CNTraveller.com is to re-launch in December  – it’s first major re-vamp since 2000.

The aim is to increase ‘customer loyalty’ and ‘engagement’ – in other words, to increase the number of repeat visits (thus increasing traffic) and the number of pages each visitor views (thus increasing page impressions).

Promised new features include daily news on the latest developments in luxury travel, a twitter feed so visitors know what the CNT team are working on, monthly videos provided by Traveller editor Sarah Miller discussing key trends in luxury travel and videoed interviews with regular contributors and behind the scenes photo shoots.

Most of this isn’t new – if you visit CNTraveller.com today you’ll find a video interview with Sarah and a regular flow of news stories.  So I believe what we’ll see is CNT upping the pace and delivering more of the same - more up to the minute news, more informative videos etc to keep users on the site for longer and give them more reasons to come back.

A visit to the Conde Nast’s recently re-launched Vogue.com, GQ.com or Glamour.com gives you a taste of what’s to come design-wise – an up to date, visually appealing, rich media experience with a greater variety of higher impact ad formats, including expandable double MPUs and double skys.

Conde Nast’s aims remain to support sales of the magazine (see Vogue’s videos of someone flicking through the latest edition) and deliver a more attractive proposition for luxury advertisers.  And,  of course, those all important increases in traffic and page impressions will make the medium work harder for both aims.

I wonder also whether they might take the opportunity to offer an online luxury travel booking service as other travel content providers have.  With the trust built up through CNT’s ’truth in travel’ policy and the higher ticket offerings their readership are interested in, it could be a potentially lucrative new revenue stream.

By: Graham Painter