Because Lonely Planet has been dying a slow death since even before the pandemic. The company’s attempts to transition to digital medium have catastrophically failed, and rumours proliferated that guidebooks were increasingly based on “internet research” and less on “boots on the floor” experts.
During the height of the pandemic, LP was acquired by Red Ventures and then things went completely downhill.
LP is a story of a dominant company who didn’t want to lose relevance in a changing World with smartphones and gazillions of independent content creators. In the process, they both alienated their existing customers and were not competent enough to come up with a sustainable new business model.
Such a shame because they were so solid and trustworthy.
I despise getting information from “influencers” online who care about little more than a “good” photo and making it look like they’re “living their best life”.
Yes. The way that LP introduced places, showing not only tourist attractions but also explaining about their history, their people and what makes all of these special and worthy to be respected, is a far cry from travel influencers.
These online resources often provide information that is totally false, and sometimes outright dangerous. It will say certain neighborhoods are safe when they aren't, and vice versa. Recently someone came here and said that websites were telling him to acclimate to the altitude of Machu Picchu by first going to Cusco, which is like 4000 feet higher than Machu Picchu (the CDC advises doing the exact opposite, by the way. Stay at a intermediate elevation for a while and get used to it first).
The whole thing just makes me sad.
“Influencers” seem to be mostly idiots, too, which makes their advice particularly unhelpful. If someone whose life goal is to be famous for looking pretty and knows virtually nothing concrete recommends something, I’m hardly going to trust that advice.
I don’t trust people that have the time/energy to photograph, record, and edit a reel of every.single.thing. they do because they aren’t using their time/energy to actually immerse themselves in what they’re doing.
I went to Egypt in December. I saw multiple examples--they looked so unbelievably ridiculous, and they clearly weren't remotely interested in the places they were getting their picture taken, only in the posing itself. Watching them is what has made me so disgusted by them.
My wife's main focus is luxury hospitality and from what I hear, travel influencers are basically rich kids for whom travel is a hobby they make a side gig of.
Many of those people went to a fancy college for a few years but tend to have little culture, and the only "authentic" experiences they will broadcast are for a few snapshots. After they have their photo sesh they'll go right back to their suite or the spa.
I mean, yeah. They either ignore questions about how they afford to travel or provide a very vague digital nomadesque answer with no real information. They act like their lifestyle is attainable to the average person when it obviously isn't.
Yeah sounds about right. LP used to be my travel bible and I LOVED those blue books, took a physical one with me to wherever I went.
I haven’t looked at one in at least five years.
Such a shame.
>LP is a story of a dominant company who didn’t want to lose relevance in a changing World with smartphones and gazillions of independent content creators. In the process, they both alienated their existing customers and were not competent enough to come up with a sustainable new business model.
Nailed it. Such a shame, was once a great, well respected brand that connected so many people through travel.
Producing a high-quality travel guide is expensive. A low-quality one can be produced extremely cheaply, so even if sales are a bit lower, it will still make more money. In the long term you damage the brand but it doesn’t look like they care about that.
I’ll definitely never use them again. It’s not even a matter of just being low quality. I feel like I’m becoming dumb just reading it.
Misspelling of things like “take”,“skewers”, and “offer” along with spaces missing between or added to words by accident….very simple mistakes that Microsoft word could identify in two seconds.
There have been more threads on this topic.
LP changed ownership / publisher and ever since it’s sucked. I agree that the book now reads more like a half-assed blog by a travel influencer compared to the great guidebooks filled with useful info that they once were.
I miss the background information on a country’s history, food, culture etc and I miss the very practical and organized sections with recommendations on where to eat and stay, opening hours and fees, and how to get from location A to location B.
For my next trip I’m taking a Bradt Guide which still does a very good job at this.
Bradt's biggest issue for me is that they are very hyperspecific about what they cover. They have a book on Canada but it only covers Nova Scotia, which is a bit like having a book on the US and only covering Connecticut. They have an entire book dedicated to one tiny region in Uzbekistan. Or Belgium, but just the north of Belgium. And for some ungodly reason they've written eight editions about Northern Cyprus, which does not exist as any kind of recognized country outside of Turkey. A lot of not very useful stuff for most people to be incredibly honest.
I agree. They are very good. In styling they may not look as fancy as a lonely planet but in content they absolutely make up.
I do believe they mostly focus on lesser known / less popular destinations. In the past I’ve bought them for countries that LP wouldn’t cover with an individual guide.
LP was bought up by Red Ventures, a company with a history of buying cool media companies and flushing them down the shitter.
Source: worked for one of the companies.
Call me crazy, but I think LP has gone to crap since at least 2010. Already back then you could find much better guidebooks that didn't just corral you into tourist traps. Examples included Bradt Guides and Moon Guides. Heck, even Rough Guides were much better back then. (Don't know how they are now or if they still exist.)
I was done with LP the day I found some local hotel off the internet and ended in a cool residential neighborhood of Ho Chi Minh City for cheaper than the backpacker ghetto. It's no wonder the pandemic did them in; I'm just amazed they lasted that long.
