It’s possible to listen to the travel publishers Webinar online and also read a transcript of the chat that took place during the session. Unfortunately there are voice conflicts in the recording that weren’t present during the actual Webinar. It is for this reason that we’ve produced a written account here of all that was said by Tom Hall. To find out more about the event visit ‘Next Webinar hands the mic to Travel Publishers‘.
What the online, digital world has meant to travel publishers
When we think about the opportunities presented by the web, by mobiles, by social media what were talking about is a greater degree of intimacy a greater degree of one-to-one contact and a greater degree of speed in terms of information coming to the fore. So at the moment if a really fantastic tour started up in Jordan for example, it would have to wait two to three years to be brought to people’s attention if it was just ‘when’s the next edition of the book coming out?’. However if we are able to harness the web to pass these things on there are ways that you can bring them to people’s attention much quicker. At the moment we haven’t cracked this in terms of making individual points of interest available on the website when they’re not available in the book, it’s just not the way that things are working at the moment, we’d obviously like that to happen at some point. I think the main thing is to get it to people quicker and to possibly be promoting more than you would be promoting along regular lines. A guidebook is only so thick, website listings that have been verified by authors could be far more detailed.
The chances of publishers creating a green index or Responsible Tourism checklist
I think everything has to be a balance and there’re two things: Firstly when an author is spending time in a particular location it has to be remembered that they are not necessarily somebody who is equipped with the skills to say that a place is being run along ethical and sustainable lines. It may be the case in a few years time that all travel writers will be, but at the moment that isn’t the case. So there are issues around that kind of assessment process.
It may be that one way forward is to be working with organisations who are very well equipped. I would say that’s probably going to happen on a destination by destination basis and at the moment it’s not something that we have worked through. I’d be interested to hear if other publishers have.
Featuring Irresponsible Tourism
I have to say I don’t view this as the role of a guidebook. A guidebook would not feature a bad hotel, it would feature a good hotel and I think that is very much the method. The incentive for individual tour operators to get their acts together on this kind of thing, is to be offering the most attractive possible product, and should they do this then they are included and marketed effectively by the guidebooks of various publishers. I think if you do the opposite then you discourage people from doing anything else.
Lonely Planet writers
Obviously I can’t go into too much detail about how we pay our authors but a lot of work has been going in to ensuring authors are paid fairly for the work that they do. You obviously have to balance a number of things – what people are paid throughout the industry, making sure people are getting a living wage for doing it, but also making sure that you’re paying enough to attract the right kind of people. Obviously experts, expertise and experience does not come particularly cheap. That said, do lots of people want to be travel writers? yes absolutely they do, but that doesn’t mean that you get people in and you pay them a pittance to do it.
Choosing an ethical publisher
How do readers choose a publisher based across the standards of behaviour that they have in their business, their relationships with their suppliers? It’s an interesting challenge and I think that more can be done to be transparent in business practices. We’re having a conversation in the chat room here about procurement of paper and whether you could use recycled paper. I only found out through talking to the chap that sources ours that if you are using paper that’s from managed sources it’s actually better for the environment than using recycled paper because of the chemicals that are used in the recycling process. Now there are an enormous amount of nuances in this topic and I’m not enough of an expert on it, we are not the only publisher that’s made an effort to demonstrate that our paper comes from managed stocks.
All of our paper in the vast majority of cases is approved by the FSC. I think publishers, not just guidebook publishers need to do that and tell people about it, and if that is an important thing, personally I believe that it is, then people should be able to find out about it. I think you have to question the eventual value for being too open about things, how interested are people where our warehouses are and what the relationships we have with our suppliers is? Now I know that we’ve put a huge amount of effort into these relationships, ensuring that they do meet labour requirements and that kind of thing. I imagine the people in this room are very interested in this, the person picking up a copy of our guide to Syria and heading off to the Middle East is probably a bit ‘ho-hum’ about this kind of thing. I think you need to work out what information you’re providing is of value and what is not.
Training writers in Responsible Travel
Every author is given a detailed brief of things to look for in their individual destinations. This comes back to what I see as being one of the fundamental questions here which is responsible tourism issues need to be woven into the fabric of these guides rather than being something that is plonked across the entire range. I would say that the briefing process for an individual book is the right time to bring in these kind of issues. There is a huge difference in something people might look for if they are travelling to the South of Spain than if they are travelling to the south of Laos. It’s up to the editors and the authors to build up the requisite knowledge base. You might do it by having editors and authors who are destination experts, you might do it by taking it on a book by book basis.
In regard to formal training do we sit people down with a blackboard and say here are a few of the things you need to know about? Are they given a manual to responsible tourism? No they are not, but I think that in a lot of cases people are already very informed about these issues. Certainly if you are a travel writer and you want to work for a publisher like Bradt, or Lonely Planet, or Wanderlust or Footprint, then you need to be across these issues, and people are often very well informed. If you’re not then what the hell have you been doing for the last five years trying to be a travel writer without being informed about these issues?
Moving Responsible Travel information out of the boxed text
Do we need to move beyond lists and indexes? Yes absolutely, and I think that brings in the theme that I was talking about before which was that this is something that needs to be woven into the fabric of guides. However, boxed texts are an extremely effective way of highlighting issues, particular themes, niche subjects, and I think that they are one of the things that really make guidebooks worth the money because it’s when authors get to move beyond the template that they are given, write a little freely, talk about issues that are important to them and that they believe are important to people who are reading the book. So yes we do want to move beyond that but we don’t want to abandon it either.
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