TTN

TTN celebrates 40 years of travel publishing

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Ronnie Middleton, managing director, Al Hilal Group

Bahrain’s leading business house, Al Hilal Group, which publishes several leading industry titles including TTN and also dabbles in exhibitions and IT, celebrated 40 years of uninterrupted travel publishing earlier this year.

A little over 40 years ago, Al Hilal Publishing launched the very first travel trade magazine for the region, Gulf Travel.

Ronnie Middleton, managing director of the group, says, “At the time, the region’s travel and hospitality industry was in its infancy, with just a clutch of hotels in each of the GCC countries and a limited number of airlines, which used the Gulf airports as refuelling stops on their flights from Europe to the Far East.”

In the first few years of publication, Gulf Travel served the needs of the immediate region’s travel industry publishing news and articles about the region from writers based within the area. In 1984, the decision was made to expand the circulation and reach of Gulf Travel to the wider Arab world including Egypt and the Levant area with a change of name to Arab Travel. Then in 1987, a revamp of the publication saw the introduction of Travel & Tourism News (TTN) as a tabloid newspaper covering the entire Middle East.

For the future, the need for an authoritative travel trade publication will continue to ensure that TTN is read either in print or online by anyone with a serious interest in the region’s travel industry.
“Whilst other travel-related titles have found it difficult to maintain print editions, TTN continues to offer print and online editions supported by daily newsletters, thanks to the steadfast ongoing support of our advertisers who continue to promote themselves in the regions’ undisputed leading travel trade publication,” concludes the managing director of the group.

Kim Thomson, publishing director of TTN, echoes this sentiment. “To all our clients regionally and internationally, who have supported TTN and me personally these last 26 years a big thank you, as even through the good and the difficult times, you have been supportive whenever possible.”

 

* We have dedicated the ‘Partners in Progress’ section (pages 11-18) to these special partners, who have been instrumental to our success.

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