Divia Thani was named Global Editorial Director of Condé Nast Traveler in December.
Courtesy of Divia Thani
When Covid-19 began its rapid spread across the globe last spring, Divia Thani suddenly found herself questioning everything. Then the Editor in Chief of Condé Nast Traveller India, a role she’d held since the magazine’s 2010 launch, Thani had spent the last decade building a curated platform for all things travel, style, and luxury. But as the new pandemic reality set in, it became clear that the incredible adventures and destinations that once filled its pages would be but distant memories for the foreseeable future. With the fate of CNT India—and of the entire travel industry—still uncertain, Thani was forced to adapt and evolve the magazine’s strategy to reflect the way readers were now thinking about travel and their collective (and mounting) longing for it.
The pivot proved so successful that Thani was named Global Editorial Director of all of Condé Nast Traveler in December 2020, and with the world continuing to reopen and travel once again a feasibility, she has spent much of this year thinking about the much-anticipated return. Now, as more borders open by the day, long-neglected flights return to the skies, and hotels start to welcome guests back to their halls, the editor and her team are debuting a new tagline and indeed a new approach to travel: “The World Made Local.” Read on to learn about the campaign, what lessons Thani learned from the pandemic, and what she believes will be the future of travel.
Gabby Shacknai: What initially attracted you to the world of travel and specifically travel writing?
Divia Thani: I have never known a life without travel (until 2020!). I grew up between India and Nigeria, studied briefly in London, and attended university in the US on a scholarship. My mother’s family lives in Hong Kong and Singapore and my father’s across the Caribbean. Travel has been my life’s greatest privilege, joy, and teacher, but I was never drawn to travel writing specifically. I was an editor at Vogue, and while I loved beautiful, glossy magazines, travel writing never seemed to have that attractive urgency that made fashion or beauty or the news so alluring. So when I was given the chance to launch Condé Nast Traveller India, I wanted to make sure I brought that appeal into the writing and design—the energy, excitement, newness, and sexiness of these faraway places and people. To me, that’s still the best kind of travel writing. It sparkles. It makes you need to be in that place, it doesn’t just paint a beautiful picture, it makes you feel the vibe, it tells a bigger story.
Shacknai: Pandemic aside, how would you say the travel industry has changed since you began covering it? How has travel journalism had to adapt to those changes?
Thani: I’ve been editing CNT India for 10 years. Soon after our launch, I attended arguably the most important luxury travel trade show in Europe. I was largely ignored. I tried to convince many seasoned hoteliers that the Indian luxury market was small but promising. At the opening forum, hoteliers spoke candidly about wanting to avoid ‘nouveau riche’ travelers from China, Russia, and India, who had a fondness for ‘gold taps’—an aesthetic they considered a tacky display of newly acquired wealth.
Today, the global travel (and retail) industry has transformed itself to cater to sophisticated, high-spending travelers from these markets. Brands now want to understand how to attract Indian destination weddings and Chinese shoppers. This says a lot about the future of global luxury travel. But there are so many other, massive changes too. The most obvious is, of course, the rise of digital media, how people access information on travel, and how they finally book. It’s affected every single part of the travel process.
The second would be the growth of companies such as Airbnb, Uber, OYO, and even features such as Google Maps, which have addressed so many pain points for travelers and created entirely new opportunities. And the third, which is so interesting and nuanced, is our very perception of luxury travel, for which Conde Nast Traveler is of course, best known. It’s no longer defined by 800-thread count sheets. It’s all about unique and authentic experiences, wherever you are. A meal of steaming thupka soup in the home of a local artist high up in the Himalayas might cost you $2, but it’s priceless. It’s a memory that you’ll cherish forever. That’s real luxury. And that’s the shift that’s most exciting. That’s what young travelers care about. Experience over product. Great stories. Back stories. Inspiring people. As someone who tells stories for a living, it’s incredibly exciting.
Shacknai: How would you describe the state of travel and travel journalism pre-pandemic? What set CNT apart from other travel magazines and outlets pre-pandemic?
Thani: The first thing that sets us apart is our integrity. That comes down to our editors all across the world and the fact that you will not meet a group of people more passionate about travel and more committed to making sure that our audience gets the ultimate, most insider, trustworthy, and reliable intel. We’re obsessive about it. It’s also why our audience trusts us so much and follows our recommendations. So everything we do, we really are thinking about our audience, and we feel this incredible responsibility to get everything right. You never really think about it, but we spend an incredible amount of time and energy debating which beach bar in Mykonos we are telling people to go to and why or under what precise circumstances Barbados makes for a better island break than Turks and Caicos. And let me tell you, things get heated.
Shacknai: When Covid-19 began its spread last spring, one of the very first things to disappear was travel. What was your thought process as an editor at that point? Were you worried that the brand would no longer have a clear path?
Thani: I did worry a lot last year about the state of the travel industry, which was the first to get hit and is still recovering slowly and in spurts. It’s complicated to get states within one nation to agree on protocols and safety, let alone entire nations or regions. But the truth is, the more uncertain things are, the clearer my direction and focus become. The more questions people have around travel, the more they long and yearn for travel, the more they look to CNT for guidance, for assurance, for reliable information that speaks to them directly.
