Frommer's Was Purchased by Google, Then Sold, Then Resold

Tnooz on the Frommer Sale back to Arthur

More discussions on the sale of Frommer's printed guidebooks back to Arthur himself, with comment input from some of the biggest players in the guidebook world.

The Frommers journey has come full circle, as the company’s original founder Arthur Frommer has re-taken the helm of the brand he created back in 1957.

With the Frommer’s Facebook page dormant since February, the brand sure could use a little reinvigoration. The powers-that-be at Google have pretty much brought the brand to full radio silence as they integrated all of the content they purchased into the Google+ Local product over the past few months.

A Google spokesperson sent over the following statement:

We’re focused on providing high-quality local information to help people quickly discover and share great places, like a nearby restaurant or the perfect vacation destination. That’s why we’ve spent the last several months integrating the travel content we acquired from Wiley into Google+ Local and our other Google services. We can confirm that we have returned the Frommer’s brand to its founder and are licensing certain travel content to him.

Now that the content has been integrated into the product, Google has sold the company back to its founder. The terms of the deal were undisclosed, but it’s very clear that Frommer intends to continue the print line of books moving forward.

Arthur Frommer told the Associated Press that he was looking forward to getting started again after selling the brand to Simon & Schuster in 1977. It’s a very happy time for me. We will be publishing the Frommer travel guides in ebook and print formats and will also be operating the travel site Frommers.com.

It appears that he did not purchase all assets, and that Google will continue to own certain content that will then be licensed back to Frommer’s. What content will be licensed to Frommer remains unclear.

Travel Guidebook Advice from The Economist

Guidebook Writer Guidelines

The Guidebook Conundrum via The Economist

More stuff on the travel guidebook crisis

LAST month, just days after the BBC announced the sale of Lonely Planet to a wealthy American investor for an £80m ($121m) loss, Google quietly signed the death sentence for the print publication of Frommer's guidebooks. The remaining portion of the brand will be digested into the corners of the Google network, and the once-famous guidebook series will soon cease to exist.

In an era of pop-up restaurants and 140-character updates, guidebook publishing has suffered hugely. Both business and casual travellers do ever more of their trip research online, where sites like Tripadvisor and Wikivoyage can provide free data quickly and precisely. The resulting decrease in book-buying has been disastrous for the publishers. Frommer's US sales dropped from $34m to $18m between 2006 and 2012. Lonely Planet's dropped from $25m to $18m over the same period. Combine those sales figures with the high costs of research and the guidebook-publishing industry's demise looks certain.


Yet there remains some demand for expert travel advice from non-digital sources. Many travellers, particularly those lacking expensive international mobile data plans or access to an internet connection, still rely on physical guidebooks to research and navigate a destination. For example, Chris McGinnis, the editor of the Bay Area Traveler Blog, says he still takes portions of guidebooks with him when visiting a new destination. “Most busy business travellers just want the facts, fast,” he explains. “They don’t always have time to pick through the get-what-you-pay-for free or user-generated sites. Ripping a few pertinent pages out of an edited, fact-checked guidebook and packing them into my carry-on bag still serves me well. But I'm slowly replacing those ripped-up guidebooks with digital versions stored on my iPad.”

The value provided by a well-researched guidebook is precisely why their buyers are willing to pay the extra few dollars for curated content. “Accurate, quality content and information is always in demand,” Daniel Houghton, the new COO of Lonely Planet, told Gulliver. As part of the editorial process, guidebook writers take special measures to review a hotel or restaurant in objective terms. Reviews from sites like Tripadvisor or Yelp, conversely, can be influenced by a host of external factors.

To be successful in the future, guidebooks will need to manage the tricky balance between the content they provide for nothing online and the material they supply in book form, while making both separately profitable. Lonely Planet puts the majority of its content in its physical guidebooks or downloadable products, while hosting a spectrum of digital articles and a community online. Frommer’s, conversely, put the entirety of its guidebook content on the web for nothing; but the growth in its online revenues did not keep pace with the decline in book sales.

Jason Clampet, online editor at Frommer's prior to its sale to Google, explained, “Guidebook companies know that growth will come from digital, but they're all legacy print operations paralysed by fiefdoms and an older skill set. In the same way that we see lots of digital start-ups fall flat on their faces when they try content, old-school content companies just bumble when it comes to digital.” Until there’s a better way for travellers to use guidebook data on their devices, many will continue to shop at their local bookstore for a physical guidebook. But as data plans improve and digital devices evolve, the guidebook publishers will need to adapt to survive.

The New Digital Rulers at Lonely Planet, via Nashville

This Kid is the New Ruler at Lonely Planet

Lonely Planet was recently sold by the BBC at staggering loss to an American billionaire who made his money selling discounted cheap smokes to Americans hooked on nicotine. He now has a new team in Nashville eager to smoke LP and marry it to new technology. Their biolines show almost no background experience, but plenty of bravado. Go figure.

