If you read the blog comments, many of you want to know more about the people behind Global Traveler. Karen S. specifically wants to know about me, so I thought, a good way to accomplish this would be to put together a Facebook page. So, that is what I have done! It is a work in progress and I plan to take more pictures when I travel the world and add these to the collections.

So, please enjoy and use this to learn more about me if you interested! But, of course, you will have to be my friend to see the pictures and read my Facebook page.

I encourage the readers of this blog to join and create a community!

Cheers!

-Fran Gallagher, publisher and CEO

Anniversaries and birthdays tend to make one look back, and what I’ve been looking back on the last few days is Portugal.

The reminiscence was triggered by Ron Bernthal’s review in the June 25 eFlyer of the Terreiro do Paco restaurant in Lisbon. I haven’t been to the restaurant, but I’ve been to the square. While I’ve been to the city many times, I remember my first visit well - it was my very first press ‘junket.’

I’d been to Europe before, and I’d been on press trips before, but they’d all been individual. This was the first time I’d gotten to mix with other travel journalists, and I believe I was the youngest person on the trip. I remember being grateful that I’d traveled a bit in the previous year so that I didn’t feel like a total neophyte. There were also some editors who didn’t travel as much as the freelance writers, so I wasn’t the only person who hadn’t been to Lisbon before.

Anyway, I still love Lisbon to this day. I remember how beautiful the Jeronimos Monastery was (is), how impressed I was with the Explorers monument, walking the cobbled streets of the Alfama. Odd things stick in my mind, like what I was wearing the first day, and having a chicken cross my path in the Alfama.

I also remember that it was my first experience of being flirted with by married men, that there were couples who traveled together and I wondered if they both really worked or if it was a dodge, and thinking that a few of the women were ‘old’ - at the same time being glad that it looked like a career that wasn’t age-dependent.

That was 30 years ago, so I guess that means I’m living proof that my last observation was correct!

- Mary Hunt, editor, eFlyer

This week marks the anniversary of Global Traveler’s blog, and this weekend marks the anniversary of my first blog here. Last year, my first blog was on my birthday, though thanks to leap year, my birthday isn’t til Monday this year.

Looking back over the last year, of course it’s the travels that stand out. In the last year I’ve been to Colorado, New York, England and Israel, and I’m off to Poland Wednesday. I’ve also had the privilege of virtually traveling to the wide range of locations visited by those who write reviews for eFlyer (a special hat tip to Ron Bernthal).

On a more parochial level, I moved again this week, just about a mile. Packing and unpacking is a good time to revisit memorabilia. My favorite from my travels is a little trophy I got from the Harbor Bay Yacht Club in Cape Town, basically for being a good sport; we never did catch any fish that day, but they said I was the first American–not just American woman, mind you, but American–who hadn’t begged to turn around after tackling the surf in the ski boats they use for fishing off the shallow shelf of the Cape. It’s just a little plastic thing, but it’s engraved with my name, and it reminds me of being young and intrepid and being in Africa for the first time.

- Mary Hunt, editor, eFlyer

Happy Birthday, GT blogs! I’m happy to have graduated from a “guest blogger” to a Thursday blogger.

Monday night, Alexandra and I made an appearance at the hotel launch party for the SLS Hotel that is scheduled to open in Beverly Hills in Fall 2008. Before I go any further, visit their website! It’s really cool.

The NYC launch party was held at Moss, located in Soho. Moss sells everything from light fixtures and furniture to watches and jewelry. Everything is displayed as an art exhibition, blending retail with art and presentation. Alex and I spotted a stuffed squirrel—yours for the price of $950!

With the opening of the SLS Hotel there will also be the premiere of an innovative retail concept, where the hotel’s public lobby and dining areas (designed by Philip Starck) will have a series of free-standing cases displaying different objects put together by Moss and available for purchase.

On top of the Moss-Starck collaboration, celebrity Chef José Andrés will create the food and beverage program for SLS Hotel. José Andrés made an appearance at the hotel launch, hand-feeding the guests caviar wrapped in proscuitto. Sounds like some sort of strange, Top Chef fantasy, right? I mean, I couldn’t think of a better way to meet a star chef than to be hand-fed by one!

So between the Moss-Starck retail concept and a menu created by José Andrés, I would say I am looking forward to the opening of SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills. “I’ll be having the caviar Tapa and that stuffed squirrel displayed in the corner, please!”

- Courtney Centeno, account executive

Happy Anniversary to us, the blog!

Today is the one year anniversary of GT’s blog. Fran Gallagher, appropriately, had the pleasure of being the first blogger. Over the last year, many members of the GT staff have contributed to these blogs. Some of us had never written before, while others had varying levels of experience as writers. In all, I think we have had a lot of fun and have also learned a few things along the way.

I remember the GT meeting via conference call when it was decided that the website should start running daily blogs by staffers. Publisher Fran Gallagher threw out the idea of a daily blog. It did not take much discussion to decide in favor of GT blogs.

The blogs have been successful in many ways. On the business side, traffic to GT’s website has increased by over 35% since the inception of the blogs. More new viewers, more return visitors, longer visits and more feedback are all directly related to the blogs.

The blogs have done a wonderful job of giving us added exposure. In this forum, the blog writers express views, relay information and choose tangential topics which don’t make it into the printed magazine. This range of topics has brought in new viewers, as well as regular GT readers. New website viewers translate to potential new readers and subscribers.

The blogs have also sparked conversations among the GT staff about everything from potential articles to distribution points. Each writer has an area of expertise. The chosen topics have often struck a chord with different staffers, who took the idea and implemented it in a different area. For instance, I have gotten several distribution point ideas from reading the other blogs.

I have used my blog space to write about a myriad of topics (some very thinly relative to global business travel). Through my notorious self-promotion (well, I promote GT too…), I have brought in some new readers. That is the beauty of the cross-section of the blog writers. We all have our areas of expertise and we all bring in viewers from new areas.

It is purely luck that has allowed me to be the blogger on our 1 year anniversary. However, I am proud to produce this special edition blog (I am sure it will be included in the upcoming DVD, GT Blogs: The First Year). Thank you to GT for allowing me to write here. Thank you to the readers for your continued viewership.

Now, I plan on blowing out the candle on the GT birthday cannoli and making my wish (for another great year), before I wash it down with my traditional big Coke.

-John Wroblewski, distribution specialist

***Thank you to all of you who have helped make our blog such a success. We value you as blog and Global Traveler readers and thank you for letting us open the doors of GT to you!***