LonelyPlanet:Wheeler's Defence

[GWR]

Simple explanation. Farang backpacker unable to break the mindless habit of poring over Lonely Planet at every whipstitch.

Something from the Thai press: Headless farang ghost - Khaosod, March 1, 2005

From the front page of Khaosod newspaper: Mysterious - a view at Miracle Beach, Krabi province that a reporter took at the beginning of February after the tsunami. After checking the photo, the reporter found the image of a mysterious figure that appears to have no head. But it is possible that the man nods or bent down his head at that moment.

http://2bangkok.com/2bangkok/thaimed...t/050301.shtml

[Yappofloyd]

Originally Posted by GWR

Simple explanation. Farang backpacker unable to break the mindless habit of poring over Lonely Planet at every whipstitch.

Excellent!

[ncr]

2Bangkok.com in Lonely Planet Thailand - November 15, 2005

Don Entz writes: We picked up the new Thailand Lonely Planet yesterday, and... 2Bangkok.com is in it. Page 98, first column, top of the list under "Internet Resources": "2Bangkok (www.2bangkok.com) Obsessed with charting construction and infrastructure projects, including translations from Thai newspapers."

Congrats, Ron.... 'tis well deserved.

Well, I dunno if the site is of great importance to backpackers and similar species (supposed they constitute the main readership of LP), but it sure is for all us construction and infrastructure obsessed souls.....

[GWR]

On the face of it, a good move that may even have a few consequences for http://2bangkok.com , which regularly gets mentioned in its hallowed pages:

BBC buys travel bible Lonely Planet

Sydney (dpa) - A majority stake in Australian travel guide publishing company Lonely Planet has been acquired by the commercial arm of the government-owned British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for an undisclosed sum, news reports said Monday.

The privately held business was founded in 1972 by Melbourne couple Tony and Maureen Wheeler.

They told national broadcaster ABC that selling a 75 per cent stake to the BBC would finance expansion and the building of the Lonely Planet brand around the world. They will retain 25 per cent of the company.

"We realized we're obviously no longer just a book publisher," Tony Wheeler said. "As far as the reality of the business is, a lot of it is now digital - our website and other things we do, from photo libraries to TV production. The value of the brand, the value of Lonely Planet is really eventually going to be much more on that side of it."

Lonely Planet publishes about 500 titles. As well as its popular budget travel guides, it puts out specialist travel guides and phrase books. Recently the company began film production through Lonely Planet Television.

"Lonely Planet is a highly respected international brand and a global leader in the provision of travel information," BBC Worldwide chief executive John Smith said in a statement.

"This deal fits well with our strategy to create one of the world's leading content businesses, to grow our portfolio of content brands online and to increase our operations in Australia and America."

May expire soon:
http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_....php?id=122218

[GWR]

British Labor Group Wants Lonely Planet Boycott
By RAPHAEL G. SATTER / AP WRITER / LONDON
Friday, February 22, 2008

British labor and human rights activists called for a boycott of Lonely Planet books Thursday, urging the travel series to withdraw its guide to Burma.

Britain’s largest labor group, the Trades Union Congress, argued the book lends legitimacy to the country’s autocratic regime by promoting tourism to the isolated southeast Asian country, which is also known as Myanmar.

“The very existence of a travel guide to Burma encourages people to visit a country they might not otherwise consider,” the group’s general-secretary, Brendan Barber, said in a statement. “We want to see the travel industry drop Burma from their list of destinations and taking the Lonely Planet guidebook off the shelves would help enormously.

“If enough people sign our petition and stop buying Lonely Planet guides, we hope we can encourage the BBC to think again,” he added.

BBC Worldwide Ltd, which bought a controlling stake in Lonely Planet Publications last year, said it has no plans to withdraw the guide. It noted in a statement that Lonely Planet “provides information to help travelers make informed decisions about whether to visit Burma and, should they decide to go, make informed choices about what they do there.”

The Burma Campaign UK, which lobbies for human rights and democracy in Burma, and Tourism Concern, which fights exploitation in the international tourism industry, are also backing the boycott call.

