Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?
I don’t know if travel writers should go to hell, but maybe we could send a few of them there as an example for the rest of the lot. I have been following with the interest the story of travel author Thomas Kohnstamm, who claims that he plagiarized and falsified information for some of the travel books that he has written for Lonely Planet. I have had a sneaking suspicion that something like this might be taking place.
I don’t claim that I have any inside information on the issue, but I have noticed how some of the travel books have had extremely dated information at best. One of the problems with the travel book genre is that economic and political crises, as well as natural disasters and terrorism can have a quick and long lasting influence on where tourists decide to vacation. If the demand for a certain travel guide decreases, the publisher is forced to make the decision whether to reprint an existing travel guide, publish a new edition or drop the country from the list. The East Asian Financial Crisis made a large impact on the local Asian economies. Businesses that were thriving the one day were closed the next. Political leaders were toppled. The Bali and Jakarta Marriott bombings only added to the jitteriness of tourists and added uncertainty to the entire tourism industry in Southeast Asia. While all of this is understandable, it is no excuse for travel guides with useless information.
My experience has taught me that travel guides in their third or fourth edition can often be susceptible to “inaccuracies”. Ever come to a new city and find out that none of the two or three star hotels exist anymore? How about mid range restaurants? This can often be due to the fact that some of the information has been revised, but not all. Keeping track of two to five star restaurants and hotels, etc. can prove to be an enormous task, particularly in a city like Jakarta where it is possible to have the same street number in three or more locations at different points on the same street. A travel writer has either to rely on an army of taxi drivers just to keep the locations of establishments up to date, or the writer has to update the information in bits.
Sure there can be perks for a travel writer, not all of them surviving the harsh light of scrutiny, but I am sure that there is also a lot of exhausting work involved.