Profile: Don Ross

Background

Editor TTR Weekly, a regional B2B publication for travel planners in Southeast Asia.

Don Ross hails from Manchester, UK. He arrived in Bangkok in 1969 on a charter flight that made three stops on the way to Southeast Asia. He planned to stay just a few months in Thailand before continuing a journey that was slated to conclude in Australia. Thailand has been home since.

He began a career in journalism with Allied Newspapers, the then publisher of the Bangkok Post and Bangkok World, and served as an editor for the group’s travel publications. For more than three decades he contributed a weekly travel column to the Bangkok Post.

He founded the regional travel trade publication, TTRweekly, 29 March 1978 and continues to serve as its editor working from his home in Chiang Rai, North Thailand.

If he is not editing or soaking up the mountain views from his cottage terrace, he’s most likely cycling along country lanes close to home. An avid cyclist, he has explored most of Thailand and neighbouring countries on two wheels.

TTRweekly was the first regional travel news journal to be published in Bangkok. It quickly expanded from monthly to weekly print editions.  Weekly digital editions and a website news channel with business-day news updates followed in 2000. Today it has 78,000 subscribers.

TTRweekly was an enthusiastic publisher of travel show dailies for the organisers, ASEAN Tourism Forums, in Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia in the 1990s.

In 2000 it withdrew from publishing trade show dailies believing it was no longer compatible with its editorial commitment to support sustainable tourism, conservation and sound environmentally friendly practices in the travel industry.