Cosmopolitan Kills Travel Booking Product CosmoTrips Following Leadership Change

The Hearst Magazines title Cosmopolitan has killed its CosmoTrips booking product, which it introduced last August in a bid to add another stream of reader revenue to its business, Adweek has learned.

According to a person familiar with the situation, CosmoTrips was wound down following a series of leadership changes among the Hearst Magazines advertising leadership. 

A representative for the publisher declined to comment. 

In February, Nancy Berger, the senior vice president and group publisher of the youth and wellness group at Hearst Magazines, announced her departure from the company. Berger had played an instrumental role in launching CosmoTrips, and she cited it as a key achievement of her tenure in the LinkedIn post announcing her departure.

The new team, led by EVP and global CRO Lisa Ryan Howard, who joined the company in September 2022, has since shifted its approach to travel-related business, according to the person, to center around sponsorable content with marketing extensions across digital, social and print properties, and will no longer include a booking element. 

The elimination of CosmoTrips reflects both the standard process of a new leader reassessing the strategy of their predecessor, as well as the challenging calculus facing media organizations as they work to diversify their revenue streams.

A counterintuitive proposition

The original CosmoTrips, which was designed and built in partnership with the travel technology firm DH Enterprise & Associates, offered readers instantly bookable, curated vacation experiences in cities across the U.S.

The service featured a collection of two- and three-day itineraries in New York, Austin, Charleston and West Hollywood, with plans to expand to New Orleans, Miami and Las Vegas, Berger told Adweek. With each booking, Cosmopolitan would generate revenue via affiliate fees, and the larger gross merchandise volume of the bundled trip would boost its takeaway. Branded with the tagline “Travel like an editor,” targeting millennials and featuring perks like a free Cosmopolitan cocktail and goodie bags, CosmoTrips sought to differentiate itself from the competition. 

While travel publishers routinely offer booking services, the product fits uneasily into the broader Cosmopolitan brand, which has historically served as a clearinghouse for coverage of relationships, fashion and beauty.

According to Berger, the publisher had increased its travel coverage over the two preceding years, and the Cosmopolitan website had seen a 98% year-to-date increase in traffic to its travel content. Cosmopolitan still covers travel writing under the vertical CosmoTrips.

Reorganization led to changes in travel 

In September 2022, Hearst Magazines hired Howard from The New York Times, where she had served as its global head of advertising and marketing solutions.

In February, Howard reorganized the advertising team to form five industry-specific sales units: fashion/luxury; beauty/wellness and retail; home and design; food and pharmaceuticals; and travel, tech, finance and outdoor.

In April, Howard hired Elizabeth Lunny as the senior vice president, head of beauty, mass retail and wellness, and Haley Buchmann as the SVP, head of fashion and luxury. Later that month she also brought Rachel Savage to the newly created position of SVP of advertising revenue operations.

While booming advertising budgets in the travel sector have bolstered the businesses of other publishers, the travel bookings space is highly competitive. By shifting its attention toward tapping into marketing budgets rather than selling vacation packages, Cosmopolitan no doubt hopes to allocate its commercial and editorial resources more efficiently.