Travelblather

The future of the guidebook – a series of guest posts by Mark Henshall

This is the last in a series of five guest posts – today answering the question:

How is the pressure from online booksellers affecting traditional bookshop
(These views are my own and not necessarily those of my Publisher.)

Publishers evolve, brands develop and so do those, importantly, who make this all count: the people; the writers and editors, as we’ve discussed. Retail needs the same level of innovation and adaptability, and you can see this played out right now between the high-street and online suppliers.

A smaller retail environment means a narrower offering and less choice for travellers on the ground. In my opinion, for the sake of variety, it would be good to see a balance between high-street and online shopping. Online provides a huge opportunity for book sales and other new travel experiences to flourish, but I really think there’s something to be gained from being in a store and flicking through a book in your hand, that you can’t always get online.

These days we speak a lot about “social” in terms of social media and apps etc. However, there is a face-to-face human “social” transaction we miss when we purchase online. I wonder if this aspect will be happily given up altogether and what its impact will be if it is?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m as screen-fixated as the next person and find online sites a godsend when I’m looking for information , but I wonder if the resilience in the children’s sector (see my previous post: Is the travel guidebook on the verge of extinction? ) has something to do with the value of in-store shopping activity? And will we lose something in that shopping activity (beyond rabid consumerism, of course…). John Naughton’s thoughts about whether shopping as a social activity will trump the economy and convenience of online are really interesting. I’ve also got some time for Will Self’s take on online shopping, which makes me long for great, little indy bookshops!

Nonetheless many of us do seem to like the simplicity and convenience of the online book shopping experience and I can’t see the increase in online shopping abating. But I think it would be a great shame if bookshops don’t keep a visible presence on our streets as part of the overall piece, and I’m talking streets here as well as out-of-town destinations. Conversely, while “bricks-and-clicks” are integrating, I believe we’ll see more online players take to the high street looking primarily for brand engagement and click-and-collect options, rather than as a main sales driver, like the recent eBay pop-up shop.

The upside for a book retailer such as Waterstones could be that it creates an online environment which offers more access points to stay engaged with the travel community. An enhanced site has been promised, come June, when its website platform returns from the domain of its previous owner HMV. This kind of blurring of the physical and virtual markets strikes me as a good thing. That said, it will be interesting to see how new MD James Daunt overhauls Waterstones’ bricks and mortar locations to offer something distinct. He has spoken about a drive to connect shops to “local” communities and his appointment – given his background as the founder of Daunt Travel Books chain - was well received by the industry as a whole.

How do we stack up as a nation? Phillip Downer wrote a great piece comparing London and New York City shops, such as McNally Jackson “elite and accessible” and the Scholastic Store where “‘reading is a fun adventure’ slogans come to life”. It gives me hope there’s different initiatives to get shops busy.

For a feel of being a bookseller on the ground check out the sharp blog by DorianThornley, who runs Westsider Books, NY. This taps into the paradigm shift in book culture covered in my first post and how booksellers are meeting the challenge.

If the high-street is to flourish it will need to compete, add value, and tap more into consumer behaviour. Things to consider? How stores use and develop: space; brands; the list range; events; seasonality; value; service; emotional connection; integrate online and e-book selling; and provide a focus for customers. The high-street needs to be smarter than ever. My own positive experience of shopping with children - kids being switched on and engaged to discover new books - and the robustness of that particular sector, leads me to think that other areas in-store need the same care and attention, to replicate the experience for adults.

If we look at travel operators for comparison on the high-street, what are we to make of new shop openings by Kuoni? Or of Virgin opening their first retail store in High Street Kensington? Andrew Aylett, Planning Director, OgilvyAction thinks Virgin is tapping into something here with what he calls “cutting edge digital technology and good old-fashioned hospitality”. For Aylett, the way ahead lies in the “emotional connection that sits behind their proposition” and in creating a memorable and compelling brand experience.

One thing I’d agree with Aylett on is the use of “storytelling” as a social currency that “drives involvement beyond the confines of the outlet”. Travel is, perhaps, very well-placed to create something powerful that resonates for customers in this area, offline and online. The creation of imaginative storytelling for a ‘traveller’s arc’ (planning to post-trip memories) is something I touched upon in my first post. For travel providers and retailers, I see this opportunity to curate stories as a virtuous circle of recommendation and engagement for the reader, and perhaps a space in which to craft and design something radical, individual and enduring.

What do you think?

 Image: Sergio Montijano

The future of the guidebook – a series of guest posts by Mark Henshall

This is the fourth in a series of five guest posts – today answering the question:

How does the changing guidebook marketplace affect guidebook writers and how do they need to adapt?

