Let's go to the Rough Guided Lying Planet
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Jan 30, 2007
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Melbourne,
Victoria,
Australia
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
The hordes of travellers clutching like Bibles the good news, the bad news, the outdated news.
In 2006 the Guardian ran a short piece about the death of the guidebook:
The death of the guidebook?
* The Observer,
* Sunday January 8, 2006
Is this the end for the guidebook? Publishers are reporting huge demand for their newly launched 'podcasts' - audio guides to foreign destinations which you download from the internet onto your iPod or MP3 player
the book
. Lonely Planet, which released its first podcast three months ago, claims that one of its audio guides proved so popular that it reached number 12 in the download chart, beating a single from Madonna.As well as publishers such as Lonely Planet and Rough Guides, podcasts are being produced by tour operators like Thomson Holidays, airlines and individual tourist boards. 'Why do you need a guidebook if you can download the information onto your iPod and listen on the plane?' said Miles Morgan, marketing director of Thomson Holidays.
More than 80,000 people have already downloaded podcasts produced by Virgin Atlantic and by the end of 2006 the airline will have produced 30 guides.
Podcasts have some distinct advantages. They are usually free to download and can be regularly updated with fresh information. Instead of standing on a dark street corner thumbing through a guidebook and announcing to the world you are a lost tourist, you can listen as you walk to lists of the best restaurants, other insider knowledge and local music.
Converts predict that travellers will abandon generic guidebooks in favour of podcasts specific to their interests. Rough Guides, which started podcasting in November, offers titles like Literary London, Mozart in Prague and Santa Monica Design.
'They are a huge step forward and it's a potentially huge market,' said a spokeswoman for Rough Guides.
Whereas Rough Guides produces guides to listen to as you walk around a destination, Lonely Planet's podcasts are like phone calls from their authors out in the field. 'The idea is it's really inspirational when you're sitting on the tube in rainy London to hear the latest from an exotic destination from someone on the ground,' said Briony Grogan, Lonely Planet publicity manager.
But will they spell the end for the book? Lonely Planet and Rough Guide insist not, arguing that the 'reassurance' and detail of a book cannot be beaten.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2006/jan/08/travelnews.news.observerescapesection
And earlier this year a contributor to Lonely Planet admitted he made up stuff:
Lonely Planet's bad trip
Article from: The Sunday Telegraph
April 13, 2008 12:00am
THE Lonely Planet guidebook empire is reeling from claims by one of its authors that he plagiarised and made up large sections of his books and dealt drugs to make up for poor pay.
Thomas Kohnstamm also claims in a new book that he accepted free travel, in contravention of the company's policy.
His revelations have rocked the travel publisher, which sells more than six million guides a year.
Mr Kohnstamm, whose book is titled Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?, said yesterday that he had worked on more than a dozen books for Lonely Planet, including its titles on Brazil, Colombia, the Caribbean, Venezuela, Chile and South America.
In one case, he said he had not even visited the country he wrote about.
"They didn't pay me enough to go Colombia,'' he said.
"I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating - an intern in the Colombian Consulate.
"They don't pay enough for what they expect the authors to do.''
An email to management, posted on the company's authors' forum, describes Mr Kohnstamm's book as "a car crash waiting to happen''.
"Why did you (management) not understand that when you hire a constant stream of new, unvetted people, pay them poorly and set them loose, that someone, somehow was going to screw you?'' author Jeanne Oliver wrote.
Ms Oliver, an experienced travel writer having written for Lonely Planet on eastern Europe, France, Germany and Greece, admitted to sending the email, but did not wish to comment further.
Other writers believe some practices described in the book are widespread. Lonely Planet forbids their authors from accepting gifts or discounts.
Another email, sent in the name of Lonely Planet chief Janet Slater, states that Mr Kohnstamm's books were all being urgently reviewed.
