Unlikely Destinations - LP Story (Book Review)

"Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story - How Two Backpackers Trekked Across Asia and Revolutionized the World of Independent Travel". By Tony & Maureen Wheeler. Periplus Editions. #0794605230. c2007, 374 pages, $17.

This work is mostly as the subtitle states, the story of the Lonely Planet travel guidebooks project. The authors are the husband-and-wife team who launched what would become Lonely Planet (LP, hereafter). Though this enterprise is now basically a household name and multi-million dollar outfit, it did in reality start on a shoestring budget after they completed their first trek and found themselves stranded in Australia, with 27 cents to their names (some of the titles which helped build their empire were in the LP "On a Shoestring" series). In 1973, they ended up printing, stapling by hand, and distributing the pamphlet, "Across Asia on the Cheap!". Shortly thereafter they expanded the concept and came out with one of the great, modern travel guidebooks, "South-East Asia on a Shoestring".

The Wheeler's cover their lives from college days and that first overland crossing to Asia, right up to the present, including the future of travel and travel guidebooks in a global economy fraught with soaring fuels costs and occasional acts of terrorism (both of which can crush their particular love and line of business). "Unlikely Destinations" is essentially a travelogue, or a meta-travel-guidebook, with some added benefits. The entrepreneurial nature of their venture, and the obvious do-what-you-love business model, have led the book to be widely reviewed and recommended outside of autobiography and travel circles. The business side of their life, as peppered throughout this volume, has brought them added acclaim (though I apparently found far less business materials and insight than other readers).

The chapter, "All About Guidebooks", is rather interesting in that it deals with copyright, plagiarism, publishing snafus, and much more (the brief account of their inability to bribe Vietnamese police into enforcing laws which would prevent the Vietnamese government from continuing to pirate their in-country LP guide and pawning it off as an official government tourism product - while at the same time banning the sale and possession of the legitimate copies of the LP country guide- pretty much captures how "weird" some things can get). Per the travel industry, the book covers more than just their guidebooks; LP side projects from cook books to television programs to their award-winning website are also included, and these successes and failures (and they readily admit some of these were mistakes and others ended up accepted as break-even, labor-of-love ventures) shed light on what can happen when success grows bigger and/or faster than you prepared for or envisioned. Other chapters deal directly or indirectly with protests, boycotts, environmental records, and all that goes into operating an international business in an area where your major customers tend to be left-leaning, globally aware, and very vocal.

Even if you do not love "travel writing" per se, but enjoy the road or at least have an interest in successful attempts to turn one's passion into a business venture, then the book is well worth reading. It is perhaps especially interesting for those who are looking for bits and pieces of firsthand experience when it comes to dealing with quickly changing people, countries, products, and, of course, for anyone who has considered writing a guidebook or catering to those who so readily and faithfully rely on them.

Splitting up the material, with autobiography in one book and business commentary in another might have helped avoid some of the criticisms the book found in occasional reviews (then again, anticipating when the market would prove receptive to multiple offerings and when it will not reward two separate volumes, is perhaps something the authors have figured out over the last few decades in publishing?). There are surprisingly few accounts of actual guidebook competition. Perhaps, though this obviously exists, it has not become a significant focus of their lives, and hence is not found here in any great detail. Also, the book never addresses in any satisfactory fashion, the fundamental question of whether or not such guidebooks ultimately lead to the demise of the very thing they were trying to call attention to (in the end it is the same question raised in the face of ever-growing "eco-tourism"; namely, are you making money by promoting the uniqueness or value of something, and if you are successful in doing so, are you not at the same time acting as major force in the possible demise of that thing?).

Surprises?: Aside from the fact that they have, apparently, misspelled the country name on several book covers or spines, that: the U.S. is not the major market for LP guides; that, costs aside, the U.S. San Francisco LP office was not nearly as productive as those in the U.K. or Australia; that "Rough Guides" travel guidebooks (http://www.roughguides.com), are considered by Wheeler to be LP's (http://www.lonelyplanet.com) major competition, not Moon (http://www.moon.com) or Footprint (http://www.footprintbooks.com) -- and, for the record, all of these presses have decent Nicaragua-based titles printed as recently as 2006-2008, as well as regional titles covering much, if not all, of Central America.

Strange?: "Unhappily, these days we have to be much more cautious about getting model releases signed [signed statement of people photographed when the intent is to use the photograph for promotional or profit-making purposes] before we can use photographs of people. It's one of the sad developments that go with getting bigger" (p.243). Oddly, "getting bigger" is not what holds publishers accountable in this regard.

While not all of the book has a great deal of "flow" to it (Maureen Wheeler's input is inserted in break fashion, just snippets, comments and brief stories, really; and, only the first few sections of the book are offered in chronological fashion, and the interesting chapter on guidebooks brings the overall story to a halt), this didn't have much bearing on the read; the book is well done and interesting. Though the chapter listed as, "September 11 and All That", could have been better titled and could have been better handled (it comes off as, well, unfinished and unpolished - and not just the language and analysis of such an event through the eyes of lost travel dollars).

*** Tony Wheeler is also the author of recent more-than-just-dates-&-places travel literature, such as “Rice Trails: A Journey through the Rice Lands of Asia and Australia” (with photographer Richard L’ Anson), "Time & Tide: The Islands of Tuvalu" (with photographer Peter Bennetts), "Chasing Rickshaws" (again, with photographer L' Anson) and, most recently, "Bad Lands - A Tourist On the Axis of Evil" ; Though at times he has handled dozens of different titles, to this day he remains the LP guidebook author (or co-author) for the following recent titles: "East Timor", "Falkland & South Georgia Islands", "Tibet", "Paris", "Britain", "San Francisco", & "Tahiti" ***