Travel Guidebook Brands | Media Publishing

The dependence on travel guides is nothing new. In A Room with a View (1908), E.M. Forster characterized the power of the travel guide in the form of Miss Lucy’s consternation over the loss of her Baedeker while in Florence. Today, brand is one of the most important factors in travel book sales.

Mary Skiver, travel buyer for Borders Group, Inc., states that bookstores are keenly cognizant of how a strong brand can drive sales: “We often promote books by brand. We want our customers to associate Borders with the travel brands that they think are important.”

This perspective is clearly shared by publishers of top guidebook brands such as Lonely Planet which relish the fact their brands have clear consumer “pull.” Cindy Cohen, a spokesperson for Lonely Planet, remarks, “We continuously hear from our bookstore partners that Lonely Planet is a must-have for their shelves and that although many travelers come to their store to ‘browse,’ many come directly to buy the relevant Lonely Planet book.”

What do readers prize in a guidebook brand? The strongest brands have a distinctive style with which loyal users become familiar. Lonely Planet prides itself on its extensive and in-depth content. Cohen describes the “engaging and reliable” content as the result of “dedicated, well-trained authors who are constantly out on the road updating the content, discovering new places, and seeing what is changing.” Lonely Planet’s reputation is so entrenched that after September 11, 2001, one of the key indicators that Kabul was about to get attacked was that all the bookstores in Washington DC suddenly sold out of the Lonely Planet guides to Afghanistan.

In addition to content and tone, the format in which information is presented can form the backbone of a guidebook brand. Access, published by Harper Collins, was the first guidebook to adopt the neighborhood-by-neighborhood format, designed by its founder, Richard Saul Wurman. An architect by training, Wurman sought to reveal the treasures of each city from a local perspective. Series editor for Access, Edwin Tan (no relation to author), maintains that Access remains “the only guide that takes you street-by-street into the heart of the city neighborhood.” Access, Tan says, is a particular boon for business travelers who tend to find themselves stuck in a neighborhood. According to Tan, the success of this format is so effective that 60 to 80 percent of first-time users of Access will buy another guide in the series, and 30 to 40 percent will purchase the volume for the city in which they live.

As with all brands, repeat purchases are true tests of loyalty. Customers buy guidebooks according to series rather than author, relying on word-of-mouth or a previous good experience with the brand.

While consistency is important, many brands need to evolve with their customers. Lonely Planet, for example, first developed its reputation on the strength of its travel guides to remote or difficult areas in Asia, with advice for surviving on shoestring budgets. Over the last three decades, the brand has worked hard to broaden itself to encompass, in Cohen’s words, customers with “an independent spirit and a passion for travel that isn’t necessarily tied to a particular budget or travel style.” In this way, Lonely Planet can assert its relevance to a wider audience, while maturing with its loyal backpacker, following as their travel habits change and their budgets grow. In reinforcing Lonely Planet as the authority on “travel inspiration in all its forms,” the brand has extended its scope to food guides, travel literature, television programs, and digital products.

While some brands seek to broaden their audience, others have concentrated on particular niche markets. One of the newest titles in the market has made this notion central to its brand. Catering exclusively to the luxury traveler, Nota Bene has eschewed the most basic rule of the travel guidebook: that people want to read about where they plan to go. Instead, this review series examines choice destinations that readers may feasibly visit.

Primarily available by subscription, each issue of Nota Bene features one glamorous destination and updates the reader on emerging travel trends. Andrea Spiegel, spokesperson for Nota Bene, explains the positioning of the brand: “Nota Bene is the must-have travel accessory, akin to the Louis Vuitton bag.” The brand focuses on how one travels, not where one may go. Back issues are available as boxed gift sets, reportedly a favorite with celebrities such as fashion designer Anya Hindmarch. In this sense, Nota Bene readers are implicitly members of the same club -- those whose travel needs are dictated by design and luxury.

In fact, guidebooks have long been emblems of particular stereotypes: Nota Bene represents higher-end travel, French backpackers can be seen clutching Routard, and intrepid young adults earnestly consult their National Geographic guides. In some cases, the brand can even act as a beacon for sociability among travelers. Let’s Go readers find each other in the hostels of Budapest, confident that questions such as “What college do you go to?” or “How many cities have you covered already?” are appropriate opening lines.

A guidebook is so much more than a collection of facts on a destination. And a successful guidebook brand thrives on the congruence between itself and its reader's idea of travel -- it's a mediator between its user and the world. And just as Miss Lucy gazed wistfully at the other British tourists with their noses in their Baedekers, a guidebook brand also sends signals about its reader to the rest of the world.

[12-May-2003]

Patricia Tan recently contributed a chapter to Interbrand's latest book on branding in the pharmaceutical industry, Brand Medicine (2001).


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