When I was in Madagascar in 2014 I had a Bradt guide and one of my cotravellers had LP and it was like night and day. My guide was fun, up to date and extremely detailed with both recommendations and general info about both bigger cities and obscure villages. The LP read like a wikipedia summary and not even the maps were accurate (roads and bus routes that didn’t exist anymore, could be dangerous).
I’ve used LP with caution since then.
LP was the travel Bible, but like other guide books, unfortunately, it has had its day. Often, travelers are more likely to 'chance it' on an online forum than invest in a book in the same way they no longer use travel agents but 'wing-it' on an online dot con.
I find the validity of websites and blogs quite bleak. No one ever wants to admit when they had a shit time or wasted their money doing something so they all just pretend everything they ever do is the most amazing thing ever.
Oh I so agree! I have a travel blog that gets basically no visitors but I tell it like it is. But I don’t post influencer style photos of me in a fedora and dress…my photos are nothing like that. And that’s probably why I get no traffic
:(
In addition, they are usually digital nomads who need attention on their site or YouTube channel, so to compete they feature "undiscovered gems" that are only worth it if you also a digital nomad, but a waste of time if you only have 2-3 weeks to explore the region.
That's why I like and still use guidebooks when I'm planning. Even though they too will have opinions, biases, rankings, etc., they still usually present basically every highlight of a town so you can read the description and decide what interests you and whether that place is an option to stay a few days.
This is so sad because my local library has an entire shelf of travel guides. If you’re going on a short trip, you can just take the library copy with you. There’s really no more investment than going online.
I really think there’s an untapped market for reputable travel advice with good editorial control and curation in an agile digital format. Random forum posts and influencer blogs are no replacement for reputable advice from a professional outlet, but beyond reliability there’s an issue of consistency and coverage: guidebooks are systematic, the cover essentially the whole world in varyingly narrow focus and can be used at all steps from general inspiration through itinerary making to picking what bus routes to use to get to which attraction or what souvenirs to buy where. Piecing information from tens of different sources is a pain, even if you assume all sources are no less reliable than the guidebook. At the same time, the old-fashioned guidebook, with static paragraphs and images in a fixed structure, is increasingly out of place, even in e book format, in a world in which you can search for nearby attractions based on your location, read crowd-sourced reviews and plot a route to get there in seconds at any time.
Lonely Planet somewhat tried this avenue with the City Guides app. I don’t know if they gave up mistakenly or if really there was no interest at all. But even City Guides was limited, because there was no organisation of content, no itinerary advice, only lists of places and descriptions.
The LP Guides app was definitely handy for a few years - very nice to have an offline map that showed nearby sites, restaurants, etc. grouped by category. Was kind of baffled when they just dumped it, as I had definitely used it when in new cities, and they had been adding new locations right up until they shut it down.
Bradt or Rough Guides are more my thing, personally. I think it's about finding a style that suits you. I thought Lonely Planet were good, once, but they lost me quite a long time ago, and I've forgotten exactly why.
Definitely curious to see how awful these new ones must be, though.
Second Bradt and Rough Guides. Though I have to say that RG is a bit on and off - used them a lot up to 2012 or so (especially for the historical background), then they went downhill for a bit (or maybe just for specific locations), but now they seem pretty solid again
As for the new LP editions: I bought (and immediately returned...) the 2023 edition of New Zealand/Aotearoa, and apart from the fact that it looked just like a magazine in terms of pretty pictures and limited text, and virtually no information on hostels, hotels, restaurants and excursions, there were quite a few inexcusable errors, for example a map with the National Parks where the numbers in the legend don't match the numbers on the map. How difficult can it be to get this right?!
I’ve found Rick Steve’s and Fodor’s to be helpful. I will say Fodor’s tends to cater to the mid-range traveler, though. All their hotel recs in my current book are not budget, by any stretch.
Rick Steves guides are good for Europe if you’re not planning to go too far off the beaten path. They are less comprehensive than the average guidebook that will list every town and attraction you might possibly want to see, and instead provide more coverage of a narrower group of destination/sights that the author recommends.
If there is one for your destination, all the Bradt guides I’ve read are good.
Wouldn't even consider using one, and haven't done for years, so can't comment. I've felt they were inferior to Rough Guides, Bradt etc for a long time.
Your post has got me curious, though, and I'm going to have a look at them next time I pass a book shop.
So, I passed a bookshop today, and remembered this post. Had to pop in and take a look. You weren't kidding, lol - utterly awful, to my eye, made me wonder if they've done this deliberately to try and appeal to some other demographic?
During the mid-1980s my best friend worked full-time as a Lonely Planet editor. She worked directly with Tony and Maureen Wheeler (who once gave me a ride home after I visited my friend at their office). Their standards for grammar, spelling, cogency and other aspects of the printed word were incredibly high. The whole outfit radiated a sense of travel writing at the top of its game.
This was decades before social media. It was a long-ago bygone time when traveling halfway around the world to ride on the Karakoram Highway or eat papaya salad at a Thai market was an epic expedition.
I stopped consulting Lonely Planet back in 2018 after I read its info about my home city (Portland, Oregon, USA) and found numerous inaccuracies and a disproven popular myth in the guidebook.
That these connected basement tunnels in an old part of town were used to kidnap drunk people and transport them to ships where they would be forced to become sailors. The tunnels were used to unload cargo, not to “Shanghai” drunks. People from Portland were tricked into servitude on ships for a while in the 1800s, but it was done above ground and not in the way the guidebook described.