The email said: "If we find that the content has been compromised, we'll take urgent steps to fix it. Once we've got things right for travellers as quickly as we can, we'll look at what we do and how we do it to ensure as best we can, that this type of thing never happens again.''
Lonely Planet publisher Piers Pickard told The Sunday Telegraph that the company's urgent review of Mr Kohnstamm's guidebooks had failed to find any inaccuracies in them.
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23530231-5013605,00.html
Which led to these comments:
Agree with the other comments, Lonely Planet guidebooks aren't all they're cracked up to be. I also find it interesting to see how they source they're images for the guidebooks. On a recent trip to Cuba, we were surprised to see all the people who graced the pages of the LP's Cuba guidebook, were actually dressed up "pay per photo" locals, complete with prop cigar in Havana's main tourist area - even the front cover. Most people are under the belief that Lonely Planet employ top notch travel photographers, not so. Next they'll be dressing people up in a studio, I wouldn't put it past them. Lonely Planet has lost its niche anyway. Once a guidebook to reach out of the way places. It now acts as a guide for where not to go - unless of course you're looking for crowds.
Posted by: Lonely traveller of Sydney 1:52pm April 14, 2008
I agree with John about the superiority of Rough Guide over Lonely Planet. I compared RG and LP before going to Costa Rica and RG was much better. If you want a good way to compare guide books, look at the books for your hometown and see how accurate, informative, and helpful they are in describing the city you know. This story about the LP writer reminds me of Rick Bragg, the lying New York Times "journalist" who also wrote about places he didn't visit.
Posted by: horatio of the seas 1:09pm April 14, 2008
Tip of the iceberg. I was once interviewed for a position writing capsule movie reviews for one of the big movie guide books. They offered $2 per review. When I asked them how I was supposed to pay for all the videos I would have to rent, they said I should "borrow" from other guides. I declined the job.
Posted by: Killbot of Santa Monica, CA 12:45pm April 14, 2008
Kohnstamm is a lame jerk who should be prosecuted for fraud. If he did not like the pay offered, he should have turned it down. What ever happened to honoring a contract, even if you later realize you don¿t like it? What a loser.
Posted by: Mike Parker of USA 12:45pm April 14, 2008
It was his loss not to go to Colombia. My wife is Colombian and I go there for two months out of the year and visit. The LP book is vague and is interchangable with the other Latin America series. What a loser. The guy has a job that many would love to get paid to do. His passport should be revoked as punishment.
Posted by: Noel Hamilton of South Bend, IN, USA 10:15am April 14, 2008
They guy took the money to write the book. Sounds like felony conversion to me. I'd guess that this writer is now persona non-grata in the industry. And if LP is such a poor paying craphole to work for, they will get crappy work done by people who aren't very good at it. It's a free market so they are getting what they pay for. And from the few comments below, it appears the public already knows this. Lonely Planet - how about Lonely Publishing Company?
Posted by: bpjam of las vegas 9:34am April 14, 2008
I personally prefer the "Footprint" Guidebooks over both Rough Guide and Lonely Planet. The LP to Chile is a really bad book, I'm using it right now as I'm travelling Chile and so far it has been very disappointing. For my trip to Colombia I will go back to Footprint which is what I had always been using before Chile.
Posted by: Robert G. of 9:28am April 14, 2008
The LP appears to be a mess right now. The current edition of the LP Costa Rica is a complete waste of money; a bar they suggested was a place of "ill repute" (the author obviously didn't go there), the entry price to a famous hot springs was over 3X what the LP said (again, the author obviously didn't go there), and about 25% of all of the addresses were incorrect. It appears that the authors make quite a bit of $ simply from cutting and pasting. Even more shocking is the inside story behind the LP guide to Guatemala- the editor Lucad Vidgen runs a newspaper XelaWho that makes all of its money off of advertisements. If you look at their primary advertisers- it's no coincidence that they all recieved prominent placement in the LP. The awful part is that people rely on these guides when they in the vulnerable position of traveling in foreign countries.
