Exploring the use and impact of travel guidebooks

Introduction 15Guidebook Terminology in Tourism Research 16Conceptions of Travel Guidebooks in the Research Literature 19Genre, Genre Theory and Guidebook Texts in Action 23Conceptualisa

Exploring the Use and Impact of Travel Guidebooks

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Exploring the Use

and Impact of Travel Guidebooks

Victoria Peel and Anders Sørensen

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Exploring the use and impacts of travel guidebooks / Victoria Peel and Anders Sørensen Bristol, UK; Tonawanda, NY: Channel View Publications, [2016]

Tourism and Cultural Change: 48 | Includes bibliographical references and index LCCN 2015034164| ISBN 9781845415631 (hbk : alk paper) | ISBN 9781845415624 (pbk : alk paper) | ISBN 9781845415648 (ebook)

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Introduction 15Guidebook Terminology in Tourism Research 16Conceptions of Travel Guidebooks in the Research

Literature 19Genre, Genre Theory and Guidebook Texts in Action 23Conceptualisation 25

Conclusion 30

Introduction 31

Guidebooks in the Historical Narrative of Western Tourism 33

A Guidebook is a Guidebook: Defining the Historical Text 40Conclusion 47

Introduction 49The Guidebook as Mediator of Understanding 50

Conclusion 60

5 According to the Guidebook: Exploring Lonely Planet’s Australia 61

Introduction 61

Guidebook Relevance and ‘Real Travellers’ 95Guidebooks Influencing Personal Interactions 97

Guidebook Usage in the Trip Cycle: ‘The When’ 117

Guidebook Usage for Purpose: ‘The What’ 122Challenging Assumptions on Guidebook Usage 128Conclusion 130

Introduction 131

Travel Guidebook Use and Users 132Methodology 134Guidebook Function: Information Sources and

9 Permission to Coast? Travel Guidebooks and

Introduction 148

Case Study 1 Melbourne: Perceived Impact of Lonely

Planet Guidebooks Among Tourism Operators in a

Case Study 2 Copenhagen: Perceived Impact of

Guidebooks Among Hoteliers and Other

Case Study 3 Bali: Perceived Importance of Guidebooks

Among Quality Accommodation Providers 159Case Study 4 Fiji: Perceived Importance of Guidebooks

Among Centrally and Peripherally Located

Assumption 2: Guidebooks and Stages of Destination

Development 174

Assumption 3: Guidebooks as Agents of Destruction 179Conclusion 183

11 Transformations in the Age of e-Tourism: The End of the

Guidebook As We Know It? 185Introduction 185The Guidebook: Internet Nexus in Information Search 187User Perspectives on Internet Resources and Printed

Guidebooks 190 Quality, Portability and Convenience: Incorporating

The Business of Guidebooks and e-Platforms 202Conclusion 204

12 The Stigma of Guidebooks: Causes and Questions 206

Introduction 206

The Guidebook and the Tourism Researcher 214Conclusion: The Guidebook and Cultural Change 217References 220Index 240

Guidebooks and Tourism

Discourse

In Berlin, in the days before the First World War, legend tells us that precisely

at the stroke of noon (…), Kaiser Wilhelm used to interrupt whatever he was doing inside the Palace (…) He would say: “With your kind forbearance, gentlemen,

I must excuse myself now, to appear in the window You see, it says in the Baedeker

that at this hour I always do.”

or Rough Guide for information on the cheapest and cleanest bed in town And so on and so on For at least a century and a half, travel guidebooks have routinely been ascribed a significant impact on the performance

of tourism, and the congruent growth of international individual mass tourism and guidebook publication since the 1960s has only strengthened that impression Yet, while popular representations of guidebook impacts regularly describe a massive and regrettable influence on tourists and destinations, neither the guidebook nor its critique has been subjected

to significant academic interrogation Indeed, scholarly understanding

of guidebooks seems often to obliquely buttress a condescending view of guidebooks rather than examining the critique.