Burma has been governed by an authoritarian military junta since 1988, but a series of peaceful mass protests last September drew international attention.

The world watched in horror as authorities violently cracked down on the demonstrators, and human rights groups have been struggling to mobilize concern to put pressure on Burma’s rulers.

The Lonely Planet’s Web site offers potential visitors a list of Burma tourism “pros and cons.” Among the cons are opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s appeal to tourists not to travel to Burma and the allegation that forced labor is used to ready tourist-related sites.

Among the pros, Lonely Planet says the tourism industry remains one of the few sources of income and communication for ordinary Burmese citizens.

The guide also offers tips for maximizing “the positive effects of a visit among the general populace, while minimizing support of the government.”

The Trades Union Congress is an umbrella group composed of around 60 unions representing more than 6 million people. The group said it had been lobbying the BBC to pull the Burma guides since last year, but was now calling for a boycott because of the BBC’s refusal to remove the books.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=10512

I'm certainly in favor of carefully-targeted sanctions, but LP does at least discuss the 'issues' in its Burma guidebook.

Ironically, I bought a Periplus Map of Myanmar (Burma) yesterday and noticed that Joe Cummings (of LP fame) is also their Field Editor.

[GWR]

It is known that LP contributors are amongst the readers/posters of this site and its forum:

Travel Publisher accused of hiring poorly-paid and unvetted staff
Published on April 16, 2008
The language was hardly typical of the CEO of a respected travel guide publisher.

"This is *#!t," Lonely Planet chief executive Judy Slatyer wrote to employees. "None of you deserve it, given the effort you put in."

The problem for Slatyer and her colleagues was what one of them described in another company-wide message as "a car crash waiting to happen": a Lonely Planet author had published an expose of the world of budget-travel writing.

Thomas Kohnstamm, co-author of a dozen Lonely Planet guides to Latin America and the Caribbean, has written his own book. In it he tells how the life of a travel writer is one of poor pay, dealing drugs to make ends meet, cribbing information from other sources and, in one case, failing to visit the country he was writing about.

The furore over Kohnstamm's claims threaten to undermine the series' most important asset: trustworthiness.

"I found out very quickly I was not able to go to all the places I needed to go to," he told interviewers at the weekend. "I was not able to make the money stretch out to the end. They didn't pay me enough to go to Colombia. I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating who was an intern in the Colombian consulate."

Lonely Planet, which sells more than 6 million guidebooks each year, moved swiftly to counter Kohnstamm's charges.

"For those who don't know," Slatyer wrote in the message to a private Lonely Planet Yahoo group, "Thomas Kohnstamm has written a book about his somewhat self-indulgent experience working on the previous edition of our Brazil guide."

The book's press release highlights his sexual encounters with a waitress (allegedly resulting in a good review for the restaurant) and his need to deal drugs to supplement his author fee, as well as less titillating complaints against us on unrealistic deadlines, lack of money and lack of support when he was on the road.

"Thomas also claims that due to lack of time and money, information in his titles is fictitious or plagiarised, and that he acted against our stated policies and accepted freebies, which compromised his recommendations."

But another Lonely Planet author, Jeanne Oliver, who has written Lonely Planet guides to several European countries, wrote back that the company should shoulder some responsibility.

"Why did you [management] not understand that when you hire a constant stream of new, unvetted people, pay them poorly and set them loose, that someone, somehow was going to screw you?" she wrote.

When Kohnstamm was recruited to write for Lonely Planet, he had few obvious qualifications other than the ability to speak Spanish. He left his Wall Street job, he has said, threw his mobile phone in a river and went to Brazil, where Portuguese is spoken.

He went on to contribute to guides to Colombia, the Caribbean, South America, Venezuela and Chile. The company said his claims that he did not travel to Colombia were "disingenuous", because he was hired to write about the history of the country, not to travel there.

"I've been contacted by a number of other Lonely Planet writers and everyone who has bothered to be in contact said, 'Good on you, it's a story that needed to be told'," Kohnstamm said. "But the book is fundamentally about my personal experience and not intended as an expose on Lonely Planet."