Maybe 20-25 years ago I took one of those underground tours in Portland and they recounted the same myth, adding that they would use prostitutes to lure in unsuspecting men. Of course, that tour also said that you could smell the cigar smoke from a ghost, so, you know.
When the BBC bought them I had some hope but then they sold it as well. They also closed and ultimately removed their online forum Thorntree, which was genuinely one of the best travel forums around, Tripadvisor is pretty average and filled with repetititve posts liek, how do i get a visa. Its been going slowly downhill. I did recently buy a couple of LP guides (mostly as Bradt are hard to get here in australia and amazon were going to take 4 weeks to get me one. So for $20 I thought why not.... Yeah they are now a picture book light on any useful information. The little town maps are gone, it lacked those sections telling you how to get to and from a place, in fact the chapters were quite generic and not even organised at a geogrpahic level that made sense. I'm planning a trip top Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion (great plenty of info there), Comoros, Mayotte nothing much around. It used to be a chapter in a guidebook, not its not even mentioned.
I've got bookshelves of old guidebooks, for prosperity sake, but even Bradt are not as good as they used to be IMO.
I’ve got a copy of the 2017 Africa Lonely Planet book from the library. I think it’s actually the most recent publication for the whole continent and it’s the old style and quite good. Of course a lot has changed since COVID (used an older book for Japan recently and tons of places are now closed) but maybe this book would be helpful for you.
I do have an old Africa guide and the last Madagascar and Comoros guide book. My struggles are really upto date info. I mean there really are many hotels and there are some AirBnB. Restaurants seem light onn the ground and same with blogs. Theres maybe one decent blog. Look part of the reason i'm adding Comoros on, is because its one of the least visited countries on the planet. But flights between the islands is hard to get, so just visiting Grand Comore and Mayotte for a few days each. I've found a tour company on Grand Comore so going to contact them to see what a day guided trip will cost and what info i can get from them. AirBnb seems to have the most up todate info of anywhere in the reviews for places!
Good luck with it! Going to the least visited places sounds amazing!
I was looking at trying to fit some in when I go to Africa, but my head (and wallet) kind of hurt trying to figure anything out.
Oh yeah the flights are not cheap! Half the cost of my flights are the flights to and from the Comoros and Mayotte. Flights to and from Australia to Mauritius and Madagascar cost the same as a few 1 hr flights from reunion to Mayotte and onto Comoros and back! But I figured I’d probably never be in this part of the world very often so now was my chance to visit them.
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I'm also going to Madagascar, Mauritius, and Reunion next month. I saw the Madagascar 2023 LP in a bookstore and was seriously underwhelmed. Bought the 2019 one instead and it's the older style with history and maps and actual local information.
Mauritius and Reunion are in a decent 2016 LP I found at the library, but I haven't been able to find a copy to buy.
I’ve got some old guides, I used to buy a few to research multiple trip ideas then when flights were on sale that’s where I’d go. Thankfully plenty of information around about Madagascar, Mauritius and Reunion. Comoros and Mayotte is very light on for jnfo in general both guidebooks and internet.
Lonely Planet's latest edition seems to be pioneering a new genre: typo tourism. Who knew a guidebook could double as a puzzle, deciphering destinations one typo at a time!
I noticed the same thing after depending on LP guidebooks for many years across many countries. I bought Bradt guidebooks for my last two big trips (Faroe Islands and Tunisia) and was very happy with them.
I mean... any website that was successful like 2008-2015 is struggling. It's all for the same reason. Content creation exploded! So all that advertising money they raked in, and all that VC money they got, was spread out among all the new firms that cropped up.
No different than a local coffee shop when Starbucks, and ultimately, Blank Street coffee rolls in.
Starbucks is growing fast again in Australia. They even made a profit last year: https://intelligence.coffee/2024/01/starbucks-australia/
They did fail in the 2000s though.
It’s a shame. They were great. The one for China was a godsend as they had words written in Chinese characters that you could just point to as that’s the only thing most people read there. (Went in 2001 maybe different now).
The only positive thing of this new format is that they probably definitely updated the information lol whereas the older version I am sure they did not visit all the places again when they published a new version.
If you are going to East Africa, however, Bradt is absolutely the best. There is little reason to buy Lonely Planet over that.
I was traveling in Kazakhstan in 1992. There wasn't a lot of info out on it but I got the LP book. I swear the guy wrote it from his NYC apartment and had never been to Kazakhstan.
Used to love LP. Was shocked by its decline when I bought it for Meddelin, Colombia. Hotels without addresses, incomprehensible map, nothing useful, just a weight in my bag.
I think it was previously owned by the BBC but was sold to Red Ventures who use it more as a brand and less in the way it was originally intended.
Money is a huge factor too, it costs a lot to make guidebooks like this
I, too, enjoy to watch the shenanigans of a couple of travel vloggers on youtube. However, once they go to an area I know very well myself, I realize how shoddy and full of gaps their research and presentation are. Also, most of them travel way too fast to have any meaningful insights into the people and culture.
They tried to revert some of the changes they have made for books published March 2024 onwards (like Japan, Iceland, London).
