Travelblather

I lived in London for a decade and moved away because I'd had enough of grumpy people and ridiculous prices. I go up there for meetings a couple of times a month though. I buy a combined rail and London transport ticket so I've not had to purchase a single Tube (subway/Metro) ticket for many months. Yesterday, though, I did need to buy one. And I nearly fell over with shock. A single in Zone 1 (basically the cheapest ride you can buy) is £4. That's absolutely unbelievable! If I was a tourist I'd be totally shocked. (That's 8 bucks for an American tourist.) I was ranting about this to a friend whom I met up with later in the evening. He is a resident so has an Oyster pre-pay card. This is a rechargeable card that all residents use. Single journeys using an Oyster card are just £1.50. So casual purchasers are being seriously discriminated against. There's nothing to stop visitors buying Oyster cards for themselves and if you plan on visiting London and using public transport (which you're bound to need to do) then you'd be mad not to buy one. They're available on-line  before coming to the UK or from Tube stations and many shops when you get here. (The link above is for US tourists, click here and select your country of origin if you're not from the US.) Get yourself an Oyster card or get shafted.... Personally I think they should just stop even offering single use tickets and make people buy an Oyster card - the people who are losing out are those who don't realise that Oyster cards are available and so much cheaper - ie foreignors who struggle to read English. There's little obvious information explaining how much cheaper fares are with an Oyster card. That seems very unfair, descriminating against unwary visitors...

Me? I didn't fancy queueing to buy an Oyster card so I caught the bus instead... which cost £2. Bargain?!

Well, it seems like it took a lifetime, but in fact this time last year I'd only just signed the contract. And now, gracing the shelves of a bookshop near you is the new Frommer's Day by Day guide to Seville. At times I wondered if I'd ever get it finished, but now it's finally complete, well, it feels like a tremendous achievement. If you've not visited Seville... go. It's one of Europe's most compelling, romantic, visually delightful cities. (And of course, if you're looking for a guidebook then you could do worse than buy this one.)

There have been loads of posts all over the place about Thomas Kohnstamm's book  which allegedly reveals all sorts of short cuts that travel guide writers take to get the job done. Mainly because the pay is so poor, it's simply not finanically feasible to put in the amount of on the ground research needed, so people crib stuff from the net or worse still make it up!? There's some interesting commentary from Chris Taylor writing in Australia's  The Age Like Kohnstamm he too is an ex-Lonely Planet author. He very correctly points out that using freelance writers and paying them a fixed fee as is the case for almost all travel guide publishers these days (as far as I know) is hardly going to make for writers who are committed to going the extra mile to get the most accurate guide they can. And he's right.

And the solution? It's blindingly obvious: give guidebook writers royalties. Give them more ownership of the copy instead of treating them like copy monkeys. The better the book they write, the more it should sell and the more they should earn...

After a recent trip to Mexico we had a nasty duty free surprise. We'd bought a couple of bottles of Tequila and Kalhua at Mexico City airport duty free before boarding a flight to Amsterdam where we would transfer to a flight back to London. The bottles were sealed in a plastic bag with ties that you had to cut to get the bag open. But that made no difference at Amsterdam's Schipol airport.

We had to go through another security X ray before boarding our short flight to London and because the bottles had not been purchased at an EU airport they were confiscated. I understand why this happened... we were taking liquids on a plane that had not passed the (presumably stringent) security measures for them to be sold in EU airport duty free shops. But in practice it's nonsense. If I was a terrorist I'd have already blown the 747 we caught from Mexico City to Amsterdam out of the sky anyway... All baggage was x-rayed at Mexico City, but no one took the slightest notice of the bottle of water in my hand luggage. What was particularly annoying was that there were signs at Mexico City duty free that suggested it was perfectly OK to purchase liquids there. This is only the case if your destination airport from a non-EU country is your FINAL DESTINATION and you're NOT changing planes...

I'm chairing what should be a fascinating seminar next week. (Well that's in my humble opinion and this post has nothing whatsoever to do with self-promotion.) We'll be discussing the future of travel publishing... which with the onslaught of the internet is facing interesting times. The net is driving growth in travel - which you'd think would drive growth in travel guide sales... but at the same time the net is also providing stacks of free travel info and advice in direct competition with traditional guidebooks. So... huge opportunity coupled with significant risk. Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Stanfords bookshops, Penguin and Alastair Sawaday will all be participating. You can find out more here.