The overarching aim of this book is therefore to problematise thinking surrounding the guidebook and, by extending knowledge of this ubiquitous element of travel, to further understanding of the tourism system We ask how guidebooks have been represented as influencing tourists and their tourism, both historically and in the contemporary scene, and their effect

on the creation of tourism places in different contexts Through critically deconstructing the framing of guidebooks in both popular and scientific writings, we expose and question a number of built-in assumptions about guidebooks and guidebook use A pervasive component of travel paraphernalia, guidebooks are often mentioned but less scrutinised in the research literature Yet, despite the lack of research – or perhaps precisely because of it – guidebooks and guidebook use are surrounded by a number of somewhat conflicting understandings

Chief among these are assumptions at the heart of the customary denouncing of the guidebook and their users as representative of all that

is superficial in modern tourism The fleeting, routine encounters with tourists’ guidebook usage described in the opening paragraph temptingly elicit in the mind cultural theorist Roland Barthes’ (1972: 76) notorious

criticism of the Guide Bleu to Spain as ‘an agent of blindness’ Certainly,

disdain, even mockery, of guidebooks, and those who carry them, has a long history (see Buzard in Gilbert, 1999: 282) In 1876, readers of the English

satirical magazine, Punch (cited in Berghoff et al., 2002: 172), understood well

the comedic derision of a rhyme describing a participant on one of Thomas Cook’s package tours as bereft of ideas other than those imparted by ‘the red

book’, his Murray’s guide or handbook:

Learns to like and to look

By his Guide or his Book

Now he likes his routes Cooked

His opinion red-booked

Contesting this, however, guidebooks can also be seen as signposting the increasing individualisation of the tourist experience in recent time From the mid-1950s until the mid-2000s, growth in the guidebook publishing industry suggests a developing influence of guidebooks on tourist decision-making and thus on tourism more broadly The increasing diversity of guidebooks signifies growing demand differentiation and tourists can now acquire a variety of titles on a destination, including the most remote regions In this way, the rapid growth of the guidebook industry in the last

half century enabled what Koshar (2000: x) describes as the ‘individuating functions of tourism’ According to Koshar (2000: 2), the travel guidebook,

‘in spite (or perhaps because) of its tightly woven itineraries, creates a space for significant individual practice’, a perspective shared by guidebook publishers who represent their series as a liberating rather than a regulating device in the pursuit of travel

A second common and largely unsupported assumption is that of the power of the guidebook as an arbiter of a destructive mass tourism

In mainstream English-speaking media, growth of the guidebook market over the last four decades is often illustrated by the success of publishers such as Lonely Planet and Rough Guide As these publishers have a reputation as suppliers of guidebooks to less ‘touristed’ locations, it is frequently presumed that such guidebooks pave the way for destination development, tourism growth, and cultural change at the tourism periphery However, there is little evidence to support this Indeed, it might equally be argued that the causality is in fact the other way around and that the growth of guidebook publications is the result of increasing affluence which has in turn fuelled the expansion of international tourism Following that train of argument, tourism growth in most locations would have happened with or without the guidebook, which cannot be entirely represented as spearheading such expansion

This, in turn, offers another angle to the understanding of those guidebooks most commonly associated with destination growth A simple analysis of publishers’ websites indicates that the majority of publications from guidebook publishers, including those once routinely termed

‘alternative’, cover well-established tourist destinations Here, guidebooks are but one source of information among a plethora of brochures, leaflets and booklets, oral information provided in tourist bureaux, internet promotion, travelogues, glossy picture books and various forms of social media presence Thus, it can be argued that in many locations, the popularity

of guidebooks is not derived from a need for place-specific information

that cannot be found elsewhere In such cases, guidebooks may be seen

as fulfilling a need for guidance through the wealth of information about established tourist destinations

In flipping the coin once more, it may equally be argued that precisely the destinations that are inundated with information are also those where,

in recent years, information search and dissemination have gone online Indeed, change seems to be blowing through the guidebook industry

as companies jostle to find purchasers in a crowded and diversifying marketplace Guidebook publisher Frommer’s US sales declined from

$34 million to $18 million between 2006 and 2012 with Lonely Planet

sales likewise declining from $25 million to $18 million concurrently (G.M., 2013) The travel guidebook as conventionally conceived is being transformed by the intersection of rapid technological development and trends in consumer demand The effect of such changes on the place and practice of the guidebook in contemporary and future tourism is unknown, but commentators are variously divided on whether the guidebook is continuing or coming to a halt, is transforming into an e-platform entity with much of its original character intact, or is evolving into something as yet unknown.