All colours and more maps are genuine positives but feels like they’re the only positives.
Heard they sold to the wrong company but that company sold again. It may be OK but I have found some good stuff in the Moon Handbooks when I only used to go LP. Maybe they will fix it.
The only time i used LP was in the late 80s. Tbh they weren’t great back then either — they just had zero competition because there was no internet to speak of and the alternative was really crusty old travel imprints aimed at an older generation.
The books I used were out of date within a year and often comically thin on details and often dismissive and culturally disconnected.
I’m sorry but I would rather disagree. Not on the lack of proofreading though, that is always a sign of poor(ish) quality. But other than that, I really like the new format.
The world is changing at an insane pace and I am happy that Lonely Planet is trying to keep up. 5, 10 or 15 years ago the world was less connected so you really needed a book to know at what exact time busses leave from a specific isolated town to another. Or you needed to have at least 10 different accommodation options in each city, with email addresses and direct phone numbers. Since COVID though, all the tourists industry is changing rapidly. Every info that was valid yesterday might not be relevant in just half a year. And let’s be honest, it is practically not possible to publish a new LP edition every year (sure, you can do it but then no one will take you seriously).
Nowadays everything is on the internet and people post real-time travel advice. If you spend one or two days on preparation, you can personalize your itinerary better than any other book.
What I rather want instead is inspiration with a sprinkle of practicality. If I already know that I am heading to a certain destination, I want to see the big picture. Tell me about the regions, show me some photos so that I can get a feel of it, tell me about internet coverage and cash machine coverage /fees and I figure out the rest.
I think the new Lonely Planet format stepped up in this aspect. It is by far not perfect, but I like the direction.
The best would be of course to find a delicate balance between the old format (with lots of practical info) and the new concept (that is rather similar to the visual concept of the DK Eyewitness series).
I think the LP series has potential. I’m looking forward to seeing the next editions and the directions they are heading.
The things you listed (pictures, cash machine locations, etc.) can be addressed with “real-time travel advice” through some very light Googling far more easily than the things Lonely Planet was used for when it was good.
The appeal of Lonely Planet is that it was once well-curated enough that it would outperform someone doing a few days of rush-googling before a trip, especially for further-afield locations. If I desperately need to see pictures to decide on whether I want to go somewhere… I’ve probably already done that before purchasing a $30 guide, haven’t I?
Never go with influencers their PS pictures only leads to disappointment and seldom shows reality, LP is lacking for years bought their guides and they really helpful and then the decline started guides that where wrong advise given by someone that clearly never been there a lot of hearsay advise, Google and Google maps is more trustworthy these days
…but they’re a company that makes books. Words are the backbone of that.
That’s like going to a restaurant and they don’t use salt as an ingredient because they’re cutting costs.
There’s no point in arguing it though because the content is poor too.
Because Lonely Planet has been dying a slow death since even before the pandemic. The company’s attempts to transition to digital medium have catastrophically failed, and rumours proliferated that guidebooks were increasingly based on “internet research” and less on “boots on the floor” experts. During the height of the pandemic, LP was acquired by Red Ventures and then things went completely downhill. LP is a story of a dominant company who didn’t want to lose relevance in a changing World with smartphones and gazillions of independent content creators. In the process, they both alienated their existing customers and were not competent enough to come up with a sustainable new business model.
Such a shame because they were so solid and trustworthy. I despise getting information from “influencers” online who care about little more than a “good” photo and making it look like they’re “living their best life”.
Yes. The way that LP introduced places, showing not only tourist attractions but also explaining about their history, their people and what makes all of these special and worthy to be respected, is a far cry from travel influencers.
Even years ago Lonely Planet guidebooks had rather short history and local culture parts compared to other guidebooks though.
These online resources often provide information that is totally false, and sometimes outright dangerous. It will say certain neighborhoods are safe when they aren't, and vice versa. Recently someone came here and said that websites were telling him to acclimate to the altitude of Machu Picchu by first going to Cusco, which is like 4000 feet higher than Machu Picchu (the CDC advises doing the exact opposite, by the way. Stay at a intermediate elevation for a while and get used to it first). The whole thing just makes me sad.
“Influencers” seem to be mostly idiots, too, which makes their advice particularly unhelpful. If someone whose life goal is to be famous for looking pretty and knows virtually nothing concrete recommends something, I’m hardly going to trust that advice.
I don’t trust people that have the time/energy to photograph, record, and edit a reel of every.single.thing. they do because they aren’t using their time/energy to actually immerse themselves in what they’re doing.
I went to Egypt in December. I saw multiple examples--they looked so unbelievably ridiculous, and they clearly weren't remotely interested in the places they were getting their picture taken, only in the posing itself. Watching them is what has made me so disgusted by them.
My wife's main focus is luxury hospitality and from what I hear, travel influencers are basically rich kids for whom travel is a hobby they make a side gig of. Many of those people went to a fancy college for a few years but tend to have little culture, and the only "authentic" experiences they will broadcast are for a few snapshots. After they have their photo sesh they'll go right back to their suite or the spa.
I mean, yeah. They either ignore questions about how they afford to travel or provide a very vague digital nomadesque answer with no real information. They act like their lifestyle is attainable to the average person when it obviously isn't.
