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Subject: Re: guidebooks: the bad news Posted on: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:42:49 +0100


"Jack Campin - bogus address" wrote in message
news:bogus-7D9A7C.00334618042008@news.news.demon.net...
> Yesterday's Times supplement (16/4/8) has an interesting piece
> on the travel guidebook industry. I can't find it online.
>
> 35,000 guidebooks in print.
>
> Authors are paid peanuts. The result being that they make it up,
> with hotel and restaurant listings being mostly fiction - at best
> the restaurant reviews are done by kibitzing other people eating,
> there's no time or money to do anything else.
>
> Quite a few instances of stuff being made up by authors who never
> went to the places they're writing about.
>
> And it looks like getting a lot worse.
>
> ==== j a c k at c a m p i n . m e . u k ===
> ====
> Jack Campin, 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland == mob 07800 739
> 557
> CD-ROMs and free stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, and Mac logic
> fonts
>

Well this is the article:
http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/travel/news/article3752483.ece

While no guide is perfect, I've generally found the Rough Guides (my 1st
choice) and Lonely Planets pretty reliable - but I use them for things to do
and places to see, and rarely for hotels and restaurant recommendations (and
as long as the former has a bed in the room and a lock on the bedroom door,
and the latter doesn't poison me, I'm not too fussy anyway.)