I penned my letter from the publisher recently and took a bullish stance on the future of travel based on the return of the Emirates A380 to New York and OpenSkies‘ new service between Washington, D.C., and Paris.

Add to that the recent announcement that American Airlines will be increasing international flights from New York. This spring, AA will add three new destinations from JFK, including San Jose, Costa Rica; Madrid, Spain; and Manchester, England. The new flights to San Jose will begin April 6, while service to Madrid starts May 1, and flights to Manchester will begin May 13.

Jim Carter, American’s vice president in New York City, rightly stated: “New Yorkers are international travelers.” He is absolutely correct. Add the feeder markets around New York, which can stretch as far south as Philadelphia, and there is a huge potential market for AA.

Hopefully, this is another sign that travel will continue to pull the country, and the world, out of the global recession.

– Fran Gallagher, publisher and CEO

With 2009 behind us (finally!), we have a lot to look forward to in 2010. I was shocked by the closing of several magazines this year, and I was grateful we kept our heads above the water for the year. The economy seems to be picking up, and we’ve had a taste of the harsh winter season when a recent blizzard hit the East Coast. What’s next?

February marks Global Traveler’s sixth year anniversary and another year of success. On Jan. 21, we are happy to help bring business back into the downtown Wall Street area at our GT Tested Awards ceremony and cocktail party at the Andaz Wall Street. I look forward to seeing friends, clients, coworkers, subscribers, family and supporters.

I am proud to be part of such a great team and publication. I wish all the GT subscribers, staff and partners a very happy and healthy New Year!

– Courtney Centeno, account executive

I don’t know if I can take it anymore. They’re everywhere, and each day brings a fresh assault. Stuffed in my mailbox, folded inside each issue of the local newspaper, blaring from the T.V. and radio, filling up the inbox of my email. I’m speaking, of course, of all those catalogs, advertisements and “special, bonus coupons” urging me to take advantage of incredible offers and ”the lowest prices of the year.”

It happens every year, surely, as retailers try to end their year in the black and move as much inventory as possible as consumers cross items off their holiday gift-giving lists. And while I would say that I’m pretty sure this year we have gotten fewer and smaller print catalogs from some retailers such as Lands End, Coldwater Creek and Victoria’s Secret who traditionally have sent out a book a week from November ’til Christmas, everywhere else the flood has increased in volume.

It’s understandable, of course, considering the bleak season for merchants last year and their hopes to end this year on a high note, but it’s all feeling rather desperate to me. According to one ad I heard last night, one company has decided one Black Friday wasn’t enough this year; they’re having one each week — but on Saturdays, instead. And we saw how the Black Friday sales began well before the day after Thanksgiving this year, and online sellers spread their Cyber Monday over a week or more of special deals and free shipping. Now it isn’t just the Friday or Sunday papers stuffed with pages and pages of ad inserts from retailers one never hears from the rest of the year. Virtually every day of the week come notices of one-day sales and early-morning doorbusters and sheets of special coupons offering additional percentages off of other coupons. It’s all really starting to get to me.

I am not a shopper. I don’t have the time or the patience to meander the malls or boutiques just hoping to stumble on something I don’t really need but can’t live without. I go with a list of what I’m looking for after checking to see who might offer the best price, get what I came for and leave. Sure, I’ll browse and windowshop a bit, but I can’t spend hours doing so, nor do I have the time to go through all those ads or the space in my head to keep track of the zillions of special deals available for three hours next Tuesday.

But the sum effect of all those ads and promos this year is really beginning to wear on me. What if there really IS something in all that newsprint that might be just the thing for my daughter/sister/husband? Perhaps that electronic item IS within my budget if I’d only check every ad in print or online and found the right coupon or rebate offer to apply to it. Surely in that enormous mountain of paper piling up in my recycle bin there is SOMETHING I WILL REGRET MISSING OUT ON!!! Oh, the horror! Oh, the wasted opportunity! Oh, the ten dollars I might have saved!