Posted by: kobus vorster of costa rica 9:10am April 14, 2008
"Smells like a liberal. Lie and justify. Blame the rich for your kindred's crimes." Smells like a sad, lonely man commenting on whatever story is linked from drudge.
Posted by: Gob Bluth of 9:03am April 14, 2008
My advice: don't trust any travel guide. For over thirty years we have run a restaurant on the Oregon coast. For almost as long our establishment has been listed in many, many travel guides. While the ones that only list restaurants, hotels and attractions that agree to pay for the privilege are a small minority, the rest are no better because they are all shoddy. First of all, the reviewers get paid very little so their work is commensurate: they plagiarize and draw conclusions on very little evidence. The combination produces comical results; An error-filled review gets picked up by any number of other guide books, more or less like an internet virus that never dies. Hence every travel guide I've seen contained more erros and obsolete information than truth. My advice: don't waste your money on any of them.
Posted by: Wim de Vriend of Coos Bay, OR, USA 7:45am April 14, 2008
And this effort by LP:
Lonely Planet checks guides after fraud claims
April 15, 2008
Travel publisher Lonely Planet today said it was checking three of its books for inaccuracies after a writer who contributed to them said he had made up large sections of another guide.
Lonely Planet publisher Piers Pickard said Patagonian Chile, South America and the Caribbean Islands were being reviewed as a precaution after Thomas Kohnstamm admitted he broke company rules when writing a Brazil guide.
"In all three books, the content he writes is very much in a minority," Pickard said.
"And because he has made allegations about the integrity of that content, we're doing a full review.
"We've sent out authors to those countries, they are checking everything Thomas has written, and based on their findings, we will do whatever it takes to correct any inaccuracies in those books."
In a yet to be released book about his experiences as a travel writer, Kohnstamm writes that he invented copy, plagiarised and sold drugs to make up for low pay while working on a now outdated guide to Brazil.
He also said he worked on a book for Colombia, though he didn't visit the country.
"I wrote the book in San Francisco," he told the Sunday Telegraph. "I got the information from a chick I was dating - an intern in the Colombian consulate.
"They don't pay enough for what they expect their authors to do."
But Pickard said Kohnstamm was never meant to go to Colombia because he was merely contributing to the history section.
"Thomas was contracted to write about the history of the country," he said.
"The guy's got a masters in Latin American studies, he actually studied Colombian history and culture as part of that specifically. We thought he was an expert.
"Two other authors were paid on that book to go to Colombia and they did. They did the normal job we expect of our authors, which is to visit every hotel, every restaurant, every site."
Pickard said because of Kohnstamm's claims, Lonely Planet would review his chapter in the Colombia book.
Pickard also said Kohnstamm had based his upcoming book Do Travel Writers Go To Hell? on the writing of the 2005 Brazil guide, which has been replaced by the fully updated 2007 version.
"The claims he makes in that book are absolutely not an accurate representation of how our authors work or what goes into our guidebooks," Pickard said.
"On the broader thing about pay, we're the industry leaders for how much we pay our authors, the reason being we demand the best content so we have to pay to get the best writers."
Lonely Planet guides, known as the "backpackers bible," were started more than 30 years ago by Australians Tony and Maureen Wheeler, who put together a list of travel tips after journeying home from Europe across Asia.
The Australian-based business, sold last year to BBC Worldwide, has expanded to some 500 titles carrying advice on accommodation, dining and transport for budget travellers venturing to destinations across the globe.
Which prompted Chris Taylor to write this for the Age in Australia:
Chris Taylor
April 19, 2008
MANY years ago, while I was updating Lonely Planet's China guidebook, the Chinese owner of a traveller's cafe in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, apologised profusely to me. He had failed, he admitted, to go to Tibet, as arranged on my predecessor's behalf, to update the previous edition of the China book. He had been too busy, he said, and instead had sent his cousin, whose English was not so good.
