Andrew and Richard Harper keep piling success upon success. (Publisher Profile).

More than 20 years ago congressional staffer "Andrew Harper" sat looking out the window of his Capitol Hill cubicle and wondered that if what he enjoyed most about his job was travel and vacations why couldn't he have a job that was all travel and vacations? He loved to travel and his friends enjoyed reports of his vacations--why not write about it?

And thus Andrew Harper's Hideaway Report was born in 1979, priced at $18/year for 12 monthly issues. (Harper is a pseudonym--the name of a Revolutionary War ancestor selected to allow him to travel anonymously using his real name.)

He put a small space ad in The Wall Street Journal, rented a post office drawer (a box might not be large enough for the anticipated flood of orders), and waited. And waited.

After a rocky start, success came. Unusual for consumer newsletters at the time, Harper almost always marketed with sample issues. He believes it gets them a more "dedicated" subscriber, one who knows exactly what the newsletter is going to be like. The results bear this out, he said, in very low cancellation rates and strong renewals.

Yes, Virginia, there is an Idaho

Eventually Harper said to himself, looking at the increasing urbanization of Fairfax County, Virginia, outside of Washington, "This is a newsletter I can publish from anywhere." He decided to relocate. His special problem, he figured, was that as a publisher of a newsletter dedicated to finding and reporting the finest, most exclusive travel locations in the world, he needed an "ideal location" from which to publish.

He established a number of criteria, obviously including convenient airport access. He finally selected Sun Valley, Idaho, and moved there.

Limits circulation

As success continued, Harper made a unique decision for a newsletter publisher. He decided to limit circulation. "Reader surveys told us that, valuing the exclusive nature of the newsletter and our travel recommendations, they would prefer modest increases in price to widening the circulation base." They published a circulation limit of 15,000 (at a time when the actual numbers were somewhat below that).

In reality, though, in the succeeding years Harper has done both--modestly increasing the price at intervals until it has now reached $135, which is pretty much the top of the line for consumer newsletters. And while they continue to market the "limited circulation" feature, they no longer publish a specific limit. Today the subscriber base is around 27,000.

Harper once told a convention of the Newsletter Publishers Association that while his was a small operation, he suspected it was as profitable, on a percentage basis, as any in the business. "You can pretty much calculate what our revenues are and the staff is myself as editor-publisher, my brother Richard who handles the fulfillment operation, and the graphic artist who does the line drawings we use to illustrate each issue."

The gift subscription program

In recent years, a major source for new subscriptions has been an annual gift offer to his current subscribers. They are offered the opportunity to give three subscriptions to friends for a modest price--for 2002 it's $135 for three subscriptions.

That revenue more than covers the fulfillment cost of the gift orders and, consistently, they are able to get 15 to 20 percent of the giftees to convert to paid subscribers, filling the "vacancies" left under the subscription limit by non-renewers.

That number, Richard Harper explains, "is former gift subs who renew on their own. Another 20 to 25 percent seem to be perpetually renewed by the givers."

Expire mailings

They also have a continuing program of expire mailings. "It's a funny phenomenon," Andrew Harper has said, "but by the way the program is structured I know absolutely that the people who get this offer have not received an issue of the newsletter in at least 13 months, but not only do we get checks in return, but sometimes they are accompanied with notes saying 'We love the newsletter, we'd never want to miss an issue."'

Branching out, Harper has also established the "Q Club," under which subscribers are offered the opportunity to join a program that offers members discounts at resorts and hotels "approved" by The Hideaway Report.

He stresses that he always travels anonymously and pays the normal rates and accepts no fees from hotels or resort properties to participate in the Q Club program.

The Harpers also publish "The Harper Collection," a continually updated looseleaf reference guide of their favorite worldwide city hotels, hideaway resorts, and restaurants. It costs $350/year.

Web site

On their web site they offer attractive discounts to all three services: newsletter, travel collection, and Q Club, plus combo offers. The newsletter, for example, is priced for online orders at $99. A current newsletter subscriber could add The Harper Collection and Q Club membership for $340 vs. a "list price" of $500.

Most newsletter publishers' web sites I've visited offer only the "regular" price. "Good," Richard Harper notes. "Maybe they won't find out." He explains that internet business has been very good for them. In direct mail, as a "rule," you can only sell one product at a time, but more than 50 percent of the Harpers' internet orders take a combination of more than one product. The average online sale, discounts included, is more than twice the revenue of a direct mail newsletter order.

Harper doesn't give away much on the web site. There are brief samples of the publications, but unlike some newsletter sites that have a lot of "free data," if you want to know what Andrew Harper recommends in the Caribbean, you'll have to pay for that information.

September 11

Did the events of September 11 hammer a travel publisher, I asked. Yes, in several ways.

* They had a Hideaway Report promotion printed and ready to drop on September 12. Since it included dates and time-sensitive material, they couldn't hold it very long and finally mailed September 21. It was a tested package mailed to established lists and it brought about 50 percent of the normal response.

* They have been making travel arrangements for Q Club members. For several weeks after 9/11, that business simply died. But it has sprung back to life, and to their surprise October '01 was better than October '00.

On the positive side, Richard Harper believes that they were the first to contact some New York City hotels to suggest, "Why don't you offer some special deals?" They successfully promoted an "I Love NY" campaign. They've already followed up with "I Love America" and are planning an "I Love Europe" offer featuring London and Paris.

Crucially, renewals have stayed unchanged through the fall months and early response to their annual "Holiday Gift" offer is tracked exactly in line with prior years.

Question. Does Andrew Harper ever get bored? After 22 years, are there days when he can't bring himself to face one more undiscovered Tuscan retreat with lake views, antique furniture and wood-burning fireplace in the rooms, and a to-die-for trattoria downstairs?

Or is that like asking if rock stars ever get tired of having affairs with supermodels?