Tim Leffel’s Cheapest Destinations

The State of Travel Guidebooks

If you want to get an insider’s scoop on the worldwide guidebook industry and where things are headed, check out David Stanley’s blog post South Pacific Handbook RIP.

There are a lot of points in there that have had current and former guidebook authors grumbling for quite a while, but he also does a good job of laying out the marketplace realities as well.

For the past few years we’ve been in this wierd situation where publishers keep putting out more and more guidebooks, even though the overall sales of the books are relatively flat. Something has to give, and we are starting to see the hairline cracks spreading outward. We can safely assume the sales trend isn’t going to improve any, despite more travelers hitting the road, since many people have become accustomed to doing much of their travel planning on the web and others are taking organized adventure tours where it’s hard to justify the weight of a guidebook. Then there’s Stanley’s particular problem: people are taking shorter breaks to one destination instead of longer jaunts where they hit many countries or islands at a leisurely pace.

I don’t think guidebooks will ever go away and they will continue to be solid sellers, especially for popular destinations, but it will be interesting to see what happens when this shakeout period we seem to be heading into hits full stride. There has been a clear decrease in quality with many publishers (yes, I’m talking to you LP) as more experienced writers are pushed out and inexperienced ones who will work for minimum wage and no royalties are brought in. More work gets done by desk researcher editors who never leave the office and writers spend less time in the parts of a country that aren’t as well known. As I noted in this Guidebook Smackdown article, the difference in quality across guides for a specific country or region can be hard to navigate as individual authors can make more of a difference than which publisher puts out the book.

What will the future hold? Will it be sliced and diced sections you download and print? Will we all be toting the latest version of a Sony Reader or Kindle in 2015? Will some enterprising authors build detailed websites that are as comprehensive and meticulously researched as your average guidebook? Who knows, but in 2008 anyway it still makes sense to travel with a good guidebook. Overall, despite the issues, a guidebook is the best place to turn for the most amount of useful info with the least amount of hassle to navigate. Old school still wins for now.