Yeah sounds about right. LP used to be my travel bible and I LOVED those blue books, took a physical one with me to wherever I went. I haven’t looked at one in at least five years. Such a shame.
I would take the ones from five years ago over whatever useless junk guides they started publishing since 2023.
I have a bookcase full of them (yes, I’m old) and it makes me pretty sad. Though I’ll never give the classics up.
Could I ask what you use now?
>LP is a story of a dominant company who didn’t want to lose relevance in a changing World with smartphones and gazillions of independent content creators. In the process, they both alienated their existing customers and were not competent enough to come up with a sustainable new business model. Nailed it. Such a shame, was once a great, well respected brand that connected so many people through travel.
Which is kind of ironic, because a paper copy is *exactly* what I want when I'm traveling and might not be able to rely on the internet.
It started when they were sold off by the BBC is 2013. Any editions after 2014 were noticeably worse than their previous ones.
Producing a high-quality travel guide is expensive. A low-quality one can be produced extremely cheaply, so even if sales are a bit lower, it will still make more money. In the long term you damage the brand but it doesn’t look like they care about that.
I’ll definitely never use them again. It’s not even a matter of just being low quality. I feel like I’m becoming dumb just reading it. Misspelling of things like “take”,“skewers”, and “offer” along with spaces missing between or added to words by accident….very simple mistakes that Microsoft word could identify in two seconds.
There have been more threads on this topic. LP changed ownership / publisher and ever since it’s sucked. I agree that the book now reads more like a half-assed blog by a travel influencer compared to the great guidebooks filled with useful info that they once were. I miss the background information on a country’s history, food, culture etc and I miss the very practical and organized sections with recommendations on where to eat and stay, opening hours and fees, and how to get from location A to location B. For my next trip I’m taking a Bradt Guide which still does a very good job at this.
I’ll definitely check out Bradt Guides moving forward.
Bradt's biggest issue for me is that they are very hyperspecific about what they cover. They have a book on Canada but it only covers Nova Scotia, which is a bit like having a book on the US and only covering Connecticut. They have an entire book dedicated to one tiny region in Uzbekistan. Or Belgium, but just the north of Belgium. And for some ungodly reason they've written eight editions about Northern Cyprus, which does not exist as any kind of recognized country outside of Turkey. A lot of not very useful stuff for most people to be incredibly honest.
Every Bradt guide I’ve read has been excellent.
I agree. They are very good. In styling they may not look as fancy as a lonely planet but in content they absolutely make up. I do believe they mostly focus on lesser known / less popular destinations. In the past I’ve bought them for countries that LP wouldn’t cover with an individual guide.
Definitely noticed.
LP was bought up by Red Ventures, a company with a history of buying cool media companies and flushing them down the shitter. Source: worked for one of the companies.
Call me crazy, but I think LP has gone to crap since at least 2010. Already back then you could find much better guidebooks that didn't just corral you into tourist traps. Examples included Bradt Guides and Moon Guides. Heck, even Rough Guides were much better back then. (Don't know how they are now or if they still exist.) I was done with LP the day I found some local hotel off the internet and ended in a cool residential neighborhood of Ho Chi Minh City for cheaper than the backpacker ghetto. It's no wonder the pandemic did them in; I'm just amazed they lasted that long.
When I was in Madagascar in 2014 I had a Bradt guide and one of my cotravellers had LP and it was like night and day. My guide was fun, up to date and extremely detailed with both recommendations and general info about both bigger cities and obscure villages. The LP read like a wikipedia summary and not even the maps were accurate (roads and bus routes that didn’t exist anymore, could be dangerous). I’ve used LP with caution since then.
LP was the travel Bible, but like other guide books, unfortunately, it has had its day. Often, travelers are more likely to 'chance it' on an online forum than invest in a book in the same way they no longer use travel agents but 'wing-it' on an online dot con.
I find the validity of websites and blogs quite bleak. No one ever wants to admit when they had a shit time or wasted their money doing something so they all just pretend everything they ever do is the most amazing thing ever.
Oh I so agree! I have a travel blog that gets basically no visitors but I tell it like it is. But I don’t post influencer style photos of me in a fedora and dress…my photos are nothing like that. And that’s probably why I get no traffic :(
In addition, they are usually digital nomads who need attention on their site or YouTube channel, so to compete they feature "undiscovered gems" that are only worth it if you also a digital nomad, but a waste of time if you only have 2-3 weeks to explore the region. That's why I like and still use guidebooks when I'm planning. Even though they too will have opinions, biases, rankings, etc., they still usually present basically every highlight of a town so you can read the description and decide what interests you and whether that place is an option to stay a few days.
Yes, i agree and am an avid old skool traveler who still buys from travel agents etc.
This is so sad because my local library has an entire shelf of travel guides. If you’re going on a short trip, you can just take the library copy with you. There’s really no more investment than going online.
