Where would the world’s travellers be without the trusty guidebook? Love them or hate them use them openly on a street corner or cast secret glances at them while pretending to know with strange surroundings; guidebooks are the meat and veg of every tourist, traveller and yes travel writer too.
Modern Travel Guides
Modern guidebooks cover every form of destination from entire continents, regions and countries, right down to guides of even the smallest cities. There are guidebooks for railway journeys, bus journeys, cruises, walks, hikes and bikes. Tourist boards and cities produce free giveaway pamphlets and despite the seeming ubiquity of the Internet the printed guidebooks still sells in millions.
There may be a temptation to consider that before Lonely Planet and Rough Guide travel guidebooks did not exist but the first guidebook was probably written many millennia ago by a peripatetic physician called Pausanias.
Travel Guides to Ancient Greece
Pausanias tramped the ancient Mediterranean not settling very long at any one location, however he must have had a soft spot for Greece for after spending ten or so years wondering the peninsula he wrote what was then the definitive guide to the area, its history and its peoples, cities, customs and charms. It was a massive ten-volume tome written with wealthy Roman travellers and adventurers in mind.
However the familiar printed guidebook had to wait for a number of developments to enable it to become the ubiquitous tool it is today. Moveable print, ease of reproducing photographs, railway travel and increasing prosperity during the industrial age all contributed to the guidebook’s ubiquitousness.
Murray Hand-Guides
Travel guides appeared before the advent of easy travel made possible by the new railway systems. Amongst the very first was Britain’s “Murray Hand-Guides” intended as a guide for emerging British middle classes who had limited time and wealth and demanded a factual and precise guide to get them form A to B without fuss or undue expenditure.
Baedeker Guidebooks
In 1827 Karl Baedeker established his publishing company and kick-started the travel guide business. Throughout the 19th century and into the 20th “Baedekers” as they were commonly know were an indispensable part of the savvy traveller’s luggage.
Thomas Cook Travel Innovator
But it was not until the rapid spread of the railways in the mid-19th century and perhaps the influence of pioneering travel organiser Thomas Cook that modern guidebooks grew into the industry they are today. As more people travelled at home and abroad the need for a reliable reference was becoming increasingly apparent.
Thomas Cook published his first travel guide a 60 page booklet in 1845 not only was it was a guide to the journey from Leicester to Liverpool it also incorporated elements of the modern travel brochure. Thomas Cook may also have produced the precursor of modern travel magazines, in 1851 and continuing to 1939 the company produced a monthly periodical called the “Excursionist” superseded by the “Traveller’s Gazette”.
Thomas Cook’s and Baedeker’s guides were joined in the mid-1930s by the Fodor guides but by this time other names were pre-eminent, Michelin in France being one of the more prominent.
Travel Guides in the 1950s
The 1950s witnessed an increase in leisure travel and with the boom a slew of travel guides followed. Famous names in the travel guide business emerged during this decade Frommer guides and the Let’s Go To series still going strong today.
Lonely Planet Guides
Arguably a British couple Maureen and Tony Wheeler changed the travel guide genre irrevocably. Travelling on a shoestring from London to Sydney and wanting to pass on knowledge and tips gained on the way the Wheelers wrote and self-published the first of the Lonely Planet guides aimed a back-packers and budget travellers.
The success of the Lonely Planet series encouraged similar guides the most prominent being The Rough Guide series. Both the Lonely Planet and Rough Guides have branched out into other, broader areas of travel the Rough Guides particularly enthusiastic in helping to broaden the travellers mind on such things as world music, anime and Jimmy Hendrix.
Kindle Technology
But new technologies may challenge the paper-based book – look out for developments in Amazons Kindle technology. The journey may only have just begun.
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