I’m not sure my frazzled nerves and fragile psyche can handle any more. Perhaps I should let my husband sort through the paper and the mail each day and remove all those urgent messages of irresistible savings before I can see them. I’ll turn off the T.V. and radio and just zone out to holiday tunes and New Age harmonies. I’ll unsubscribe to and designate as “junk” all the online retailers who dare to tempt me via email. Then I’ll be safe . . . at least until all the after-Christmas sales.

– Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader

The time has come to close our December awards issue. I find myself stopping and thinking about the past year often recently. It’s hard to believe that around this time last year, I was entering my second year at GT. And now, I am at the threshold of my third year. This year definitely was not easy, and I don’t expect 2010 to be a breeze. However, to me, the awards issue is a reminder of Global Traveler’s success.

As with every year, we had a great response from our readers. I think the GT Tested Awards reflect an honest and accurate evaluation of the premium products our clients continue to provide for the high-end traveler. Stay tuned for the survey results! We had a successful 2009 MRI survey, in which our numbers continued to jump. On the other hand, though, we have learned circulation and years of stability can mean essentially nothing. If someone had told me three years ago that T&L Golf and Gourmet would go out of business, I wouldn’t have believed them.

As we close our last 2009 issue and enter into 2010, I feel focused and a little excited for the new year. I predict budgets will be tighter, media plans will be more conservative and procedures will be more strict. However, I am hopeful we are entering a new era, one where it is less about the large corporations and the mass audiences and more about the value of the niche audiences that make sense for the product. I predict a challenge, but I think it will be a healthy one.

Congratulations GT on another year of success. Thank you to our readers for a wonderful response to the GT Tested Awards and to our MRI survey.

– Courtney Centeno, account executive

This week as our high temperatures have hovered around 100 and it’s been weeks (well, more like months) since we’ve had measurable precipitation, I’ve watched the news stories of the torrential rains and flooding in the South. My friends on the East Coast and my daughters in Chicago have bemoaned the fact that it seems as if summer hardly visited them this year, and I’ve thought more than once that it would be nice if we could somehow stir the weather up a bit and give them a little of our heat while we got some cooler, damper days. 

For most of us, unpleasant weather — whether too cold, hot, wet or dry — is merely cause for small talk or minor inconveniences, but as we’ve seen this week, it can be cause for severe economic loss and death. Too little rain and farmers lose crops to drought; too much, and they see those crops swept away or rotting in the fields. Either way, production costs go up and income drops. Transportation and shipping face delays and expensive interruptions, and damage is visited upon infrastructure. In the case of wildfires, such as those Southern California has been battling for nearly a month now, the cost of fighting those fires must be added to the losses of homes, businesses, crops and forests. The human loss, greatest of all, comes to those who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and those who seek to protect the rest of us from the fires, floods and winds; and those who experience the loss of their homes and sense of security.

All of that came a little closer to home for me this week as we saw not one but two large wildfires in the Rogue Valley this Monday, one at the edge of Ashland and one only three miles from my home here on the east side of Medford. Firefighters, facing 100-degree temperatures and 30-mile-an-hour winds, had barely begun to get a handle on the Ashland fire when a fast-moving blaze sprung up on a hillside adjoining several housing developments in Medford. With the airport between my home and the towering pillar of smoke across the valley, I watched throughout the afternoon as four airtankers repeatedly landed to refill with fire retardant and immediately took off to drop their loads. While I knew our home was in no immediate danger, even as ash and charred oak leaves drifted into my backyard, I couldn’t help but feel dread and anxiety for those who lived on that hillside and those fighting the flames and wind. And knowing how quickly that fire sprung up, I also knew it could just as easily happen in the field across the street from my home.

Happily, in this case, no homes were lost and no one was injured in the 600-plus-acre fire that scorched that Medford hill, and it was contained by the next day. Over the last three days, though, we’ve sat under a pall of smoke from two fires burning in forest lands several miles north of here. With the heat expected to continue into next week, no rain in sight and everything as dry as tinder, we know we aren’t out from under the threat of more fires yet. We wait and watch and hope for cool, fall weather and a good drenching rain.

–Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader