At a gathering of American booksellers earlier this month in New York City, one couldn’t help but notice the giant displays devoted to travel books. Hundreds of guidebooks and other travel-related works are published annually.
When I wrote my first travel guide in 1956, a slender volume called “Europe on $5 a Day,” the amount of space allotted to travel books in the average bookstore was less than 2 feet of a single shelf.
The books occupying that paltry width were displayed spine out, one copy of each title. And like a handful of travel authors, I frequently and surreptitiously switched my book to the aisle position so that shoppers could at least see some of the back cover in addition to the spine!
Nearly 50 years later, the average small bookstore carries at least 500 travel titles, and the large chain bookstores will have travel sections carrying upward of 2,000 travel titles. Some of the latter stores have travel sections as large as whole bookstores used to be.
What brought about the increase in the demand for travel books? I ascribe it to three main factors:
First, in transportation, the advent of the passenger-carrying jet in the late 1950s and the wide-bodied jet several years later made travel to almost everywhere greatly more affordable and pleasant, increasing the number of travelers.
Second, the explosion during the same period of the number of college-educated Americans made our population more comfortable with far-ranging travel, more eager to experience foreign cultures and lifestyles – or even the different life led in other U.S. cities.
And finally, the travel books themselves became far more interesting. Whereas once they focused on dry listings of statues and obelisks, or simply confined themselves to the addresses and rates of hotels and restaurants, they began to contain judgmental and either enthusiastic or critical comments about the sightseeing experience; they delved into provocative areas of lifestyles, politics and attitudes in the cities or countries they covered. They became page-turners.
And large numbers of travelers, drawn to guidebooks, discovered that with one, they could travel independently and not as a part of groups or escorted tours. The composition of the travel market became one of independent travelers using guidebooks. It is a little-known but irrefutable fact that the vast majority of Americans traveling abroad do so on their own, making their own reservations or choosing hotels on the spot, relying on printed advice.
Travel publishers face many challenges, of which the greatest is the variety of titles competing for the public’s attention. But a lesser challenge is from the electronic media, which have so far done nothing to reduce the demand for printed travel guides.
Though the Internet is full of so-called comparison sites, which invite users to post their opinions about the hotels, restaurants and ships they have booked, there is obviously a reluctance on the part of the public to risk their next vacation on the possibly eccentric comments of an amateur travel critic.
Too many travel message boards exist for simply blowing off steam. When a travel guide has gone through many editions, revised and polished to reflect repeat visits to the places listed in them, it gains an authority that no website yet possesses.
And so the travel guides become more numerous and specialized. They deal today not simply with the standard cities, but with the secondary ones, too, like Cincinnati or Minneapolis, to which whole travel guides are now devoted.
There are travel guides not simply to whole countries, but some limited to simply a part of a country, like Wales or Tuscany or Provence. I won’t be surprised to soon find “Frommer’s Guide to the Upper West Side of Manhattan.”
At the recently concluded BookExpo America in New York City, booksellers from all over the country flocked to a featured seminar on the travel guide, in all its variety and flavor. Though I have an obvious self-interest in saying so, I find that turnout to be beneficial to the American traveler.
Arthur Frommer is a recognized authority on budget travel.