"Did it work out OK?" he asked nervously. I did make it to Tibet, and I've always been too embarrassed to ask the colleague who allegedly went there before me whether he did. But at the time I was not particularly surprised by the revelation. Underneath the self-promoting veneer of the guidebook industry, all kinds of things go wrong out in the field and for all kinds of reasons.
Accordingly, I have followed the controversy ahead of the publication of Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, by Thomas Kohnstamm, with amusement. Amusement because, if the Amazon description before the April 22 release of the book is anything to go by, Kohnstamm's account of a writing assignment in Brazil promises to be very funny. Amusement also because the official Lonely Planet response has been to attack the author as a rogue element, which amounts to blanket denial of any responsibility for what might have gone wrong on Kohnstamm's research trip.
Lonely Planet writer Jeanne Oliver challenged that response in a post on the company's internal authors' forum, which was leaked to the Sunday Herald Sun, describing Kohnstamm's coming book as "a car crash waiting to happen". Oliver has declined to make further comment, but as an industry insider, I agree with her. At present, the debate is playing out as a sparring match between Lonely Planet management and Kohnstamm, with Oliver's comments fuelling speculation that perhaps Lonely Planet is hiding some dirty secrets. The real issue, however, is not whether poor pay forces Lonely Planet writers to cut corners and accept "freebies", but endemic practices in an industry bloated with competing players. In this context, the surprise is not that the "car crash" happened but that it didn't happen sooner.
Guidebook publishers will deny this, but the travel publishing industry is bound to exploit demand for what is widely seen as a glamour job - travel and get paid for it. But with so many competing guidebook series, many titles do not generate sales revenue that justifies the legwork that results in genuine personal recommendations. Most publishers who make claims to the contrary are being disingenuous.
In this context, Lonely Planet is probably one of the most responsible industry players. Nevertheless, pay rates for Lonely Planet writers have dropped with the proliferation of competing guidebook series in the past two decades. When Lonely Planet chief executive Stephen Palmer told the BBC (Lonely Planet is 75% owned by BBC World, the commercial arm of the BBC) this week that "we're pretty confident we pay at the top of the range", his confidence was not misplaced. What he neglected to say - and I have seen many examples - is that his company's internal authors' forum bristles with author posts about pay rates that have forced them to cut corners.
Oliver's email focuses on two "main mistakes": poor pay and the use of "freelancers with no stake in the company or the profession". The latter was an issue even before I joined Lonely Planet in 1988; now that 75% of the company belongs to the BBC, it is unlikely it will ever be dealt with. Oliver's primary fusillade, however, is on the issue of pay. She writes: "You know or should have known based upon more or less constant author complaints that you are not paying enough money to authors to do the work you expect."
One author, on condition of anonymity, told me this was "absolutely true". "Authors are always bitching for more money and showing examples of what they cannot do because of expenses," he said.
Lonely Planet author forum posts include one that complains: "For South Australia I was told outright that large chunks of the outback would be desk research, because LP (Lonely Planet) couldn't afford a 4WD budget."
Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler responds: "Authors not paid enough? We don't have blank author-cheques at our disposal. I hope we pay fairly, the rates are regularly reviewed and the 'I wasn't paid enough' Jeanne Olivers have been balanced by people saying they felt their pay was OK."
An interesting exchange on the forum concerns "desk updates", which one writer refers to as Lonely Planet's "dirty secret". The fact is, "desk updates" are not just Lonely Planet's "dirty secret" but the industry's dirty secret. It is little commented on, but the huge proliferation of guidebook titles that now line bookshop shelves coincided with the rise of the internet. In times past, the only way to research a guidebook was to actually go there - the alternative, plagiarising another guidebook, was, and still is, difficult to cover up. Today, you can sit at home and Google the town you might otherwise be exploring on foot, and hopefully some random blogger has done the legwork for you.
