LONDON: Travel writers are being forced out of guidebook writing by falling standards and declining pay in travel publishing.
“The steady expansion of the slimmer, more colourful Directions series, launched by Rough Guides three years ago, is just one sign that shorter, funkier guidebooks are here to stay,” writes Jay Burgess, in the UK publication, Writers’ News.
Burgess said that over several years most guidebooks had been incrementally losing rich detail, partly due to the growth of the internet as a resource of free travel material and advice, and partly due to the shrinking engagement of most tourists who were less interested in culture, background, and history, and keener on resort-style breaks and soft adventure.
Burgess said guides had evolved from reference books to “glorified brochures”.
“Shallow content has reduced the importance of authors to little more than data collectors, which is reflected in authors’ contracts and earnings.”
Burgess said guidebooks were now often written by beginners who were paid poorly with the result that research was skimpy and guidebooks were “riddled with factual mistakes, cultural misconceptions, inconsequential anecdotes, and the absence of rich journalistic detail”.
It was a trend that was nudging guidebooks into a larger crisis – the hyperbole raised expectations, and ultimately readers were lost in the long-term when it transpired that the destination was actually less interesting than insinuated by the guidebooks, the author said.
“Worse still, readers were put off once they realised that the guidebooks were wrong and inaccurate.”
Authors were the “exploited mules” of guidebook publishers, Burgess added.
He said beginners did a skimpy job, simply flitting through the destination, copying text from museum legends, websites and brochures, virtually ad verbatim, reviewing restaurants they didn’t eat at, and writing about hotels they didn’t visit, Burgess said.