NC2 Home Website

Arthur Frommer Gets Back his Trademark

Arthur Frommer and Daughter Pauline

Google Buys Frommer, Ends Printed Guides, then Sells the Whole Mess back to Arthur

What in the world is going on with Frommer's Guides and Arthur himself? This is starting to sound like a bad parody from The Onion. Where is the travel guru gonna get enough money to restart printed travel guidebooks? I assume he is doing OK, but this is an enormous endevour, God Bless you Arthur, but you have now promised dreams beyond your bounds.

Arthur Frommer, the avuncular, erudite travel icon who 57 years ago inspired a generation of cost-conscious Americans to pack their bags withEurope on 5 Dollars a Day, is taking back control of his travel guidebook brand from Google and intends to resume publishing Frommer guidebooks.

"It's a very happy time for me," Frommer, 83, told The Associated Press. "We will be publishing the Frommer travel guides in ebook and print formats and will also be operating the travel site Frommers.com."

Skift.com reported last month that Google - which had purchased the Frommer brand from Wiley last year for a reported $22 million - was "quietly pulling the plug" on print publication of Frommer travel guides.

Financial terms of the deal between Frommer and Google, which is using Frommer's content on Google Plus Local and other services, were not disclosed.

The move comes during a turbulent time for the print guidebook industry, which is facing stiff competition from such user-generated alternatives as TripAdvisor and Yelp. Last month, BBC Worldwide agreed to sell Lonely Planet to a Nashville-based digital media company for less than half what it paid for the company in 2007.

Huff Post Travel Writer Still has Faith in Printed Guides

A travel writer and blogger at Huffington Post thinks printed travel guidebooks are not yet dead. I enjoy my collection of old and often rare travel guidebooks, but I think that printed travel writing is on the wall, so to speak. They are going away, given new technologies that make traveling with gadgets the future. Just watch your gadget, as thugs around the world prefer your IPad and IPhone to your old, used paper travel guidebook.

Jeanne Oliver on why Printed Travel Guidebooks will Survive

March was a bad month for travel guidebooks. First the BBC sold the venerable Lonely Planet brand to NC2 Media, an obscure digital distribution company backed by former tobacco tycoon Brad Kelley. Then, in a one-two punch, Google discontinued the print editions of Frommer's guidebooks. Is that it? Are print guidebooks being edged out by online content? Some commentators think so.

I'm not so sure. I've been on both sides of the divide, first writing guidebooks for Frommer's and Lonely Planet and now publishing the kinds of travel-planning websites that are supposed to replace guidebooks: croatiatraveller.com and frenchrivieratraveller.com. While a growing percentage of my visitors are accessing my websites through mobile devices, the overwhelming majority still consult my websites from their laptop or PC before leaving home.

I'm happy to provide digital content and certainly gobble it up when I plan a trip. I research online, download the relevant apps on my smartphone and put a free ebook or two on my tablet. For a weekend getaway, that's usually enough. If I can do without a guidebook, I will. But, for a first-time visit to a foreign country, you can bet that a dead-tree guidebook will be part of the mix. Here's why:

No Data Connection Necessary

More hotels are finally offering free wifi. Great! But the connection is not always speedy in all parts of the hotel. So, I point my device around like a dowser, watching the bars on my screen until I find the sweet spot where the connection is strong enough to get online, which is usually in the lobby.

Away from wifi, a smartphone requires a data connection which is where matters get complicated. First the phone must be "unlocked" if possible (it may now be illegal in America). Then, how many megabytes do I need on a prepaid SIM card with a data plan? 150? 500? Getting it set up invariably involves wasting a good part of the morning in a phone shop and the cost can be more than a guidebook. In France, a prepaid SIM card with a data plan is about €20 ($25).

Rick Steves Believes Printed Travel Guidebooks are not Dead

Rick Steves

Rick Steves on Printed Travel Guidebooks

Last month, three things happened that were interesting to me as a guidebook writer: After Google purchased the venerable Frommer's guidebook series, they announced that they would no longer keep them in print. http://goo.gl/WbquL I read an article about the "rapid decline of the printed guidebook." http://tinyurl.com/cgm57af And I got my biggest royalty check ever in payment for my guidebook sales.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a coffee with Arthur Frommer at the Washington DC Travel and Adventure Show. While he sold the guidebook series with his name on it a long time ago, Arthur still gives spirited talks at such shows all around the country. The first edition of his GI's Guide to Traveling in Europe, which eventually became the groundbreaking Europe on $5 a Day, was published the year I was born (1955). I have a copy of it on the bookshelf in my office as a kind of personal and thankful reminder of how Arthur’s work gave people like my parents the confidence to travel independently through Europe back when that was a new thing for middle-class Americans. You could make a case that without Arthur Frommer opening that door for my family in 1969, I’d still be teaching piano lessons.

I loved traveling with Arthur’s book for a decade (along with the backpackers’ guide, Let’s Go: Europe). Arthur’s personality — his sass, elegance, and Ivy League respect for culture and language — along with his passion for making Europe accessible (first to his fellow GIs, and ultimately to a whole generation of American travelers) inspired me. Way back in 1984, Arthur invited me to appear on his cable TV show and introduced me as “Rick Steves, the new Steve Birnbaum, Eugene Fodor, Temple Fielding of the travel guide industry.” At the time, his prediction seemed a little wacky, but — in part because most publishers have found it's cheaper to write and update guidebooks by committee rather than employ individual personalities — my generation has failed to produce a class of well-known guidebook writers. Arthur Frommer's endorsement was a huge break for me, and even though I had a hard time believing it, I used the quote a lot.