The different ways in which a writer can now get their work read have never been greater. There’s opportunity now to experiment with different products/formats as never before. As traditional media (e.g. print newspaper travel sections) suffer with a decline in advertising and the move to digital quickens, other avenues spring up. These are not obviously always easy to monetise, but for those prepared to work hard it’s a pioneering time in travel publishing.

The move to digital means guidebook content can be updated more frequently and a good travel publisher will seek out the top writers to help achieve this. I think the old mould of one writer going to numerous countries and reporting back has now been broken and the overall trend is towards more local writers. However, it’s still about getting the best writer for the job. A local writer has the advantage of economy of travel and local insights, but a good writer coming into town always has a fresh set of eyes, too: both scenarios I believe can work.

The business is evolving rapidly, so if we’re talking about new writers entering travel writing, they need to be adaptable and get the basics right. In print or digital, editorial rigour is vital. You need to be able to write for different platforms to make it work. But, of course, there’s opportunity there to go it alone, experiment and endeavour as the guidebook concept evolves, innovate as travellers demand information in new ways, figure out different partnerships, and find a path that works for you. I see multiple models of working, including writers self-publishing and getting picked up by traditional publishing houses.

Any publisher working in travel will be looking to develop new skills in people passionate about writing and travel, but dedicated in the digital arena. Being digitally aware, competent and having some affinity for it is certainly crucial in the next wave of publishing. Being technically savvy will give you a head-start, but as long as you’re willing to learn, good writing will be the foundation on which to develop I’d hope.

As the migration to digital rapidly increases I still see Publishers as very much a part of the picture. There will be an increase in self-publishing, smaller publishers entering the market and non-publishing outfits emerging as covered in my other posts, but I think the partnership between a Publisher and author can still produce something of high-quality and is worth pursuing. Both Ian Rankin and Anthony Horowitz have commented on this recently. Publishers willing to adapt rapidly and seek new spaces to develop travel content can still form innovative partnerships with good writers.

I back writers as well. I back good writers to be imaginative, innovative entrepreneurs and force change themselves - as has always been the case. Just as Publishing is evolving, content is transforming, and Publishers need to evolve and experiment, freelance writers acting as small businesses will make it happen by asking why? Why can’t I write in this particular way? Partner in that way or forge a new and unique relationship like this? They will question and find unique ways of approaching travel.

Demand for content won’t just come from Publishers, of course. Various other media/companies (e.g. SMEs) and sources will look to distinguish themselves, and writers will be able to meet this need with engaging, creative and inspiring content from words online to video on a tablet. A few of the people who have commented on these posts have already worked on these kind of innovative projects such as the Grantourismo/HomeAway Holiday-Rentals collaboration and Round the World Flights blog content.

Again, I’d reiterate, it’s not one standard business model, cookie-cutter future we’re looking at, but something much more varied and stimulating.

Image: laverrue

The future of the guidebook – a series of guest posts by Mark Henshall

This is the third in a series of five guest posts – today answering the question:

How can a traditional guidebook publisher innovate its way out of the declining guidebook market?

Regardless of the format, the starting point still has to be excellent quality content and expertise. Even before we get into delivery/platform discussion, I think long-term (and especially since the Google Panda updates) this is paramount. I also think it is worth not losing sight of the fact that high-quality travel experiences can be life-changing; creating rich, meaningful stories. You want to match that passion within the travel community by creating the most inspiring and imaginative tools for travellers - from print to online to apps.

To be relevant it’s important to experiment, be flexible, evolve products for a rapidly changing market and know your audience. Publishers need to drive innovation and technological advances to create exciting and indispensible products, strive to improve content, and form solid and productive relationships with authors and partners.

The digital arena offers a huge opening for Publishers looking to be creative and offer travellers stimulating new content. Perhaps because the wider community (e.g. Science, Technology, Education) at Wiley (Frommer's' umbrella publisher) demanded digital early on we’ve been able to move travel towards other platforms quickly. Peter Balis, director of digital content sales for Wiley’s P&T division, has recently outlined how this digital shift and new infrastructure happened.

Some of what we’ve been trying at Frommer’s lately has included a significant new push on Frommers.com to create rich, engaging content (news, features, expert advice & travel ideas, tips & tools, newsletters, forums, deals, slideshows…), resulting in both a rapid growth in page views but also in reader engagement (which, interestingly, is much higher with users browsing on an iPad). Frommer's is also developing new apps, ShortCut e-books; Remix custom guides; and engaging more widely through social media. It’s also a time for trying new partnerships such as Frommer’s collaboration on the new Wenzani app with Lonely Planet and Time Out, breaking new ground.