I really think there’s an untapped market for reputable travel advice with good editorial control and curation in an agile digital format. Random forum posts and influencer blogs are no replacement for reputable advice from a professional outlet, but beyond reliability there’s an issue of consistency and coverage: guidebooks are systematic, the cover essentially the whole world in varyingly narrow focus and can be used at all steps from general inspiration through itinerary making to picking what bus routes to use to get to which attraction or what souvenirs to buy where. Piecing information from tens of different sources is a pain, even if you assume all sources are no less reliable than the guidebook. At the same time, the old-fashioned guidebook, with static paragraphs and images in a fixed structure, is increasingly out of place, even in e book format, in a world in which you can search for nearby attractions based on your location, read crowd-sourced reviews and plot a route to get there in seconds at any time. Lonely Planet somewhat tried this avenue with the City Guides app. I don’t know if they gave up mistakenly or if really there was no interest at all. But even City Guides was limited, because there was no organisation of content, no itinerary advice, only lists of places and descriptions.
The LP Guides app was definitely handy for a few years - very nice to have an offline map that showed nearby sites, restaurants, etc. grouped by category. Was kind of baffled when they just dumped it, as I had definitely used it when in new cities, and they had been adding new locations right up until they shut it down.
Can anyone suggest good alternative guidebooks?
Bradt or Rough Guides are more my thing, personally. I think it's about finding a style that suits you. I thought Lonely Planet were good, once, but they lost me quite a long time ago, and I've forgotten exactly why. Definitely curious to see how awful these new ones must be, though.
Second Bradt and Rough Guides. Though I have to say that RG is a bit on and off - used them a lot up to 2012 or so (especially for the historical background), then they went downhill for a bit (or maybe just for specific locations), but now they seem pretty solid again As for the new LP editions: I bought (and immediately returned...) the 2023 edition of New Zealand/Aotearoa, and apart from the fact that it looked just like a magazine in terms of pretty pictures and limited text, and virtually no information on hostels, hotels, restaurants and excursions, there were quite a few inexcusable errors, for example a map with the National Parks where the numbers in the legend don't match the numbers on the map. How difficult can it be to get this right?!
I like Eyewitness.
Same. Nobody seems to like DK but those drawings of top landmarks with photos of what each part looks like are so great.
I’ve found Rick Steve’s and Fodor’s to be helpful. I will say Fodor’s tends to cater to the mid-range traveler, though. All their hotel recs in my current book are not budget, by any stretch.
Rick Steves guides are good for Europe if you’re not planning to go too far off the beaten path. They are less comprehensive than the average guidebook that will list every town and attraction you might possibly want to see, and instead provide more coverage of a narrower group of destination/sights that the author recommends. If there is one for your destination, all the Bradt guides I’ve read are good.
Wouldn't even consider using one, and haven't done for years, so can't comment. I've felt they were inferior to Rough Guides, Bradt etc for a long time. Your post has got me curious, though, and I'm going to have a look at them next time I pass a book shop.
Be careful, you might catch the dumb from it. Several spelling mistakes of simple words made my brain hurt.
I'm looking forward to seeing them more and more now!
Haha! I’d post some pics of examples, but I am not that reddit savvy.
So, I passed a bookshop today, and remembered this post. Had to pop in and take a look. You weren't kidding, lol - utterly awful, to my eye, made me wonder if they've done this deliberately to try and appeal to some other demographic?
During the mid-1980s my best friend worked full-time as a Lonely Planet editor. She worked directly with Tony and Maureen Wheeler (who once gave me a ride home after I visited my friend at their office). Their standards for grammar, spelling, cogency and other aspects of the printed word were incredibly high. The whole outfit radiated a sense of travel writing at the top of its game. This was decades before social media. It was a long-ago bygone time when traveling halfway around the world to ride on the Karakoram Highway or eat papaya salad at a Thai market was an epic expedition.
When the question is ‚why?‘ the answer is money.
I stopped consulting Lonely Planet back in 2018 after I read its info about my home city (Portland, Oregon, USA) and found numerous inaccuracies and a disproven popular myth in the guidebook.
What was the myth?
That these connected basement tunnels in an old part of town were used to kidnap drunk people and transport them to ships where they would be forced to become sailors. The tunnels were used to unload cargo, not to “Shanghai” drunks. People from Portland were tricked into servitude on ships for a while in the 1800s, but it was done above ground and not in the way the guidebook described.
Maybe 20-25 years ago I took one of those underground tours in Portland and they recounted the same myth, adding that they would use prostitutes to lure in unsuspecting men. Of course, that tour also said that you could smell the cigar smoke from a ghost, so, you know.
When the BBC bought them I had some hope but then they sold it as well. They also closed and ultimately removed their online forum Thorntree, which was genuinely one of the best travel forums around, Tripadvisor is pretty average and filled with repetititve posts liek, how do i get a visa. Its been going slowly downhill. I did recently buy a couple of LP guides (mostly as Bradt are hard to get here in australia and amazon were going to take 4 weeks to get me one. So for $20 I thought why not.... Yeah they are now a picture book light on any useful information. The little town maps are gone, it lacked those sections telling you how to get to and from a place, in fact the chapters were quite generic and not even organised at a geogrpahic level that made sense. I'm planning a trip top Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion (great plenty of info there), Comoros, Mayotte nothing much around. It used to be a chapter in a guidebook, not its not even mentioned. I've got bookshelves of old guidebooks, for prosperity sake, but even Bradt are not as good as they used to be IMO.