The very coexistence of such contradictory understandings surrounding the guidebook suggests to us a domain of culturally embedded knowledge where not only the use and influence of the guidebook in tourism but also the various meanings ascribed and attitudes towards it warrant a wide-ranging critical enquiry Ours is not a defence of the guidebook, but

a requalification of guidebook critique through peeling back the layers of truisms and discourse that have framed understandings of guidebooks and their influence on tourism

We contend that guidebooks are more than functional tools subject to elitist ridicule They are cultural items, routinely present in tourism for two centuries, dynamic and interactive with tourism, moving, changing and reflecting cultural change in tourism itself Our interest in the guidebook

is therefore as an historical and contemporary artefact of tourism which

is significantly more complex than is often identified, and whose meaning

in a larger setting of tourism and cultural change deserves a multifaceted exploration

Guidebook Research

Despite criticism by Fussell (1980) and others who regard guidebooks

as little more than the ephemeral and superficial ‘debasement of an earlier and more sophisticated travel literature from the Enlightenment’ (Koshar, 1998: 324), the guidebook has begun to receive more attention as an artefact

of tourism Yet, while tourism researchers have made extensive passing reference to travel guidebooks, focused analysis of guidebook agency and theory is limited and guidebook conceptualisation remains weak (Peel

et al., 2012) We have identified four clusters of research activity referencing

guidebooks Together with seven areas of research lacunae which are described below, they frame the content of this book

Cluster 1: Guidebooks and tourism history Guidebooks have received

varied attention in accounts of the familiar narrative history of Western tourism focused on the European Grand Tour tradition and the evolution

of 19th-century mass tourism Historians’ interest in the guidebook as

a resource for deciphering Western consumer interests and the imperial project is particularly extensive (e.g Buzard, 1993; Koshar, 2000; Michalski, 2004; Palmowski, 2002; Parsons, 2007; Scott, 1998; Vaughan, 1974; Withey, 1998)

Yet, historians’ use and interpretation of the guidebook, in both the writing of tourism history and as a subject of historical inquiry in its own right, have advanced slowly Broad assumptions regarding guidebook use, which Therkelsen and Sørensen (2005) observed in the literature on contemporary tourism, appear equally evident among those who would seek to understand tourism histories and who have based their analysis

on the guidebook for this purpose In addition, while referenced in much historical narrative, the guidebook frequently receives atheoretical treatment, diminishing insight into the guidebook in the conduct of tourism and its performative features The content, character and omissions of research into guidebooks and tourism history are the subject of Chapter 3

in this book

Cluster 2: Guidebook texts and images Scholars’ analyses of guidebook

texts and images to elucidate how guidebooks represent place, culture and history have resulted in a reasonable body of research (e.g Bhattacharyya,

1997; Gritti, 1967; Jacobsen & Dann, 2003; Jacobsen et al., 1998; Kelly, 1998;

Lew, 1991; Lisle, 2008; Siegenthaler, 2002) Much of the research within this cluster is situated within sociological and cultural theory perspectives which perceive the textual and/or visual content of guidebooks as an encoded source of mediated messages directing the ‘tourist gaze’ (Urry, 1990) Research approaches range from empirically descriptive elucidation

of content and appraisal of textual representation and its accuracy and truthfulness, to various forms of content or discourse analysis

However, there is a latent shortcoming in this approach which assumes that users of guidebooks necessarily perform according to script We are also reminded of Franklin’s (2003: 97) caution about the limitations of the kind of textual approach influenced by the recent cultural turn in the social sciences in which ‘tourist things’ are rendered significant ‘only in what they represent; as a meaningful set of signs and metaphors’ In Chapter 4,

we question how far findings based on textual/image analysis can take

us in understanding the corporeal functioning of the guidebook in the tourism system

Cluster 3: Guidebooks as mediators of tourism practice The research in

this cluster refocuses on material culture and ‘the object’ in human action and is akin to other interrogation of tourism praxis involving materialities such as the camera (Robinson & Picard, 2009), photographs (Crang, 2006),

souvenirs (Morgan & Pritchard, 2005) and walking boots (Edensor, 2000) This agenda has provided a welcome addition to the focus on signs and metaphors in tourism by advocating for a ‘social life of things’ (Appadurai, 1986) perspective offering an understanding of guidebooks as mediators

in touristic ‘worldmaking’ (Hollinshead, 2007, 2009) Such work has raised guidebooks to the status of ‘dynamic objects’ (McGregor, 2000) which offer a unique means through which to interpret the practical engagement of tourists within different cultural milieu These approaches usefully signify the guidebook as an active agent in tourism experience facilitating the way ‘meanings are constructed, contested and circulated through discourse as tourism knowledge’ (Caruana & Crane, 2011: 1501) Generally, however, analysis of the guidebook as an object through which tourism is performed and which exerts a material influence in their use

by tourists remains, like much guidebook research, sporadic (Beck, 2006;

Caruana & Crane, 2011; Lisle, 2008; McGregor, 2000; Wilson et al., 2009;

Young, 2009)