This is an interesting phenomenon, insofar as in, say, 10 years, it might become obvious that the internet simultaneously became responsible for a bloating of the guidebook industry that resulted in publishers being forced to cut rates for actual research, while travellers became savvier and started to use the internet - like the writers - as an information source. The result: the death of the guidebook, at least as a reliable source of information of what's happening in a place real time. Before that happens, it has been difficult for me to obtain current Lonely Planet pay rates, but I can say that in 1994 I was paid $US17,000, including travel expenses, for an update of the publisher's Cambodia guide. A writer who still works for Lonely Planet confided to me recently that in 2002 he was paid $US11,000, also including travel expenses, for an update of a country of similar size and costs.
I cannot comment on the extent to which corners are being cut in research as a result of the lower pay rates, but I believe it's worth considering that before budget restraints intervened, time restraints did.
Guidebooks have deadlines, and they are not always aligned with best interests of the book. As co-ordinating author of several high-volume-turnover titles - notably China and, for one edition, South-East Asia on a Shoestring - in the '90s, I had to deal with problems that arose from writers failing to reach a destination. I won't say it was commonplace, but I will say it happened.
In the case of China, personal experience tells me that such problems continue. I have recently returned from a 1½ year stint in China's south-western province of Yunnan. I based myself in the stunningly beautiful, ancient walled town of Dali and became friends with many of the foreigners and Chinese who catered to the tourist trade there.
When the May 2007 edition of China came out, the reaction in Dali - and the neighbouring Tibetan tourist town of Zhongdian, re-branded in recent years as Shangri La - was initially shock. Not one of the six foreign-run and very popular bars in Dali rated a mention; but the Yunnan Cafe (which I first wrote up in 1991) did - despite the fact it had closed in 2000. In Shangri La, neither of the destination's immensely popular Indian restaurants (run by Tibetan returnees from the sub-continent) or the town's most popular bar, run by a British-American couple who are a mine of information on the region, got a mention.
For travellers who use guidebooks, shoddy updates are a problem only if you are travelling solo over a long distance and a long time. It is unlikely that a reputable guidebook publisher, such as Lonely Planet, is going to skimp on a prime destination such as, say, Rome, Bangkok, or, for that matter, Melbourne. In other words, if you are taking a two-week to a month-long vacation somewhere, your guidebook is highly unlikely to let you down. Take a year out, on the other hand, and you will before long acquire a personal collection of "Lonely Planet let me down" anecdotes.
I spent a very pleasurable evening over beers in China with a fellow guidebook writer perhaps a year ago. We swapped amusing guidebook disaster stories for hours to the horror of a group of backpackers who shared the bar with us. Finally, he confided in me how, on one particular rush job for a guidebook publisher I won't name, he briefly visited a large lake in the far north of China. "I wrote in the book, 'Nice lake, take a walk around it,' " he told me. "Problem was, half of it turned out to be in North Korea, and the first person who did, ended up in prison."
Chris Taylor was the author or co-author of Lonely Planet guides to Tibet, Japan, Seoul and Tokyo, and an updater for many Asia guides, including China. He is currently based in Bangkok.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/strongtravelstrong-death-of-the-guidebook-lost-in-a-cutthroat-world/2008/04/18/1208025469923.html?page=fullpage
And LP must have got their lawyers and PR people to get this in the Age in May:
AS LONELY Planet's former global publisher Richard Everist sees it, the company's problems can be summed up like this: "Portraying yourself as being on the side of the angels is an enormously powerful marketing tool, but watch out if anyone finds it is bullshit."
The Melbourne-based travel company, which grew from two people stapling photocopied pages by hand on their kitchen table to the world's biggest guidebook seller, now faces that dilemma. Until now, it has dismissed author Thomas Kohnstamm, who says in a new book he was so poorly paid he took freebies from hotels and restaurants and resorted to peddling ecstasy pills while on assignment for Lonely Planet in Brazil, as an atypical rogue.
