Newsweek, a division of The Washington Post Company (WPO), a diversified media and education company, recently announced that it has agreed to sell Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel magazine to Fletcher Asset Management Inc., a New York investment firm.   The terms of the transaction, expected to close by Dec 31, 2009, were not disclosed. The investment firm notified that it will keep essentially all of Budget Travel's employees. Newsweek had acquired the Budget Travel magazine from Group XXVII Communications in 1999.   The magazine industry, whose fortunes are tied to the advertising market, has been hit hard by plunging advertising demand amid the global meltdown, as advertisers migrate to the Internet driven by increasing online readership and lower ad prices. This has compelled many publishing companies to undertake cost-cutting measures such as a lower headcount, pay cuts, furloughs, and shutting down of printing facilities.   Budget Travel magazine, ...

With Priceline.com Inc. (NASDAQ:PCLN) – the name-your-own-price travel-services player – it’s time to either beam up or buy in.

Priceline – the online airfare and hotel-booking firm known for its kitschy TV ad campaign that stars “Star Trek” star William Shatner as “The Negotiator” – is an interesting possible profit play, thanks to its strong balance sheet and market muscle in the bargain-hunting end of the travel-services sector, the financial weekly Barron’s says.

The stock market has already factored in the challenges facing the travel and retail sectors into Priceline’s stock price, Reuters and Barron’s both reported.

According to Barron’s, as the current financial crisis deepens, consumers are going to devote an increasing amount of time to their personal and household spending budgets – a point that Money Morning has repeatedly made as part of its ongoing “Credit Crisis Safety Plays” series. As

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With Priceline.com Inc. (PCLN) – the name-your-own-price travel-services player – it’s time to either beam up or buy in. Priceline – the online airfare and hotel-booking firm known for its kitschy TV ad campaign that stars “Star Trek” star William Shatner as “The Negotiator” – is an interesting possible profit play, thanks to its strong balance sheet and market muscle in the bargain-hunting end of the travel-services sector, the financial weekly Barron’s says.

The stock market has already factored in the challenges facing the travel and retail sectors into Priceline’s stock price, Reuters and Barron’s both reported.

According to Barron’s, as the current financial crisis deepens, consumers are going to devote an increasing amount of time to their personal and household spending budgets – a point that Money Morning has repeatedly made as part of its ongoing “Credit Crisis Safety Plays” series.

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