Lonely Planet scandal

There has recently been a minor scandal in the tourist book publication business because of the admission of a Lonely Planet editor that he did not always go to the places he described in his books.

Thomas Kohnstamm says that he was in San Francisco at the time. "They didn't pay me enough to go to Colombia," he told The Australian Herald Sun. So he "got the information from a chick I was dating who was an intern in the Colombian Consulate".

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Speaking from his home in Seattle, Kohnstamm told The Times that his comments had been misrepresented. He denied inventing content. However, he stood by his original argument that overstretched and underfunded freelance travel writers, whose recommendations are relied upon by generations of travellers, cannot possibly visit every budget hotel and jungle outpost they are asked to.

Death of the guidebook: lost in a cutthroat world

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.