On the B2B side, Publishers can also obviously gain from the flexibility of high quality content with detailed metadata to provide inspiring local detail and travel experiences, insider knowledge and a fresh perceptive. Here’s a look at what we’ve been working on for clients from WTM in November.

It’s a really exciting time to be in travel publishing. When you have an idea you’re thinking ‘could this make an online feature, app, enhanced e-book, short e-book, video, slide show, audio guide, series, standalone book?’ Or all of the above.

The digital world creates a really exciting arena to reach readers in a creative way.

What other challenges and opportunities do you see for guidebook publishers?

Image by WanderingTheWorld

I just checked - I published 23 posts in 2011. Just about one a fortnight. I had some help from some great guests too.

So, looking back, which of my posts do I think are really insightful? Which ones do I think I'd tell a newcomer to Travelblather to read? Here's my top 5 for 2011. Interestingly(?) they are often posts that didn't get that many comments. Perhaps because they are more distilled and emphatic with less room for discussion? What do you think?

Free Sucks - Seriously I hate it
This theme percolates through much of my writing here on Travelblather. The idea that free is always good is frankly lazy and stupid. It typifies the mindset of the dumb consumer endlessly feeding on stuff that they are thrown - just because they can. With no thought about why it's free and what the implications are longer term of accepting it. Free is often really, really bad. This post explains why.

Forget Content - Think Curation and Connections
One of my first posts of 2011, this I think remains pretty pertinent - why create yet more content just because you can if someone else has done a great job already? With the zillions of new pages of content being added all the time online, search engines are struggling to make sense of it all. Maybe real people hold the final answer!

Choose Your 'Friends' Wisely
Many commentators suggest that social media came of age in 2011. Did it? I'm not so sure. But one thing is for certain, our online connections will have increasing importance as we go forward - in all sorts of ways. Some good, some bad. Maybe we need to think more carefully about who we are 'friends' with online and why?

Will Quality Content Beat Social Connections?
Just one comment on this post. But for me it's a bit of a call to arms for content creators. I feel strongly that the skills we possess are so undervalued in the online world. I remain convinced - as I say in this post - that quality, niche content written by experts will outlast the current excitement about social media and the social graph.

Endemic Corruption Or Just A Travel Press Trip?
OK. This one did garner a lot of comments (over 50). As often happens when the comments snowball, they went off topic quite a bit. There's some really interesting innovation going on with the travel blogging community as they seek to monetize their work more aggressively. I admire their boldness, but because travel bloggers are publishers as well as writers they risk alienating their readers if they get too caught up in chasing the bucks too overtly.

Thanks everyone who has read and commented in the last year. It's been great fun!

Any posts you found particularly useful? Anything you'd like to see more or less of in 2012? I'd love to hear what you think.

Welcome the very excellent Tamsin Bishton-Hemingray - previously Head of Content at iCrossing and all round super-experienced web content person. I can't recommend her highly enough if you're looking for help with content or content strategy.

I've been badgering her to write me something for Travelblather... and now, here it is!

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This summer I spent a wonderful week inter-railing around Italy with my family. We spent 36 hours in Venice, a couple of days in Rome and a couple on the coast in the Cinque Terra national park. As well as being a fantastic holiday, it also gave me the opportunity to try out a travel app on my HTC Android phone, which being a content geek was quite exciting to me. I was really disappointed by the experience. This blog post explains why, and why I think that travel publishers have got to work a lot harder on their apps before they are going to put good, old-fashioned guidebooks out of business.

Planning the trip
Planning this holiday required some forethought. There were a lot of things that we wanted to do and see in Venice and Rome, and only limited time to do and see them all in. We sorted out our accommodation online ahead of time using a combination of TripAdvisor recommendations for Venice and Rome, and a superbly useful B&B website which uses a searchable Google map to help you find a B&B exactly where you want one – in my case the tiny village of Manarola.

Then we turned our thoughts to planning our holiday activities. Despite both being web-savvy types, we headed straight to the book shop – because in our experience online travel content of this kind is still poorly lacking.

Guidebooks, ebooks, maps or apps?
We went to the lovely Waterstones in Brighton and sat down in the travel section to work out what we needed. My husband had youthful brand loyalties to Lonely Planet while I had fond memories of a week in Paris when I was 18 with the Rough Guide as my companion - so we knew we wanted a guide book. But should we buy one each for Venice and Rome, or just buy one for the whole of Italy?

As we browsed the bookshelves we also searched the Android Marketplace for apps. These were much cheaper than the printed guidebooks.  But we wanted to balance cost with having enough detail to help us get the best out of our holiday.

