Dangerous liaisons - Tom Otley recalls the more colourful coverage of Business Traveller’s early years
Sex sells. That seems to have been the attitude of editors of Business Traveller in the 1970s and 1980s.
Looking back over the past 400 issues, you would expect much to have changed in the world of business travel, but what’s surprising is the different approaches we now take in reporting it on a month-by-month basis.
Would we, in 2015, repeat our cover of 30 years ago? It promised a “focus on the world’s most sinful cities”, where inhibitions could be safely shed for the duration of a trip. Today, a smartphone would probably be a more effective way of navigating red-light districts than a clutched copy of our magazine.
In our 1981 issue, the great novelist/traveller Graham Greene memorably recounted three of his great “escapes”. Sadly, the cover pictured a bowler-hatted businessman carrying one of our sales executives in leopard-skin fancy dress. Adventures abroad indeed.
There may still be readers who wish we would continue to dole out advice on “How to tend a Tokyo rose” (“You’re lonely in Tokyo, you’re male and – in both senses of the word – you have the yen…”).
Still, alongside such titillation, Business Traveller also warned of the consequences (“Corporate duty versus marital fidelity: the infertility risks of marrying an international executive”). This was less to do with absence from home and neglecting your conjugal duty, and rather more about bringing home a sexually transmitted disease, something we wrote about with a monotonous regularity throughout the 1980s.
A belated move towards equality was slow to come, but by 1999 we were telling readers that: “Although business travellers are among the most frequent adulterers, partners left at home have plenty of chance to stray too.” Happy travels.
