Where's Everyone Going?

Reflections on Directions in Travel and Travel Books from the 1970s to Now

By Kathy Widing

When I began traveling in the late 1970s, overseas travel guides took up just a small section of bookstore shelves. Choices were limited. Like a typical Aussie, I slung my pack over my back and took off for Europe and Asia, carrying, appropriately, Let's Go Europe. In Asia I was thrilled to share my new Lonely Planet guides with American and European travelers who had never heard of this Australian publisher.

But as interest in travel increased in the 1970s, new books emerged, along with a new type of bookstore-the travel bookstore. The first in the U.S. (1976) was Seattle's Wide World Books & Maps. Now travel bookstores dot the globe, and their well-traveled staffs offer travel workshops, travel newsletters, and comprehensive travel web sites.

In the 1980s travelers became more savvy; their focus changed. Many no longer wanted to just sightsee; they were looking for active vacations, and travel titles responded to their demand. Books covered hiking, cycling, kayaking, spiritual journeys, volunteering, buying a house abroad, and traveling with children. Women could choose from a selection of guides specifically for them.

After a steady increase in travel titles in the 1980s the explosion came in the 1990s: Moon, Cadogan, Rough Guides, Footprint Handbooks (siblings of the South American Handbook), Insight Guides, and the graphically gorgeous Eyewitness Guides were just a few of the new series with ever more specialized titles. Rick Steves, who started with Europe Through the Back Door in 1980, now has 22 separate titles on Europe-updated every year.

It's been over a decade since I became Transitions Abroad's travel book editor. Every year we diligently searched through the annual offerings of travel guides to select the best of both individual guides and series. Now that the number of titles has become overwhelming, we recommend visiting the experts, the travel booksellers-either in person or via their web sites.

How Travel Has Changed

To see what the experts are saying about travel in 2002 we talked with Simone Andrus of Seattle's Wide World Books & Maps, Sandye Wexler of Chicago's Savvy Traveller, and Susan Hickman of Distant Lands in Los Angeles.

Transitions Abroad: What is your view of how travelers and guidebooks have changed in the last decade?

Wexler: More books for less traveled places; more guides directed to special groups (children, hiking, homosexuals, but still not much for seniors, the disabled); more guides about food; more guides that get into activities, including nightlife.

Hickman: There are so many more books! (We just received a Bradt guide to St. Helena, Ascension & Tristan de Cunha.) They're more visually compelling. Travelers are more sophisticated, so you see more "off-the-beaten-path" guides. Customers ask for recommendations from English-speaking artists and academics who live in cities like Rome, Florence, and London.

Andrus: Guidelines have changed significantly because of the Internet. Lonely Planet and other publishers offer updates online. In selecting accommodations, people want to see pictures of that villa or farmhouse before they decide to spend a week there. Travelers have demanded and got more sophisticated and speci-fic guides: guides for short trips, budget guides, driving guides, hanging out guides-all kinds of guides are out there. Competition is fierce.

TA: Has there been a shift in overseas travel destinations and the type of books travelers are buying after September 11?

Wexler: Well, we're certainly not selling travel guides and maps to the Middle East, except to the news media. We're seeing more interest in calmer destinations-parts of Latin America, the islands (both Atlantic and Pacific), the Orient, and Canada seem to be hotter than last year.

Hickman: Travelers seem to be sticking to "tried and true" destinations like Western Europe. Australia and New Zealand were popular this winter. Most notably, our travel narrative sales have really spiked, as have maps. What we haven't seen are droves of travelers looking for U.S. destinations.

Andrus: The shift was to no travel at first. Now people are venturing out again but more tentatively. Europe is popular. Italy of course. Africa and the Middle East sales have contracted to a trickle. Latin America and Southeast Asia are popular with the more experienced travelers. Australia and New Zealand are popular as well. Travel in North America is up. Many people are waiting to see what the war on terrorism will mean in the long run.There is a lot of uncertainty right now.

TA: Guidebooks aside, what is your favorite title in the store?

Wexler: My opinion changes almost with each new book I read. Right now I'm particularly fond of Memoirs of a Geisha and In a Sunburned Country, the last two books we've discussed in our travel book club.

Hickman: You might consider it a guidebook but The Traveller's Handbook has long been one of my favorites-every self-respecting traveler should have this on her or his reference shelf (The Globe Pequot Press, $23.95). Otherwise, the last travel narrative I really, really enjoyed was Without Reservations by Alice Steinbach. For some reason I identified quite strongly with her desire to travel as a means of discovering her "self," which she had somehow shelved away over the years behind her other, work-oriented life.

Andrus: The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan is a delightful book. Plants that we take for granted have surprising stories to tell us about ourselves.

KATHY WIDING is author of Cycling in the Netherlands, Belgium & Luxembourg and is part owner of Wide World Books & Maps in Seattle WA. Her latest book, Cycling in France, will be published by Lonely Planet.