Print-digital dynamics remain a hot topic in the guidebook sector. Search engine results, once merely a significant aspect of travel planning, are now travelers’ #1 source of information when putting together a vacation, according to travel and hospitality marketing company MMGY Global’s report “Portrait of American Travelers, 2017–2018.”
Rick Steves’ Europe maintains an active online presence, but its namesake questions the general traveling public’s reliance on the web: “Are they getting the same value of information out of the internet as from a guidebook?” Several of Steves’s competitors are working hard to answer that query in the affirmative.
While Fodor’s isn’t introducing any new guidebook titles this season, its website is being “expanded and enhanced,” says editorial director Doug Stallings, with content that complements the publisher’s print products “but doesn’t fit into the guidebook format.” That includes newsy updates, photo essays, and listicles with sticky titles like “Party by the Pool: The 9 Best Hotel Pool Scenes in L.A.” Stallings says the site’s Fodor’s Hotels component is re-emphasizing its authority as a professional, objective review source, as opposed to what he calls the “reader-generated noise” found on many go-to review sites.
In 2016 Insight Guides started bundling digital products with print purchases, and Agnieszka Mizak, managing director at parent company APA Publications, says the strategy has proven so successful that “all our destinations have either an e-book or app or both.” The publisher is adding destinations—Budapest, Cuba, Iceland, Madrid—to its pocket-size Insight Explore Guides, which include access to a companion e-book download. New additions to the regions and countries roster include Insight Guides American Southwest (June) and Insight Guides Madagascar (Nov.). Mizak notes that the Insight Guides website includes a booking engine for trip planning to destinations it covers.
Toward the end of 2017, APA, which also publishes Berlitz guides and phrasebooks, added Rough Guides to its portfolio, as a complement to the glossier Insight line. Through the third quarter of 2017, prior to the acquisition, APA ranked sixth and Rough Guides seventh in the NPD BookScan Travel Publishing Year Book’s world travel guide rankings. Mizak says the purchase will double APA’s reach and revenues.
As part of Lonely Planet’s push to grow as a multimedia travel hub, the publisher began partnering with GoPro in April 2017 to add more video to LP’s website. Travel media company Skift reports that 63% of consumers consult social channels in vacation planning, and August 2017 saw the launch of Trips by Lonely Planet, an app that allows users to share photos, videos, and commentary as well as gain access to travel information. Lonely Planet’s year-old Guides app offers maps, phrasebooks, and local search functionality to a growing number of cities.
But however bright and shiny the rapidly developing world of digital travel content may be, DK Eyewitness Travel publisher Georgina Dee remains a true believer in the core product in this publishing sector, the venerable guidebook. “The play between print and digital is always at the forefront of our minds, but travelers are [already] well served by the digital world,” she says. “Rather than adding to the noise, we’re focused on reducing the noise with beautiful, useful books.”