In an age of consolidation, when only big is viable, guidebook publishers are big and few in number. The major guidebook series in the USA are Fodor’s, Frommer's, Lonely Planet, Dorling Kindersley, and Rick Steves. And for many of these, the future looks shaky. Lonely Planet was owned by BBC in London for less than six years before they unloaded to a tobacco tycoon it for less than half what they originally paid. Its fate is unknown. Frommer's was purchased in August of 2012 by Google, who recently announced that they will let almost all of their 350 titles go out of print — leaving the company with piles of data to shuffle into its searchable banks, but no bookshelf presence. Dorling Kindersley (or "DK," publishers of the glossy, illustrated Eyewitness and Top 10 series) is owned by Penguin, and Fodor’s is owned by Random House — and now that those two publishing giants have agreed to a merger, DK and Fodor’s are likely to merge with them, creating more uncertainty.

And the Rick Steves line? We’re as strong and determined as ever. This week, I’m setting out with a band of 25 fellow researchers with the goal to visit in person virtually every sight, hotel, restaurant, launderette, train station, boat dock, and other place mentioned in our guidebooks, as we make them up-to-date for next year.

I think guidebook publishers are challenged in the same way news corporations are. It’s expensive for news services to pay for individual correspondents to bring home the news when it’s just out there on the Internet for all to scarf up — and viewers don’t necessarily respond to more costly, higher-quality journalism. And, in the case of TV news, the limited funds are much better spent on a good-looking anchorperson to read the news rather than quality people to gather it. That's why top-notch investigative journalism is at a critical low point these days.

Considering the modest profit margin for publishing a guidebook, publishers have a similar problem in hiring trained researchers to actually research their books in person. And new crowdsourcing alternatives to guidebooks (like TripAdvisor, CruiseCritic, Booking.com, Yelp, Urbanspoon, and so on) give travelers the impression that they have all the reviews they’ll ever need from other consumers. With the increasing popularity of these options, a tough business equation has become even tougher.

All of these review-based websites are certainly useful and informative, and I use them myself when traveling somewhere new. But I believe that — just as you wouldn't want to get all of your news from amateur bloggers — casual online reviewers take a hit-or-miss approach that isn't always an improvement on an experienced guidebook researcher with a trained eye. Most users reviewing hotels on TripAdvisor have experienced a few dozen hotels in their lives; a professional travel writer has inspected and evaluated hundreds, or even thousands. And, while these sites are particularly helpful for sleeping and eating, they do virtually nothing to explain what you're seeing when you get there. Guidebooks' sightseeing advice, self-guided museum tours, and neighborhood walks help you engage with and understand the place you've traveled so far to see, with a depth that crowdsourced websites don't even attempt. For all of these reasons, I find crowdsourced sites a handy tool to enhance, but not replace, the information I learn from a good guidebook.

Complicating matters is the advent of digital, non-print formats, which challenge traditional book-business thinking. But, while ebooks seem exciting, print sales still dominate (for now, at least); only about 15 percent of total guidebook sales are electronic.

Are guidebooks dead? Not yet, that’s for sure. I’m flying to Egypt and the Holy Land as I write this, my bag heavy with Lonely Planet, DK, and Bradt guides to Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinian Territories. The question can be interpreted in two ways: Will people still be traveling with good old-fashioned print guidebooks in tow? And is the entire concept of a guidebook (whether in print or electronic) still viable? My take: For another decade, travelers will be toting print editions of guidebooks. Slowly, print will be replaced by digital. There will be a battle between various electronic information services, including guidebooks. Many users will opt for GPS-driven, crowd-researched apps. But plenty of others will still use guidebooks in their futuristic digital format — probably souped up with streaming video and GPS features. And, God willing, I’ll still be out there making sure mine are accurate and up-to-date.

Travel Writers Angst Blog from Carl Parkes

Arthur Frommer Gets His Brand Name Returned

Arthur Frommer and his Daughter

Arthur Frommer Gets Back his Brand

Arthur Frommer gets back his namesake, but what does this possibly mean? He sold his guidebook series many years ago, and his daughter has attempted to keep it in the news just as the travel publishing world was collapsing. He doesn't really need to keep the brand going, but his name remains golden in a travel publishing world where few words and brands carry such weight.

Skift reports some of the details. The real story remains to be told.

I was interviewed years ago by Arthur Frommer on the Sausalito side of the Golden Gate Bridge just as the first edition of my Southeast Asia Handbook was released by Moon Publications. He was a very smart and quick guy who understood the industry and the venerable history of Indonesia Handbook from Bill Dalton. The interview was later shown on his travel section on cable TV. It was a moment in my short history as a travel writer, and I have always very much appreciated his educational and emotional approach to travel.

Long may his flag wave.