Rebecca Rose
Financial Times
I set this travel vertical up for the FT in 2019, to capitalise both on our peripatetic readership and our far-flung network of correspondents, and to resurface a wealth of evergreen city-related FTWeekend content lost in the ether. As editor, I surveyed 1,000 readers to find out what they wanted from an FT city guide, and my team and I developed a pioneering mobile-first article format for the FT designed to be read by busy people on the move. The resulting long listicles - such as my investigation into London’s longest and best hotel pools (also attached) - are created in such a way that you can look at them at a glance (see the sub-headings Good For, Not so Good for etc) with enticing images, but you can also settle in for a longer - and always reported - read. With FT Globetrotter, we are cutting through the noise on the internet to bring curated carefully commissioned content to our readers - an engaged community of discerning travellers behind our paywall. Readers know that they can trust FT Globetrotter articles as they are written by the correspondents and reporters they read in the main paper every day. We also invite our readers to contribute their city secrets, which we then publish in turn, creating an ongoing dialogue. We are mindful of our readers desire to travel more meaningfully and sustainably - we have an ongoing series called Greener Getaways highlighting more sustainable breaks in cities and out of the city. We also know that our readers are often desperate for green space, and ways to stay healthy in their cities and when they travel so we also have a focus on running and cycling routes, and a series called Portrait of a Park, where we tell the stories of the green spaces in our cities and the tribes that populate them. We have now launched 11 cities, and have several more in the pipeline for next year. Our content is regularly the most read on ft.com homepage, even on busy news days. FT Globetrotter’s success lies in knowing our readers and making the most of the paywall, and making sure that we never settle for the 101 angle and are always looking to how to make travel articles relevant, fun, sassy, useful and refreshing.