Travel: Why guide books have to lie

Subject: Travel: Why guide books have to lie Wed Apr 16, 2008 7:52 pm

"The waitress suggests that I come back after she closes down the restaurant, around midnight. We end up having sex in a chair and then on one of the tables in the back corner. I pen a note in my Moleskine that I will later recount in the guidebook review, saying that the restaurant is, 'a pleasant surprise ... and the table service is friendly.'"

So quotes the back of Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?, the tell-all book by Seppo travel scribe Thomas Kohnstamm that currently has the Lonely Planet editors of this world all a-flutter.

What has them tearing through their back catalogues are claims by Kohnstamm, who contributed to a few of Lonely Planet's South American guides, that he embellished, plagiarised, and in some cases plain old made up the information he committed to the "backpackers' bible".

It's become a pretty big deal - he claims he sold drugs to supplement his income, and didn't even visit Colombia, despite contributing to the guidebook (a claim he's since retracted).

But for me, the biggest surprise wasn't that some of the information in the old LP might be made up - but that it's taken this long for someone to blow the whistle on it.

And even still, I don't think there's much cause for concern, with either Kohnstamm's claims, or the quality of guidebooks.

For starters, let's not forget that Kohnstamm readily admits to embellishing his work for Lonely Planet, so it's pretty easy to believe he's lent that same imagination to his recent work.

And even if what he says is true - is it so bad?

The problem is that travellers treat the word of their guidebooks as gospel. How many times have you heard a traveller get told by a local that such-and-such a restaurant doesn't exist, only for them to reply: "But my guidebook says it does."

LNK

Travel: Why guide books have to lie

Travel: Why guide books have to lie

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