The travel guidebook market is shrinking, but niche titles still offer travelers a ton of value. Photo by: Lindyi
With news coming out of London that entertainment and nightlife publisher Time Out will be shutting down the presses on its print travel guidebooks line, it’s hard for travel writers not to address the elephant in the room.
Is the sun truly setting on the venerable travel guidebook?
It’s not a new question, frankly. Since the high water marks of the mid-2000s, when global travel guidebooks had their largest reach and highest sales, the industry has faced a slow, steady encroachment of digital media upon its formerly privileged perch.
Consumer interests have changed, and information, once a commodity, is ubiquitous.
For the handful of travel publishers who came of age during the second half of the 20th Century — names like Frommer’s, Rough Guides, Fodor’s and Lonely Planet — the winds of change have brought foul weather.
These product lines known to generations of international travelers as go-to sources for crucial, hard-to-find info have been sold, and resold, and repurchased by their founders.
But it’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle, once released.
On the surface, this doesn’t bode well for travel publishing in general, and it could be said that segment is on the wane.
Or is it?
A Travel Guidebook Renaissance?
After years of declining sales, the guidebook industry showed new signes of stability in 2015. Take a swing through your local book store, and chances are you’ll see a wider range of niche travel titles, appealing to specific interests.
The long tail stretches to the travel information world, too.
Further, with the explosive rise of self-publishing in the years since the Great Recession, adventurous new travel magazines have stepped into the void and are delivering to curious readers new perspectives and viewpoints.
And increasingly, digital publishers are creating new, highly visual guides to in-demand world destinations, as with this Vice Guide to New York City.
Maybe, just like Napster didn’t “kill music”, the digital age hasn’t rung the death knell of travel publishing. Perhaps its just been most impactful upon the traditional publishers who for all intents and purposes, monopolized the markets.
Maybe the change is seen through the veil of nostalgia.
Or you can just look at the travel guidebook industry as just a classic tale of economics. A market appears — global travel information, fueled by a massive upswing in new, interested customers.
Businesses step in to fill the needs of consumers. Players consolidate, and a few heavyweights come to rule the roost.
The industry matures, new technologies arise that are leaner, hungrier, less tied to the economics of maintaining the status quo, and more adaptable to evolving customer needs
Once innovative, the established players get caught flat-footed, and before they realize it, the market – and consumers – have moved on.
Is such the fate of the traditional guidebook publishers? Will we be digitally dancing on their graves for good come 2020?
Maybe for some, but not for all. After all, these traditional publishers are still putting out products. And sales aside, these brands remain strong. Heck, Lonelyplanet.com ranks among the top 2000 sites in the US and globally on Alexa.
People might not be buying a new guidebook every year, like the annual car purchases made by Americans in the 1950s.
But none of the classic guidebook lines have gone the way of the Studebaker just yet.
Sum it all up, how should a travel writer navigate today’s publishing landscape? Same as always: with diligence, persistence, hustle and good humor. Be innovative, seek new markets, and look to provide added value whenever you can.
Or start your own online publishing venture.
And always remember: as with travel itself, approach opportunities in life with the belief in abundance, not scarcity, firmly in hand.