"For 35 years we've been producing these amazing guidebooks for the whole world and now we've got one guy alleging pretty shady practices in one of our guidebooks," says Lonely Planet's publisher, Piers Pickard. The interest in the scandal is "because of the trust people have in Lonely Planet not because of distrust".
Trust is of enormous commercial value, and that is what is at stake for Lonely Planet. The Sunday Age has spoken with numerous guidebook authors and former executives who have similar although not so salacious stories to that of Kohnstamm. Their tales of taking freebies - specifically banned by Lonely Planet - and updating guides from their desks are hard to write off.
Freebies, where a writer accepts complimentary trips or accommodation, are openly approved by rival companies such as Rough Guides and Fodor's, on condition there are no guarantees of favourable coverage. Lonely Planet's policy as written in its guidebooks and on authors' business cards reads the same way, that authors "don't take freebies in exchange for positive content".
But it has been caught out by insisting that its standards in practice are more reputable and trustworthy than its rivals. In an interview at Lonely Planet's headquarters on the Maribyrnong River in Footscray, Mr Pickard insists the policy means "no freebies - period".
Are there exceptions? He pauses. He says Lonely Planet lets its authors accept free entry to state-run institutions such as museums or national parks. Prodded further, he says the company also allows freebies when obtained through a tourist office. He says the wording of its policy will be tightened further in future books to close any perceived loophole.
But the company is even at odds with itself over its own policy. Co-founder Tony Wheeler, who worked on the first guidebook in 1973, told The Sunday Age that accepting free car hire from a tourist office would not be "a major problem". "That doesn't disappoint me. From my perspective this is an impossible standard to meet," he says.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/news/a-guide-delusion-makes-it-lonely-at-the-top/2008/05/03/1209839616468.html
And of course, the man who broke the story got his book out:
Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?
Kate Duthie, reviewer
April 19, 2008
Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?
By Thomas Kohnstamm
Pier 9/Murdoch Books, 216pp, $29.95
Ask any travel writer about their dream job and they will tell you it isn't travel writing. Sure, there are exotic destinations, free drinks, meals and hotel rooms but there are also long-haul flights, weeks at a time away from home and no chance of any down time once they arrive.
When Thomas Kohnstamm gets roped in to contribute to the Lonely Planet guide to Brazil, it allows him to leave a Wall Street job he hates and extricate himself from a failing relationship. Over six weeks, and with a limited budget, he is expected to update, revise and perfect the existing guide and research hundreds of hotels, bars and restaurants, bus and train timetables and tour packages. "You must be able to wake up in Thai hill country, Kaliningrad, the Ganges delta, Tegucigalpa, Mombasa or Port Moresby and quickly wrap your head around the place."
Telling the "real" story of how guidebooks are compiled is a good idea, but you soon realise that as Kohnstamm spends so much of his time drunk, stoned or chasing skirt that it's not surprising he finds it all a bit of a strain. "Even if it were possible to work 24 hours a day," he pants, "I could not visit but a fraction of the places that I have left to review." Zip up those pants and stay away from the bar, perhaps.
As he travels around Brazil, desperately working out where to go next and how to get on top of his mountainous workload, Kohnstamm meets a colourful parade of similarly displaced travellers who often know more about a destination than he does and are usually ready with another handful of pills or a bottle of booze. I expected a rollicking ride with lots of laughs but reading about Kohnstamm's hangovers, anxiety attacks and diminishing bank balance made me so anxious that I needed a holiday. Unsurprisingly, Lonely Planet is not happy about this book's release, with chief executive Judy Slatyer telling her writers: "We are now urgently reviewing all current books Thomas contributed to, using authors on the ground and others. If we find that the content has been compromised, we'll take urgent steps to fix it." Do travel writers go to hell? God, I hope so.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/your-travel/do-travel-writers-go-to-hell/2008/04/16/1208025250896.html
