Kimberly Krol Inlander '12 (M.A.), Global Traveler

Kimberly Krol Inlander ’12 (M.A.) is the editor in chief of Global Traveler, an online and print magazine for people who travel often for business and/or leisure. She is also the editor in chief of Trazee Travel USA and Wherever Family.

How do you go about creating a distinct voice or point of view for each of the three outlets you edit?

We started with Global Traveler, which was always aimed at business travelers, and then, through different reader research and studying our demographics, we learned that those people who are traveling for business are also traveling just as much for leisure. We launched Trazee Travel in 2012, which was aimed at the millennial audience of, now, the 25- to 40-year-old traveler. Then, a few years ago, we looked and saw that as millennials had children, they weren’t waiting to travel abroad, they were taking their kids, which changed the world of family travel. From there we launched Wherever Family. We now like to say that through each of our brands, we can reach travelers at every part of their travel experience.

International queer travelers tend to be more or less welcome depending on the country. Have you ever made a travel safety index for your queer readers?

We actually have an LGBTQ+ column in every print issue of the magazine that looks at those exact things. We don’t have one specific resource listing country by country, but we have that column, and every issue highlights destinations that we wouldn’t suggest they travel to or places that are very friendly. We also have a column that’s a destination article that’s focused on nightlife. In there we include LGBTQ+ friendly places for people to travel, or for people to visit in most cities as well.

At what point did you realize the extent of the pandemic's impact on the travel industry?

They had stopped all flights to Europe, and I just knew. I just felt a pit in my stomach. I was like, ‘This is it. This is not going to be something that is a quick recovery.’ I think when people started traveling last summer and driving places, we thought that was going to be the rebound, and then winter changed all of that. We’re cautiously optimistic as the vaccine rolls out, but I do think that people are itching to travel, so it’s just a waiting game for the boom to come back. The pandemic has highlighted how important it is to get out there and travel because you never know when that might not be possible.

How has the pandemic changed the work you do?

Pre-pandemic we were printing and publishing 16 print issues a year, and we were doing 16 daily articles between the three websites online. We were also doing newsletters for each of the brands. Now we’re doing maybe six or seven issues this year. We cut back our publication schedule last year, and each of our websites, at this point, is only updating once a day. It was a struggle in the beginning. Then, in the summer, we noticed the road trip trend was coming up and people were doing more domestic travel. We started to look at some of those places that were drivable from major metropolises and shifted our focus that way. We used to do a lot of international travel, and we shifted more to domestic.

What is a typical day like for you?

We have definitely spent the last 12 months doing a lot of pivoting and changing. Before, there wasn’t really a typical day because people would always be out on trips or at different events and obviously, that’s all kind of come to a standstill. The last year has brought a lot more of our work internally as opposed to using a large freelance network.

Where would you like to travel once global travel is safe again?

I got married in 2020 and had an entire honeymoon plan to go to South Africa, sharking, safari, wine country. I would say getting there is definitely at the top of my list.

— Zac Dobinson '22