Why travel guidebooks are not going anywhere

THEY DECLARED that it was dead—or, if it wasn’t dead yet, it soon would be. The cause of the malady was viral: first blogs, then influencers on Instagram and TikTok. Yet, for all journalists’ poor prognoses, the printed travel guide is still in fine fettle. Sales in Britain were mostly flat in 2014-19, a period when smartphones became both ubiquitous and powerful.

That is not to say there have not been spells of ill health. Frommer’s, the grandfather of American guidebooks, was sold in 2012 for $22m to Google, which reportedly planned to end the series’ print run. (The following year Arthur Frommer, its founder, bought the company back.) Lonely Planet, the best-known publisher, has been through several owners at ever-lower valuations. In 2020 the company ended up in the hands of Red Ventures, a publishing house funded by private equity.