Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?

Diane Clarkson | April 18, 2008, 02:35 PM

Do Travel Writers Go To Hell? This is the title of a new book by Thomas Kohnstamm, a former Lonely Planet travel writer who has admitted that he did not always visit the places he reviewed for Lonely Planet.

Mr. Kohnstamm blasts the venerable Lonely Planet for its unrealistic deadlines, lack of money and lack of support to authors while on the road.

The scandal is troubling for the Lonely Planet - a brand travelers around the world hold with high trust.

The explosion of user generated content has rattled the world of old fashioned travel publishing, where content is stale by the time it hits the shelves. Our upcoming “Travel Consumer Survey 2008” looks are the growing segments of travelers relying on UGC in their decision-making process.

I don’t know enough to comment on Lonely Planet’s culpability or the voracity of Mr Kohnstamm’s complaints. Nor have I read the book so I don’t know to what extent this is a cautionary tale versus an expose by a disgruntled employee. But it is shameful to misrepresent travel advice as coming from experience when in truth it is not. This controversy isn’t in the same scale as James Frey/Oprah Winfrey “Million Little Pieces”. But while Mr Frey may have bamboozled his readers with a partially fictitious memoir, travelers acted upon Mr. Kohnstamm’s advice in how they spent their precious money and travel time. And that is not something to take lightly.