In March of last year when travel first came to a halt, our audience slightly dipped, but since then, we have seen a growth of more than 150% in many of our markets. It’s amazing. People across the world truly reflected on the value of travel in their lives in 2020. It went from feeling like a luxury, an indulgence to feeling like a necessity. We’ve taken travel for granted for so many years now, and suddenly, the whole world has been united in this feeling: I can’t wait to get back out there. They want time in nature and the outdoors. They want to be in beautiful places surrounded by their dearest friends and family, the people they’ve been separated from. They want to create memories again. It’s what got us through 2020, isn’t it?
So, the road ahead is really clear for us. Our audience is highly engaged and invested in traveling again, soon and safely, and they’re looking closely at us to help them through it, every step of the way. You see it in our traffic numbers, in our e-commerce revenues, in our engagement across every channel. It has reinforced everything we do, and redefined how we do it. I see this as an unprecedented, massive opportunity for the brand right now, and we are poised to leap.
Condé Nast Traveler
Courtesy of Condé Nast
Shacknai: When it became clear that travel would remain an impossibility for quite a while, how did your approach to CNT’s content shift? And now, with the world beginning to reopen and travel returning once again, how is the brand changing its approach to reflect that?
Thani: The return to travel is taking place across the world at very different times and in very different ways. Yet, there are similarities we see across the globe in terms of what people are searching for online, how they start stepping out, how and why they plan their first few trips. So, we’re taking all that wonderful data we have access to and talking to our local editors all around the world for that incredible insight and cultural specificity to define our editorial strategy for each market. It’s not a cookie-cutter approach. It’s smart, timely, sensitive reporting. It’s about keeping your finger on the pulse of what’s happening today and relying on that glorious editor’s intuition of what’s going to happen next. And it’s exhilarating to connect the dots, to have these moments when something our Spanish editor says rings true to our editor in the Middle East. The fact that we are all coming together under this new system at Condé Nast at a time when the world itself feels so connected is like more than serendipity—it feels right, it feels needed, it feels real.
Shacknai: How do you explain CNT‘s success over the last year despite the obvious barriers set in its path?
Thani: We have teams of absolute geniuses spread across the globe who are sharing their ideas and insights and making really informed, smart decisions and telling the best travel stories and giving audiences the best information possible.
Shacknai: What lessons did the pandemic and CNT‘s response to it offer that you think will stick with the brand going forward?
Thani: 1. Never take travel for granted. It is truly one of life’s greatest privileges and joys.
2. We’ve seen our audience become more and more interested in sustainability and responsible travel. It’s our job to make sure they keep thinking about it, educating themselves about it, and choosing it, long after this pandemic is over.
3. Your integrity is everything. No matter how bad things get, keep your head down and work hard. It’ll pay off. One thing I’m incredibly proud of is how—even when things were at their absolute lowest point for us—Condé Nast Traveler continued to support the travel and tourism industry in a responsible and heartfelt way. And the industry recognized it. They see us as true partners. And that’s really important to us.
4. Travel has always been about forming connections: you connect to nature, to the past, to human endeavor, to people whom you would otherwise never encounter. The pandemic, as well as movements like #BLM, are strengthening our desires for meaningful life experiences and building real connections. And the more mindful we become about travel, the more personal—and personalized—travel and travel content will get.
Shacknai: What is the thinking behind CNT‘s new “The World Made Local” campaign? How will it inform the brand’s content and strategy for the future?
Thani: Before we travel, we imagine places. When we return, we remember people. At CNT, we start with people—our people, our colleagues, and teams creating CNT editions across the globe—from the US, UK, Europe, the Middle East, India and China—passionate people who live to travel, who have their fingers on the pulse of the most exciting things happening in their parts of the world. Our global network ensures that we bring you the most current, updated, newest, and coolest insider intel on wherever in the world you’re interested in visiting.
A local connection is what makes our trips truly authentic and unforgettable. Our editors and their hyper-local networks are one community, holding your hand, sharing their secrets, and guiding you through this new era of travel. So, no matter where you’re going, you’ll feel as if you have a personal guide showing you the way. That’s how we make the world feel local. Our audiences are going to benefit from this in such a great way. But truthfully, it benefits us too. Because we are all collaborating for the first time, talking to each other for the first time, all the time. We can see very early what the big trends are making their way across the globe, and we can see what’s particular to each culture and audience. We can take these insights and learnings from one market to the next. We can take a successful new property from one market to another, adapting it so it speaks to them directly. Our editors around the world are so creative and entrepreneurial, and the potential to grow these small, regional successes into global flagship franchises is truly exciting.
We know, for instance, that Spain, Italy, and India do a tremendous amount in the food space because food and travel are so interlinked for our audience, and we’re figuring out how to translate that elsewhere. Our events and video business in China are brilliant; our grip on luxury and fashion in the UK is fantastic; our “Women Who Travel” podcast in the US is made up of stories of inspiring women that we know our global audiences are going to love just as much. That’s the beauty of powerful stories—they travel across borders. Our partners in the travel and tourism industry are so interested in our insights that they’re already thinking of how they’d work with us in every corner of the world. We’ve become that much more powerful a brand. The CNT team today is one team, spread around the world. And the fact that it’s all coming together now, at a point in time when the world feels more connected than ever, when travel is opening up again, when people can’t wait to get out—it just feels like it’s meant to happen.