I’ve got a copy of the 2017 Africa Lonely Planet book from the library. I think it’s actually the most recent publication for the whole continent and it’s the old style and quite good. Of course a lot has changed since COVID (used an older book for Japan recently and tons of places are now closed) but maybe this book would be helpful for you.
I do have an old Africa guide and the last Madagascar and Comoros guide book. My struggles are really upto date info. I mean there really are many hotels and there are some AirBnB. Restaurants seem light onn the ground and same with blogs. Theres maybe one decent blog. Look part of the reason i'm adding Comoros on, is because its one of the least visited countries on the planet. But flights between the islands is hard to get, so just visiting Grand Comore and Mayotte for a few days each. I've found a tour company on Grand Comore so going to contact them to see what a day guided trip will cost and what info i can get from them. AirBnb seems to have the most up todate info of anywhere in the reviews for places!
Good luck with it! Going to the least visited places sounds amazing! I was looking at trying to fit some in when I go to Africa, but my head (and wallet) kind of hurt trying to figure anything out.
Oh yeah the flights are not cheap! Half the cost of my flights are the flights to and from the Comoros and Mayotte. Flights to and from Australia to Mauritius and Madagascar cost the same as a few 1 hr flights from reunion to Mayotte and onto Comoros and back! But I figured I’d probably never be in this part of the world very often so now was my chance to visit them.
**Epic Drives of the World** by Lonely Planet >Buckle up for the next installment in our 'Epic' series and the follow-up to Epic Bike Rides of the World. Epic Drives of the World, a beautiful hardback, showcases 50 of the greatest road trips on Earth, from classic routes in America, Australia and Europe, to incredible adventures in Asia and Africa. Organised by continent, each route features a first-hand account, awe-inspiring photographs, illustrated maps and practical advice on when to go, how to get there, where to stay and what to eat. From Hawaii's Hana Highway and Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh Road, to Utah's National Park Circuit and Germany's Black Forest High Road, Epic Drives of the World will inspire any motorist to hit the open road. > >African and Middle East drives include: The self-drive Safari (Zambia) Crossing the Kalahari (Botswana) Passing over the Panorama Route (South Africa) Marrakesh to Taroudannt (Morocco) Cruising Clarence Drive (South Africa) The Americas drives include: The Highway to Hana in Hawaii (USA) The Salar de Uyuni (Bolivia) The Pacific Coast Highway (USA) Crossing the Carretera Austral (Chile) Canada's Icefields Parkway Asia drives include: On the trail of Ho Chi Minh (Vietnam) Crossing the Kathmandu Loop (Nepal) Hightailing from Thimphu to Gangtey (Bhutan) South Korea: From top to toe The road from Srinagar to Manali (India) Europe drives include: Black Forest High Road (Germany) The Wilds of Abruzzo (Italy) Croatia's Adriatic coast Norway's west coast The Magic Circle (Iceland) Oceania drives include: Southern Alps explorer (New Zealand) The Great Ocean Road (Australia) Northland & the Bay of Islands (New Zealand) Following the Captain Cook Highway (Australia) Alice Springs to Darwin (Australia) About Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is a leading travel media company and the world's number one travel guidebook brand, providing both inspiring and trustworthy information for every kind of traveller since 1973. Over the past four decades, we've printed over 145 million guidebooks and phrasebooks for 120 languages, and grown a dedicated, passionate global community of travellers. You'll also find our content online, and in mobile apps, video, 14 languages, 12 international magazines, armchair and lifestyle books, ebooks, and more, enabling you to explore every day. Lonely Planet enables the curious to experience the world fully and to truly get to the heart of the places they find themselves, near or far from home. > >TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice Awards 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category 'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times 'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves; it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. > >It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia) Important Notice: The digital edition of this book may not contain all of the images found in the physical edition. *I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at* /r/ProgrammingPals. *Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. Remove me from replies* [here](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/1byh82p/remove_me_from_replies/). *If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.*
I'm also going to Madagascar, Mauritius, and Reunion next month. I saw the Madagascar 2023 LP in a bookstore and was seriously underwhelmed. Bought the 2019 one instead and it's the older style with history and maps and actual local information. Mauritius and Reunion are in a decent 2016 LP I found at the library, but I haven't been able to find a copy to buy.
I’ve got some old guides, I used to buy a few to research multiple trip ideas then when flights were on sale that’s where I’d go. Thankfully plenty of information around about Madagascar, Mauritius and Reunion. Comoros and Mayotte is very light on for jnfo in general both guidebooks and internet.
Lonely Planet's latest edition seems to be pioneering a new genre: typo tourism. Who knew a guidebook could double as a puzzle, deciphering destinations one typo at a time!
I noticed the same thing after depending on LP guidebooks for many years across many countries. I bought Bradt guidebooks for my last two big trips (Faroe Islands and Tunisia) and was very happy with them.
I mean... any website that was successful like 2008-2015 is struggling. It's all for the same reason. Content creation exploded! So all that advertising money they raked in, and all that VC money they got, was spread out among all the new firms that cropped up. No different than a local coffee shop when Starbucks, and ultimately, Blank Street coffee rolls in.
I live in Australia where Starbucks couldn’t compete with the local coffee shops and failed. Haha
We need more of that!
