Budget Travel Offers Interesting and Exciting Vacations For Less Money
Written: Apr 03 '03 (Updated Nov 06 '08)
Product Rating:
Pros: Interesting And Exciting Vacations With a "Budget" slant, Great Photos, Tips and Ideas
Cons: Just Remember That "Budget" Doesn't Mean Cheap
The Bottom Line: Want a magazine that let's you look over vacations that aren’t boring but are budget wise? Budget Travel helps you save that arm and a leg.
jps246's Full Review: Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel Magazine Subscripti...
How about a magazine that gives you a chance to look over vacations that the average person can take but that aren’t boring and are definitely not mundane? Budget Travel fits the bill and helps all of us find and plan for that vacation we’ve been looking for without necessarily costing us an arm and a leg in the process.
You generally won’t find any trips to Disney World here, but as the latest April issue attests to, you’ll find trips to the Yucatan, Alaska’s Marine Highway, Berkley, Switzerland and Vegas for starters. In general, even for the more “normal” travel destinations, Budget Travel puts a spin on the trip. For example in the coverage of Las Vegas this month, the magazine completely ignores the Strip and focuses on hotels and casinos where you’ll get good service and have good fun, without having to pay the premium for staying on the Strip.
In each issue, there are several feature stories that focus on different vacations and different locations. The features generally focus on cost savings and budget ways to make the vacation as enjoyable and as inexpensive as possible. Budget Travel also contains several other columns and departments within the magazine that have generally smaller, but no less interesting, articles on various travel locations, money saving ideas, or stories from and about travel.
That’s not to say that budget means “cheap” – some of the vacations can be expensive, but what Budget Traveler does, is look for ways for any vacation plans to be inexpensive. Quite often, the hints and suggestions made in any one article are applicable across the board to any vacation (such as staying away from the downtown area in the case of Vegas or going to a destination such as Europe in the off season). The beauty of the magazine is in this methodology – that is – you take what you learn from each article and even if you don’t go on the trip that they describe, you can still use what you have learned in order to create your own “budget” vacation.
The magazine also has several sections that show up in ever issue:
The Editors Letter – The Editor’s introduction to each issue Letters to the Editors – The readers’ chance to be heard Q&A: Ask Arthur Frommer – The magazine answers readers’ questions Nomad’s Notebook – News and Notes from the travel world Reflections – Last page editorial article 20 More Money Saving Tips – 20 tips an issue to save money Checklist! – A collection of last minute bargains, warnings and news
I don’t believe there’s a specific slant in the type of vacations that Budget Travel suggests. They review family, couple and singles types of vacations. If anything though, there may be more vacations and ideas that are geared to couples and singles, but only because many of the more “different” types of vacations that Budget Travel reviews are probably better left to the singles and couples (what family would want to bicycle around Switzerland with small children?). Thus for me, as a twenty something with a twenty something partner and no children – The two of us can can read about a trip and imagine ourselves on it without too much effort. It’s those family destinations that we have trouble imagining.
With Budget Travel you may not be able to find the cheapest vacation, but that’s not the point of this magazine. It’s to travel to exciting and interesting locations for the least money possible. Why go somewhere at the height of its season, when you can go 2 months earlier, with much the same weather or conditions, but you’d pay half as much? It’s things like this that Budget Travel reviews and offers to the reader.
The magazine is not bogged down by ads like some other travel magazines are. They are spaced throughout the magazine – along with some “special advertising sections,” but neither or overwhelming and the majority of the magazine is devoted to the articles.
Budget Travel also has some great photographers on staff because issue after issue, the photographs throughout the articles are excellent in quality and do an adequate to outstanding job of giving the reader a real idea of a location.
The magazine sells for $4.50 an issue and a year long subscription (10 issues) is $12.00.
I personally don’t have a subscription to this magazine, but I do pick it up fairly frequently (usually every 3 or 4 months). The last issue I picked up was the current April 2003 issue. At this point in my life, I don’t think I travel enough (I sure wish I did) to justify getting myself a subscription. All it would serve to do is make me salivate about all the trips I wasn’t taking.
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