For now, Kohnstamm says his days of exotic adventure are behind him. He has moved back to his native Seattle, and lives three minutes away from the house he grew up in. Soon, however, he is embarking on another journey, to Australia, where Lonely Planet is based, to promote his book, "Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?" - Guardian News Service

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2008...n_30070832.php

[jpatokal]

With a traditional guidebook publishing model this kind of thing is inevitable, and it's happened before: a while back, Rolling Stone had a hilarious story called "Let's Go, Or Let's Not and Say We Did" about a hapless writer in Istanbul. Here's Lonely Planet's official response:

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/about/thomas_kohnstamm.cfm

One really interesting thing, though, is that they try to explain away Thomas not going to Colombia by saying that he wasn't even supposed to go to Colombia. In other words, it's not just a rogue author, it's company policy to hire people to write a guidebooks about place that they aren't familiar with!

Anyway, no matter how dedicated your guidebook editor is, and even if he does actually make it to where he's supposed to go, is he really going to sleep a night in every fleapit in Khao San Rd or sample every restaurant in Tokyo? No, he's going to, at most, stick his head in the door and count the cockroaches. No less a guru than LP's founder Tony Wheeler confesses to doing so in his own autobiography (The Lonely Planet Story, which incidentally is quite a fascinating read), and he even suggests how a writer can quickly determine if a restaurant is good: just check if it has many customers.

The Internet is changing this rapidly though, as it's now possible to read actual experiences through TripAdvisor etc. And, of course, there's Wikitravel Press: every single hotel, restaurant and attraction in every single one of our books has been tested out and found good by a real live traveller, not a harried editor.

BTW, if somebody has the full e-mail from LP CEO Judy, I'd love to see it

[MBK]

The reason given why he didn't go to Colombia was he was writing background parts of the book, not the hotel reviews etc. He didn't need to go there to write a brief history which many readers will just skim over anyway. He could research that on the internet, at his local library or ask someone from Colombia as he did. Just read some Thai forums and you can see that employing some local expats to do the Thai version of what this person was asked to do would result in some pretty skewed versions of the history, culture and customs of Thailand.

Interesting how you can sign up to do a job then later on decide you're not paid enough, not complete what you agreed to properly and then write a book about your lack of ethics using the ensuing furore as publicity and presumably making a bundle of money from your own book. Somehow I think the problem also lies with another publisher even printing his story. In some places convicted criminals cannot profit from writing books or doing tv interviews when convicted of a crime. While this guy has not been convicted of any crime I don't see why he should profit from fraud. As it is, he has stated he lied about things before so it's easy to suspect a lot of what he has written in his new book was either made up or exaggerated in order to sell books.

With guidebooks, I learnt a long time ago that they are only that, GUIDE books. Travelling through Europe I soon learnt that all the cheap eats and lodgings were over run with many others using a Let's Go etc. and the trick was to go to the areas mentioned but try a few of the places nearby that weren't written up. Usually better value without all the crowds. Too many times places mentioned in guidebooks get so many customers that they no longer have to rely on word of mouth and good value to keep a steady stream of customers coming through the doors so they relax the standards that got them listed in a guidebook in the first place.

You even need to be careful about what you read on the various message boards. Take a look at Fodors Thailand section sometime. Read that and you would think it's almost impossible to see Thailand without employing a guide called Tong.

[jpatokal]

Originally Posted by MBK

The reason given why he didn't go to Colombia was he was writing background parts of the book, not the hotel reviews etc. He didn't need to go there to write a brief history which many readers will just skim over anyway. He could research that on the internet, at his local library or ask someone from Colombia as he did.

Sure. But I was still a little shocked: this guy not only did not visit the country for LP, he has never been to Colombia at all! And he was still hired to write not just the history section (which anybody could pretty much crib off Wikipedia), but "culture, food and drink and environment" as well. Would you accept a Thailand guidebook written by somebody who has never eaten Thai food in Thailand?

[MBK]

It's a fair point you make and I would answer you in this way.