And then there were maps. We definitely needed a good map of Venice, and one of Rome.

In the end we bought the following:
Rome Compass (Lonely Planet app) – 49p
The Rough Guide to Italy (10^th edition, March 2011) - £15.99
Pocket Rough Guide to Venice (Including large map) written and researched by Jonathan Buckley - £7.99

We were relying on the app to be our map in Rome, and the pull-out large scale map in the Venice guidebook to help us there.

How good were our guides?

App: Lonely Planet Rome Compass
I downloaded this app for 49p while we were still browsing in Waterstones because it was published by Lonely Planet. In fact, it was the only relevant app that I could find on the Android Marketplace from a publisher I trusted.  I was surprised how important this issue of trust was. My phone is an important tool – and I felt nervous about downloading an app from a publisher  I didn’t know. I felt even more nervous about giving my credit card details to them. So I rejected unknown publishers immediately.

I was excited by the Rome app because the blurb said you could use your phone’s camera function to display an “augmented reality” map giving you directions to the places you wanted to go to in Rome, a bit like a SatNav display from your phone. As I fired it up in Waterstones, I realised that, durrr, I was going to have to wait until I was in Rome itself to see how this actually worked from a usability point of view! There was also static content in short guidebook-style sections – Eat, Drink, Sleep etc. But the content in here wasn’t very detailed and didn’t provide indications of things like price range – something that was a critical factor for us. We were holidaying on a budget.  And it was also clunky to search for things and there didn’t seem to be a way to search by location or type of restaurant without using the map function.

So before I even got to Rome I was feeling a bit nervous about using this app.

Once there, things got worse. I had been receiving regular text messages from my provider (Vodafone) about my data usage reminding me that I had a “passport” and so would pay a fixed fee for a certain amount of data usage – but then an astronomical amount per MB once I passed my limit. It meant that I got worried about using data services on my phone. And without data services, the app was next to useless. On the couple of occasions I turned it on, it was so slow to load that my husband had already found what we needed to know in our print edition Rough Guide To Italy.

After our first afternoon of failing to find our way around with the app, I switched it off. We got a great map from the reception of our B&B – complete with the receptionist’s recommendations on how to get to the major sites, and we used the Rough Guide for everything else.

In short, the app was crap. This was partly because it was so hard to search for stuff, and partly because with roaming costs for mobiles still so high, I was just too worried about my mobile bill to use it.

Lonely Planet need to give users a clear indication of the amount of data the app is likely to use. They also need to add content and make it much more easy to search and bookmark for future reference. For me one of the advantages of a digital guidebook should be that I can carry around lots and lots of information without having to carry around a weighty book. Having less detail than the print version just doesn’t make sense.

Rough Guide to Italy
This rocked in comparison to the app. Easy to find stuff (just use the index), quick to flick through, simple to bookmark (just fold the corner), fun to browse in more detail on train journeys (no batteries or mobile signal required), jam-packed with reliable and important detail, it absolutely trounced the app. We used it for Venice, Rome and Cinque Terre and also had fun reading up about the parts of Italy that we just glanced fleetingly through the window of our train. Yes it was 30 times more expensive than the app, but it was worth every penny.

But – as with my previous experiences of Rough Guides – the small maps included alongside the fantastic detail were consistently pretty useless and often completely wrong. We would have got lost many times if we had relied on them. So it wasn’t completely perfect.

Pocket Rough Guide to Venice
We bought this because of the pull out map, and because we were worried the Rough Guide To Italy wouldn’t have enough detail. Actually, we could have lived without it. And the pull out map was a little bit inaccurate when it came to locating recommended cafes and gelateria. The best map we found to Venice was (like the one used in Rome) the one that was provided to us by our fabulous B&B; it was clear, easy to understand, accurate and free. We brought one home with us to use next time we visit Venice.

So what?
As a content geek, I’ve been reading for years now about how mobile phones are becoming our favourite way to access content of all types. I was really excited about the idea of an app that would fuse Google Maps data and guidebook content into a new format right there in the palm of my hand. But practicalities got in the way. There are a few people who will take their phones on holiday with them and not worry about the cost of use. But there are a lot more people like me who really worry about that expenditure. I might just take the risk if the content in the app was more detailed, more up to date and easier to access. But it wasn’t.  There was less detail than the guidebook. And on top of that, you just can’t flick through an app the way you can flick through a book. These are both critical flaws in my opinion.

For me, the bottom line is that the new medium isn’t enough. The content and the experience have to be top notch too. Based on the Compass experience, I think travel apps still have a way to go.