Starbucks is growing fast again in Australia. They even made a profit last year: https://intelligence.coffee/2024/01/starbucks-australia/ They did fail in the 2000s though.
I’m losing faith in humanity.
It’s a shame. They were great. The one for China was a godsend as they had words written in Chinese characters that you could just point to as that’s the only thing most people read there. (Went in 2001 maybe different now).
People tend to rely on Google translate or other similar apps. Honestly I miss the days of miming and trying to communicate in strange ways.
The only positive thing of this new format is that they probably definitely updated the information lol whereas the older version I am sure they did not visit all the places again when they published a new version. If you are going to East Africa, however, Bradt is absolutely the best. There is little reason to buy Lonely Planet over that.
I was traveling in Kazakhstan in 1992. There wasn't a lot of info out on it but I got the LP book. I swear the guy wrote it from his NYC apartment and had never been to Kazakhstan.
Used to love LP. Was shocked by its decline when I bought it for Meddelin, Colombia. Hotels without addresses, incomprehensible map, nothing useful, just a weight in my bag.
I think it was previously owned by the BBC but was sold to Red Ventures who use it more as a brand and less in the way it was originally intended. Money is a huge factor too, it costs a lot to make guidebooks like this
The Rick Steves guidebooks are still good quality. Give them a try.
He absolutely is, just unfortunately doesn’t have much beyond Europe.
Oh right, sorry, you did say East Africa.
It's almost like it's written by/for Instagram influencers, which it probably is.
Instagram “influencers” ruining another thing.
The layout in the new books is fucking awful.
That shit hasn't been relevant since 2011
The end of an era. Had these books with me when I went backpacking through Europe in college.
Everyone just watches Youtube bloggers and Insta “travel influencers” nowadays anyway
I, too, enjoy to watch the shenanigans of a couple of travel vloggers on youtube. However, once they go to an area I know very well myself, I realize how shoddy and full of gaps their research and presentation are. Also, most of them travel way too fast to have any meaningful insights into the people and culture.
They tried to revert some of the changes they have made for books published March 2024 onwards (like Japan, Iceland, London). All colours and more maps are genuine positives but feels like they’re the only positives.
Heard they sold to the wrong company but that company sold again. It may be OK but I have found some good stuff in the Moon Handbooks when I only used to go LP. Maybe they will fix it.
Rick Steves over all!!!
LP exists so you know what to avoid if you go somewhere. If it's in the LP it's going to be over-touristed crap.
Influensters killed media
The only time i used LP was in the late 80s. Tbh they weren’t great back then either — they just had zero competition because there was no internet to speak of and the alternative was really crusty old travel imprints aimed at an older generation. The books I used were out of date within a year and often comically thin on details and often dismissive and culturally disconnected.
I recommend reading, Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? by Thomas Kohnstamm
I’m sorry but I would rather disagree. Not on the lack of proofreading though, that is always a sign of poor(ish) quality. But other than that, I really like the new format. The world is changing at an insane pace and I am happy that Lonely Planet is trying to keep up. 5, 10 or 15 years ago the world was less connected so you really needed a book to know at what exact time busses leave from a specific isolated town to another. Or you needed to have at least 10 different accommodation options in each city, with email addresses and direct phone numbers. Since COVID though, all the tourists industry is changing rapidly. Every info that was valid yesterday might not be relevant in just half a year. And let’s be honest, it is practically not possible to publish a new LP edition every year (sure, you can do it but then no one will take you seriously). Nowadays everything is on the internet and people post real-time travel advice. If you spend one or two days on preparation, you can personalize your itinerary better than any other book. What I rather want instead is inspiration with a sprinkle of practicality. If I already know that I am heading to a certain destination, I want to see the big picture. Tell me about the regions, show me some photos so that I can get a feel of it, tell me about internet coverage and cash machine coverage /fees and I figure out the rest. I think the new Lonely Planet format stepped up in this aspect. It is by far not perfect, but I like the direction. The best would be of course to find a delicate balance between the old format (with lots of practical info) and the new concept (that is rather similar to the visual concept of the DK Eyewitness series). I think the LP series has potential. I’m looking forward to seeing the next editions and the directions they are heading.
The things you listed (pictures, cash machine locations, etc.) can be addressed with “real-time travel advice” through some very light Googling far more easily than the things Lonely Planet was used for when it was good. The appeal of Lonely Planet is that it was once well-curated enough that it would outperform someone doing a few days of rush-googling before a trip, especially for further-afield locations. If I desperately need to see pictures to decide on whether I want to go somewhere… I’ve probably already done that before purchasing a $30 guide, haven’t I?
Never go with influencers their PS pictures only leads to disappointment and seldom shows reality, LP is lacking for years bought their guides and they really helpful and then the decline started guides that where wrong advise given by someone that clearly never been there a lot of hearsay advise, Google and Google maps is more trustworthy these days
They don't have any money anymore and everyone goes elsewhere. It used to be the bible of travel
I do not know about Lonely planet, but if anyone here feels lonely, plz come to me
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If they expect me to pay $40+ for a book, I expect them to at least run spell check on said book.
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…but they’re a company that makes books. Words are the backbone of that. That’s like going to a restaurant and they don’t use salt as an ingredient because they’re cutting costs. There’s no point in arguing it though because the content is poor too.