Jasons Travel Media Turns 40

Media Release

Jasons Travel Media Turns 40

For Immediate Release – 28 May 2007

Jasons Travel Media has reached its 40th birthday. As at May this year, the company has completed forty years of travel publishing in the New Zealand market.

Jasons started life as Jasons Publishing Company back in 1967, a one-man band led by founder John Sandford. The company initially published farming and travel publications, but since 1979 has focused purely on the tourism market. Millions of guides, directories and web pages later, Jasons is still going strong, supplying trusted travel information to destinations across Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific.

Founder and major shareholder John Sandford said that it was hard to believe that Jasons was already forty years old. “The time has truly just flown”, he said. He was proud of the company’s achievements over the forty years. “I always had high ambitions for our business. I wanted to succeed and to help make a difference to the sectors in which we worked. Our aim was always to make adequate profits to justify the effort and ensure we continued in business but at the same time to contribute to the business success and well being of those sectors.”

John says the company has had the normal opportunities and challenges along the way. “We always worked to create real points of difference compared to our competitors. We were always trying to be innovative, not just on the product front but particularly ensuring that our business customers were well looked after. We were clear that our job was to collect, package and distribute the right material in the right way at the right time to the right people.”

Asked about plans for the company in its next forty years, current CEO Steven Joyce said the tourism media sector was fast moving, but that the principles underpinning the company remained the same. “We will continue to offer new initiatives to the industry. However everything we do will be designed to provide the best possible marketing platform for our customers’ businesses to reach travellers, whether they be from New Zealand, Australia or around the world. I can assure you that our focus remains looking after our customers first, and helping them negotiate change profitably.”

The company is celebrating with a number of events through its 40th year, including a function last week alongside TRENZ in Rotorua, which attracted a big turnout.

ENDS

Attached: “Life Begins at Forty” - background on history of Jasons Travel Media

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“Life Begins at 40”!

Jasons Travel Media is 40 years old. Forty years ago this month, Jasons New Zealand started operations for the first time.

Company founder, John Sandford, started Jason Publishing Company in May 1967 as a one man operation publishing specialist farming and travel publications.

From small beginnings, the company forged ahead with a vision of “delivering the right information, in the right way, to the right people, in the right place at the right time”. Camping & Caravanning Northland (1968) was the company’s first travel publication, followed by the New Zealand Motels and Motor Lodge Directory in 1972.

In 1979, John decided to specialise in one sector. As a result he sold his farming titles to concentrate on the growing travel and tourism market.

The company then vigorously pursued the opportunities that John saw in the travel and tourism sector. The company’s statement of purpose at that time was to “become a household name for the provision of quality leisure and travel information”. To reinforce this intention, the company’s tag line was and still is, “for travel information you can trust”.

During the next 10 years or so, Jasons grew significantly. It extended the penetration of its flagship Motels & Motor Lodges directory, developed its Holiday Parks and Backpackers accommodation guide and its Business Traveller directory, developed its nation-wide series of regional visitor activity maps and commenced operations in Queensland Australia as well as adding publications for the South Pacific Islands to its portfolio.

In 1994 the company acquired Carlton Tourism Promotions. In addition to titles such as Auckland What’s On and Wellington What’s On, this purchase also included Carlton Tourism Promotions’ Brochure Distribution business. Distribution is a vital part of any successful publishing enterprise and that unit was seen as a good fit with Jasons existing distribution activities and also enabled even better in-house and client brochure distribution.

In 1996, the internet site, Jasons New Zealand Travel ChannelTM was established. The objective of the web site was to provide consumers with the most comprehensive database of travel information available in New Zealand. This move also meant that Jasons was offering advertising customers access to powerful dual media marketing strategies.

Specialising in tourism has enabled Jasons to literally, live and breathe the market that it is serving. This focus enabled the company to understand the travel and tourism market, and meet the needs and objectives of each stage of the communications chain from tourism operator through to consumer.

Jasons focuses on professionalism and quality, and that has enabled it to succeed in an extremely volatile and competitive, high-growth industry. The company has won numerous business excellence awards and has always ensured best-practice through all its processes. It is still the only tourism print publishing business in New Zealand that commissions independent circulation audits.

Arguably, it is the desire to consistently meet new challenges that has led Jasons to be a driving force in New Zealand’s tourism industry and one of New Zealand’s most durable tourism publishing companies.

The company’s intention, at all times, has been to succeed and to help make a difference to the sectors in which Jasons worked, and to contribute to the business success and well-being of the various sectors in travel and tourism.

The job was, and still is; to collect, package and distribute the right material in the right way, in the right place, at the right time, to the right people. And, above all, at all times, ensuring that the tag line “for travel information you can trust”, underpinned everything the company did.

Jasons launches into its second forty years with a continuing commitment to provide the travel and tourism sector with the best possible marketing platform for tourism businesses to reach travellers. This is a fast changing industry but the Jasons focus remains on looking after its customers first and helping them negotiate change profitably.

Forty years and millions of directories, guides, maps, brochures and internet user sessions and page impressions later, Jasons looks forward to an exciting, dynamic future with a great deal of confidence and commitment.

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