour operators converge on the same customers and distribution channels.

Covering the industry through crisis

Travel Weekly's journalism has been tested by the two greatest crises in the modern history of British travel: the collapse of Thomas Cook in 2019 and the Covid-19 pandemic. When Clive Jacobs received the Queen's Award in 2020, he paid tribute to the role his company played "in informing, connecting and supporting individuals and brands around the world through our portfolio of events, conferences and insight products" at a moment when the industry faced "its greatest challenge."

Throughout the pandemic, Travel Weekly chronicled the shutdown and restart of international travel — the quarantine rules, the traffic-light systems, the testing regimes and the government support schemes — providing the trade with the news and analysis it needed to survive. Its recovery coverage, from the restart of cruising to the boom in long-haul and luxury bookings, has documented the industry's remarkable rebound.

Jobs, careers and community

Beyond news and events, Travel Weekly operates jobs boards serving the travel industry's recruitment needs, connecting employers with candidates across agencies, operators, airlines, cruise lines and tourist boards. The brand's training and careers coverage supports an industry that has long struggled with skills shortages and the perception of travel as a transient rather than professional career.

Through its awards, conferences and editorial campaigns, Travel Weekly functions as much as a community institution as a media outlet: the place where the trade talks to itself, celebrates its successes and argues about its future. For anyone selling travel in Britain — from an independent homeworking agent to the boardroom of a FTSE-listed operator — it remains the first read of the week.

Training, careers and industry advocacy

Beyond news and events, Travel Weekly invests in the travel trade's professional development. Its jobs boards connect employers with candidates across agencies, operators, airlines, cruise lines and tourist boards, while its training and careers coverage supports an industry that has long wrestled with skills shortages and the perception of travel as a transient job rather than a profession. The brand's editorial campaigns frequently champion the value of booking through agents and the expertise of the high street, giving the trade a collective voice in public debates — from the fairness of airline refund policies to the economic contribution of outbound tourism.

Through its awards, conferences, jobs boards and daily journalism, Travel Weekly functions as much as a community institution as a media outlet: the place where the trade talks to itself, celebrates its successes and argues about its future. For anyone selling travel in Britain — from an independent homeworking agent to the boardroom of a major operator — it remains the first read of the week.

Visit the official Travel Weekly website