Overall, the research within this cluster both benefits from, and contributes to, understanding how tourism texts influence tourist behaviour and experiences more broadly Tourism texts in general, and travel guidebooks in particular, are not necessarily passively accepted

by the user, but are met with varying levels of resistance and diverse interpretations In particular, they are contested by the (anti-)tourism discourse that scaffolds the enduring traveller–tourist dichotomy There

is a need to investigate this mesh of anti-tourism one-upmanship further and guidebooks, which are a palpable symbol of this dichotomy in diverse ways, offer a prism for such research Much textual analysis frames the reader – the tourist user – as predisposed towards unconditional acceptance of the messages conveyed in words or photographs unmediated

by any personal understanding This, however, is not supported by much empirical evidence on actual guidebook use, and such an approach harbours a latent risk that Barthes’ (1972) condescending view of the tourist is unquestioningly accepted rather than critically interrogated by the researcher More simply, we can’t claim to understand the impact of the guidebook on the tourist without understanding the touristic usage

of the guidebook and the tourist user, themes which recur throughout this book

We examine this further in Chapter 7 Descriptions of use are compiled from consumers’ online discussions about guidebooks and evidence of use

is drawn from observation of and interviews with tourists These data support an examination of fundamental issues of when and how tourists

use their guidebooks before, during and after travel, and even when travel

is only vaguely anticipated The intent of this discussion is to compare how published accounts of use accords with what is understood theoretically

of guidebook usage as a means of problematising the way guidebooks are incorporated into the doing of tourism

Cluster 4: Tourists’ use of travel guidebooks Much of the

guidebook-based analysis in this cluster is firmly anchored in the tourist behaviour research domain with some theoretical and empirical groundwork undertaken in that context (Brown, 2007; Jack & Phipps, 2003; McGregor,

2000; Nishimura et al., 2006a, 2007; Osti et al., 2009; Therkelsen &

Sørensen, 2005; Wearing & Whenman, 2009; Wong & Liu, 2011) Deeper understanding of tourists use of guidebooks has in particular occurred through Jack and Phipps’ (2003) interpretation of the didactic nature

of guidebooks as apodemic literature in that they are both written and

consumed with the full intention of affecting behaviour, and Seaton’s (2002) notion of the dual function of travel texts as stage directions (where to go, what to search out, what to see) and instructions on how

to play the part of responding as a bone fide traveller/tourist Brown’s

(2007) exploration of how tourists ‘work’ their guidebooks in unfamiliar environments to problem-solve also focuses on the way guidebook prose

is converted to activity in the field

However, while the quality of emerging research on guidebook use is acknowledged, much of the scientific discourse on the subject

is equally informed by anecdotal evidence scattered throughout the tourism research domain We assert that the continuing influence

of anecdotal evidence in analysis is caused not only by the paucity of dedicated research but also by the dearth of structuring devices for the exploration of differences in the dynamics of tourists’ use of guidebooks Extant research demonstrates a diversity of guidebook usage, yet most knowledge is on pre-trip use of guidebooks Little has been published on

tourists’ actual use of guidebooks in situ and, apart from Therkelsen and

Sørensen’s (2005) exploratory classification of guidebook users, we are not aware of foundational typologies of guidebook usage In Chapter 8,

we therefore explore key variants of in situ guidebook use, by extending

the discussion in Chapter 7 on guidebook usage to develop a typology

of guidebook users Evidence for this typology, building substantially on the work of Therkelsen and Sørensen (2005), derives from fieldwork data from Denmark, Australia, Indonesia and Fiji Further support is offered

by examples of guidebook usage in situ collected opportunistically in a

number of countries in Asia, Europe and Africa

Guidebook Research Lacunae

While significant academic commentary has included the guidebook

to a greater or lesser extent, extant research displays serious lacunae As

a means of contesting viewpoints and introducing fresh perspectives on guidebooks in the tourist system, we have identified seven such lacunae worth further exploration

Lacunae 1: Travel guidebook conceptualisation For travel guidebooks, about

which a small body of research has been built and which is so frequently mentioned in passing in the tourism research literature, it is striking that so little has been done by way of conceptual clarification What is termed in this book as ‘travel guidebook’ or ‘guidebook’ is in the research literature described by a number of words, such as guide, handbook, travel guide, tourist guidebook or travel handbook Several of these words also carry significantly different meanings or are easily confused with similar phrases leading to terminological misunderstanding There exists little by way of conceptualisation of the guidebook, a consequence of which is a tendency to probe only those texts commonly recognised as guidebooks The lack of conceptualisation in research leads to the actual breadth of travel guidebooks narrowing to a few ‘safe’ choices (books that are popularly identified as travel guidebooks), while in other research the term

