Holiday Villas Magazine

...free mags. This is a holiday magazine and it shows. Its oozing feel good factor. The front colour cover picture is very attractive, a superb holiday location. The text on the front is informative and refers to editorials inside the mag.

It opens with a welcome address from the editor, a brief overview of the mags contents', the contents page, and the villa finder, then some news items. Everything is positive, positive. Your holiday ...
...focus is Menorca as a holiday destination for families.
The other articles include Rick Wakeman's Tenerife hideaway, an article on Provence, Cyprus, Lanzarote and a cruise to your villa write up. The ariticles are brief, informative, very positive about the experiences. They do encourage you to dive deeper into the magazine. There is also the inevitable continental cuisine write-up too. However the pictures are good quality, interesting varied ... more

I picked this magazine up at Morrisons supermarket where the free car mags are. Its hard to believe this issue is free! The retail price of £2.75 is crossed out.

404 pages, A4, full gloss colour all the way through, pictures on every page - non of those naff extremly poor paper bits you find in other free mags. This is a holiday magazine and it shows. Its oozing feel good factor. The front colour cover picture is very attractive, a superb holiday location. The text on the front is informative and refers to editorials inside the mag.

It opens with a welcome address from the editor, a brief overview of the mags contents', the contents page, and the villa finder, then some news items. Everything is positive, positive. Your holiday almost starts here!

Articles inside this magazine include an article on Menorca - nicely written, quite brief, good pictures. The focus is Menorca as a holiday destination for families.
The other articles include Rick Wakeman's Tenerife hideaway, an article on Provence, Cyprus, Lanzarote and a cruise to your villa write up. The ariticles are brief, informative, very positive about the experiences. They do encourage you to dive deeper into the magazine. There is also the inevitable continental cuisine write-up too. However the pictures are good quality, interesting varied and well printed. Each article stretches to two to three pages.

A lot of care has gone into the presentation. The total editorial content stretches to 40 pages. Half of this is photographs. The editorial is at the front of the magazine. That's 10% of the total magazine. I think the editorial is easy to read, quite informative, nice mix of celeb lifestyle and man in the street, very positive, no downsides to any of the articles and very "I want to go!" stuff.

Lets have a look at what the magazine is really trying to achieve.
Get you to rent a villa.
If you have an idea of where you want to go - use the index on the villafinder at the front, nicely colour coded. Its not in alphabetical order. It starts at Portugal/Madeira and works its way around the Med, drops in on Croatia, Bulgaria, and Slovenia. It then looks at Lakes and Mountain zones, North Africa and then the rest of the World. This magazine goes everywhere! At the start of every section is a one page editorial about the region. There is a hand drawn map in pastel shades and a couple of photographs. Predictably the Leaning Tower of Pisa for Italy! The write up is quite bland but it has a nice feel to it. There is very little real info there, just a thermometer chart. What about the rain, humidity, currency etc.If you are really thinking of going to somewhere not in Europe you will have to do a lot more research!

The adverts. Lets look at one small section, Tenerife an island I know quite well. There are about 50 individual holiday adverts, each one with an individual photograph or maybe up to four. They range from six a page to a third of a page advert. Aproximately half belong to private owners renting out their holiday homes on an individual basis, all the way to large companies (Wimpen - at one time part of Wimpey builders). However almost every advert has an email address and some, especially the large ads and companies have a web site address. Wimpen has online booking. Owners can be represented by agencies. This is mostly clear from the adverts. There is a liberal sprinkling of cheap flight adverts in this section too. I know that the websites lead to an even larger choice of holiday accomodation.

So a huge range of choice. The banner at the top of the Magazine says thousands of villas for rent. This is true! Approximately 4 villas a page, 350 pages - 1400 ads. most adverts have a choice as well as web addresses.

My point of view as a person looking for a villa is superb - the magazine has all the info I need initially to make an informed choice. I know I have to do more research about the place I am going to, but it's sucked me in. The choice is mine. The next step is the internet for a quick shufty about the part of the world I've just signed up for.

But if I'm an advertiser.... Would I be happy?

A sixth of a page advert, colour photo, 125 words of text as well as contact details for £525 + Vat

A third page more text £995+ vat

This is for 8 issues.

You get a chance to see the proof before the magazine goes to press too.

Yes I think would!

Conclusions.
Great magazine, Even better for free! I would be doing cartwheels if I had advertised in it, knowing that a lot of shoppers will be picking it up. It has an air of honesty about it. The magazine has a great feel good factor going on in there too.

Would I buy it?
£2.75 - Yes if I was going to rent a villa.
There is no way I would get it every month, the adverts are going to repeat themselves. I will keep this issue and then use the internet to find a villa. I suspect the advertisers have almost paid for the magazine.

I'm impressed Get hold of a copy

Published by Merricks, Somerset UK (www.villaseek.com)

 

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