Photo-rich, experience-focused travel guides have mushroomed in recent years. Publishers continue to modernize the traditional paperbacks that dog-eared travelers lug around in their daypacks, but they’re also expanding their offerings of coffee-table books designed to help vacation-focused planners and would-be globetrotters envision where they’ll go next. PW spoke to editors of major travel guide publishers about their latest conceptual travel routes.
Toast of the Nation
Many tourists today want to travel “for a specific reason, not necessarily to a specific destination,” says Doug Stallings, editorial director at Fodor. The popularity of Fodor’s guide to Napa and Sonoma, he says, suggests that readers may be interested in other parts of the U.S. “that are particularly steeped in wine, distilling or even beer traditions.”
keyword American Spirits (November), which teaches the basics of winemaking, beer brewing and spirits production. The guide divides the country into 12 regions and introduces readers to the microbreweries of the Pacific Northwest, the whiskeys and bourbons of Appalachia and the vineyards of Colorado wine country.
At DK, the October release Road trips in the USA is a tribute to the American tradition of filling up the tank (or, these days, charging the battery) and hitting the road. The routes cover all 50 states and have different focuses. Some highlight historical significance, like the Civil Rights Trail, a 570-mile drive from Georgia to Tennessee; others, including the 55-mile Haˉna Highway on Maui, offer scenic views and postcard-worthy opportunities, such as lingering with sea turtles and eating at coconut stands. Georgina Dee, publishing director at DK, says that books like Road trips in the USAwhich are usually larger in size and have more comprehensive content than traditional travel guides, contain ideas that the traveler can consider again and again over time.
To that end, DK’s inspirational titles include “a mix of epic or ambitious journeys and more achievable journeys,” says Dee. Take The travel bucket list (Oct.), which suggests joining an expedition to the North Pole, an endeavor that requires significant logistical planning and expense. It also recommends readers enjoy a glass of mezcal in Oaxaca, Mexico, an experience that is comparatively easier to achieve.
Postcards from the edge
National Geographic turns the idea of the bucket list on its head: go to hell (Aug.) suggests that curious travelers can make a pit stop in the afterlife and then go home again. Science writer Erika Engelhaupt (Gory Details: Adventures from the dark side of science), organizes the international locations into three categories – “portals to the underworld,” “hells on earth” and “afterlife destinations” – and explains “the historical and scientific phenomena” behind their hellish reputation, says Allyson Johnson, editor in chief at National Geographic Books. Italy’s volcanic Phlegraean Fields, to give one example, probably inspired Dante’s infernoElsewhere, the eerie red waters of Blood Falls in Antarctica get their color from iron-rich flows beneath the ice.
The book is aimed at the “dark tourism trend” – people visiting haunted houses and ghost tours,” says Johnson. “We’re trying to meet people’s needs. How can we inspire them to put places on their list of potential travel destinations, or how can our books enable them to ‘travel’ from the comfort of their own home?”
Two more upcoming travel titles from NatGeo—100 hotels of your life by Annie Fitzsimmons and 100 Nights of a Lifetime by Stephanie Vermillion, both published in December – were suggested by the respective authors. “Many people love traveling because of the hotel – hotels are destinations in themselves,” says Johnson of Fitzsimmons’ book. And 100 nights of your life comes out, fortunately, at a time of “cosmic wonder,” she says. “There have been more auroras this year than in about a decade. And the book offers more than just stargazing – there are suggestions for trips to bioluminescent bays in Puerto Rico or visiting the Great Wall of China at night.”
Relaxing postures
Rough Guides launched its latest series of inspirational travel guides in 2019 with Make the most of your time on EarthSarah Clark, publishing director at Rough Guides, says inspirational titles offer the opportunity to explore travel options, particularly sustainable and environmentally conscious travel, in more depth. The Rough Guide for Slow Travel in Europe, will be published in October and describes expeditions of varying lengths, some of which cross several countries: a train journey through Scandinavia is extended from six hours to three weeks, through many detours outside the train that encourage travelers to explore the Nordic concept of outdoor living (“Outdoor Living”).
“Inspirational travel guides are our shop windows,” says Clark. “They are a fantastic opportunity to explore the world in a level of detail that we could not offer in a regular travel guide.” The recently published A rough guide to rewilding in the UK The environment is also a focus. Rewilding is defined as “a return to natural processes: avoiding the use of fertilisers, pesticides and other chemicals and allowing nature to work its own ways”. The 15 rewilding sites covered in the book represent a range of places and terrain that have benefited from rewilding: the Haweswater area in Cumbria, for example, is described as a mix of “mossy woodland, moorland, heath and marshes and rushing streams set in dramatic mountain scenery” that is accessible all year round (though without visitor facilities). Wilder Doddington, a former farm, is now a nature reserve and destination that hosts thousands of visitors and events every year.
Lonely Planet’s upcoming The joy of quiet places (Sept.) also recognizes the benefits of returning to nature, pointing readers to peaceful places like Namibia’s Skeleton Coast National Park, a vast stretch of sand and sea coast, or the city of Konya in Turkey, a place of Sufi mysticism and the last home of the poet Rumi, to “switch off and de-stress,” says Piers Pickard, managing director of publishing at Lonely Planet. “The book has a connection to notions of wellness, the need to escape the chaos of everyday life,” he adds.
Pickard sums up travelers’ desire to be guided by their interests and passions. “Travel today is much less about seeing things than it was 10 or 20 years ago,” he says. “It’s much more about experiencing things and sparking cultural curiosity.”
Vera Kean is a writer living in New York City.
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A version of this article appeared in the December 8, 2024 issue of Publisher: under the heading: Trip Advisors