I don't have the Thailand guide but I do have the current Indonesian book. Most of what is written there about food could be written without having visited Indonesia. Out of 924 pages there are about a dozen pages devoted to the basics of Indonesian food and drink (not talking about restaurant reviews) so it's not exactly the backbone of the book. How what is in the Indonesian guide applies to what has been raised about the Colombian book I couldn't say as I haven't read it but as I understand it the person who all this fuss is about was writing about the basics and not doing restaurant reviews. The Indonesian guide I have used in the last 6 months and I've no complaints. Someone who is Indonesian or who is living or working there may disagree but as a visitor to Indonesia it has served me well.

One thing I noticed is that a number of the people who are doing a lot of the complaining about books for certain countries are involved in the local tourist industry so you have to wonder if for some of them, not being reviewed in the book causes them to look at the book in a different light to your average traveller. You only have to see the replies to questions asked on travel forums to know that there is no one answer to many questions, people from different countries and backgrounds can have very different opinions about the same question. People complain about a map being wrong or a restaurant no longer being in business but how many times have I asked a local something only to end up being sent to the wrong place so expecting any guide book to be spot on about everything is expecting a bit much.

I do think that someone who decides to sign a contract to do a job shouldn't turn around later and profit from not doing what he was contracted to do. If I was a travel writer then I wouldn't be very happy with the way this person has gone about things as it would seem to taint others involved in the business.

[jpatokal]

Originally Posted by MBK

I do think that someone who decides to sign a contract to do a job shouldn't turn around later and profit from not doing what he was contracted to do. If I was a travel writer then I wouldn't be very happy with the way this person has gone about things as it would seem to taint others involved in the business.

I agree that Kohnstamm's actions weren't exactly ethical... but I think he did actually do what he was contracted to do? LP didn't expect him to go to Colombia in the first place, he's just stretched the truth here to make his little expose more shocking.

[GWR]

Originally Posted by GWR

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=10512

I'm certainly in favor of carefully-targeted sanctions, but LP does at least discuss the 'issues' in its Burma guidebook.

Ironically, I bought a Periplus Map of Myanmar (Burma) yesterday and noticed that Joe Cummings (of LP fame) is also their Field Editor.

Lonely Planet Founder Defends Burma Guidebook
By DENIS D. GRAY / AP WRITER / BANGKOK Thursday, May 1, 2008

The founder of one of the world's largest travel publishing companies defended its much-criticized guide to Burma on Thursday, saying tourists going to the military-ruled country are doing more good than bad.


[Photo: The Irrawaddy - Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler. (Photo: stanfords.co.uk)]

The Lonely Planet's guide to Burma, also known as Myanmar, has been attacked by human rights groups who say income from tourism helps prop up the generals who run the country and control many sectors of the economy.

"I am not going to be an ad agency for Burma, but going there is doing more good than bad," Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler said in an interview.

He argued that many tourists put money directly into the hands of individual Burmese people rather than the state coffers and also help open up a society largely shut off from the world.

He said that BBC Worldwide, which bought a 75 share of Wheeler's company last year, was also being pressured by critics of the book.

"If BBC decides to withdraw the guide, it would be a deal breaker," Wheeler said, indicating he would sell his remaining shares. BBC Worldwide is the commercial arm of the London-based British Broadcasting Corporation.

Wheeler said his Planet Wheeler Foundation has started a health clinic and a number of other humanitarian projects in Burma and intends to fund more.

Wheeler and his wife Maureen began with a hand-stapled guide called "Across Asia on the Cheap," and in three and a half decades built an empire with more than 500 titles, television productions and other travel-related products. Lonely Planet guides, often called "backpacker Bibles," cover virtually every country on earth.

Wheeler, in Bangkok to attend a conference on tourism and global warming, said the company was approaching the printing of its 100 millionth book.

The guides took a credibility hit earlier this month when one of its writers, Thomas Kohnstamm, wrote in a memoir that sections of his 2005 guide to Brazil were based on secondhand information and outright invention, partly because the company didn't give him enough money to do proper research.

Wheeler said that there has been little fallout from the revelations and that the Brazil guide has been replaced with a new edition. The company said earlier that it stood by the accuracy of its guides.

"On the other hand, it's a wake-up call. You have to keep an eye out on your authors," Wheeler said.

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=11691