‘guidebook’ is used indiscriminately

The need for conceptualisation is all the more pressing given the appearance of new technologies and platforms in the form of tablets, smartphones, e-books, hypertext, apps, user-generated content and so on This and the accompanying challenges to conventional publishing and distribution further emphasise the benefit of fundamental conceptualisation and explicit definition of the guidebook to provide a foundation for analysis

of ongoing change in travel information provision Issues of definition and conceptualisation are explored in Chapter 2

Lacunae 2: Mutability and evolution in the travel guidebook There is little

extant analysis of the intrinsic structure of the guidebook, particularly in relation to change and consistency in the information provided It may

be expected that guidebooks are prone to sameness in structure, a trait exacerbated in the context of a guidebook series to a single destination The supposed immutability of the text and structure supports popular conceptions of the guidebook as a rigid constraint on the more liberating aspects of travel Yet, there is little analysis to support this notion At the same time, guidebooks are products whose survival requires a response

to the changing economic and sociocultural environment in which they operate

In Chapter 5, we take a comparative content analysis approach in

evaluating a series of guidebooks, Australia (Lonely Planet), with an aim

to understand the guidebook diachronically and to identify the extent and nature of change in one guidebook series over more than three decades

Lacunae 3: Tourist attitudes to the travel guidebook As identified in research

Cluster 3, the guidebook as apodemic or instructional text designed to affect tourist behaviour is a nascent area of research To date, however, there is little understanding of what users of guidebooks expect from the guidebooks they field

Chapter 6 advances a clearer understanding of consumer opinion regarding the value or otherwise of guidebooks, the reasons for the failures and strengths of guidebooks, and attitudes to particular brands Analysis

of the exchanges by a group of English-speaking online bloggers towards their guidebooks offers insight into the satisfaction and frustration of the guidebook among one group of consumers

Lacunae 4: Impact of guidebooks on businesses There is an almost

complete absence of empirical evidence of guidebooks ‘in action’ generally in relation to tourism businesses What little evidence exists

is generally fragmentary, collected and reported as part of other topics rather than as focused research on the subject of guidebooks While the role of guidebook information on tourist motivation and choice factors remains largely unexplored, extant analysis indicates that guidebooks

do play a part in the success of some tourist enterprises while having little impact on others This would seem to have particular relevance for the sustainable development of small to medium enterprises in tourism with implications for developing tourism economies For example, tourist guidebooks have been shown to influence the business of professional tour guiding (Salazar, 2006: 844)

However, the absence of scholarly research on guidebooks and tourism businesses is overshadowed by predominant conventional wisdom on guidebooks’ alleged and seemingly obvious impact on businesses that are mentioned in them Often, this relationship is argued in pejorative ways, as illustrated by the following extract from a travel blog by

theseraphicrealm:

[A guidebook’s] one saving grace is that when we see a restaurant with

a big sign that says ‘Recommended by Lonely Planet’ we know to steer clear What that sign really means is ‘we know Lonely Planet is sending

a bunch of mindless zombies our way; time to jack up our prices, lower our quality, and give crap service’

While we are unaware of any empirical research which investigates the assumptions behind such pillorying, the challenge deepens given that there are no simple tools for guidebook description and classification It would seem to be self-evident that various types of guidebooks used in different destinations may entail disparate business impacts, and that different types of trip organisation entail varied ways of using (or not using) a guidebook with consequences for an individual destination business Yet we don’t know and we lack the conceptual tools necessary for exploring this further.

Whether expressed neutrally or pejoratively, the predominant view

of guidebook influence on businesses is almost uncontested in popular discourse and is so prevalent as to deserve to be examined empirically We

do so in Chapter 9, with the dual purpose of checking popular wisdom as well as laying the groundwork for a more systematic exploration of the nexus between the travel guidebook and tourism businesses

Lacunae 5: Impact of travel guidebooks on destinations Guidebooks play a

significant role in the development of popular geographical knowledge and the development of the modern guidebook is generally perceived as concomitant with the growth of mass tourism (Gilbert, 1999) However, despite the pivotal role of the guidebook in the contemporary tourism system, the genre has received little interpretative analysis regarding its impact on destination change Gilbert (1999: 281) asserts that this is the result of the guidebook’s essentially ephemeral nature in the context of

‘deeper accounts of place’, causing its importance ‘as transcultural texts’ to

be vastly underestimated

Following on from analysis of guidebook intersection with the success

of individual businesses in a tourist destination, Chapter 10 analyses the interplay between destination development and the guidebooks that promote it In addition, the chapter focuses on a popular perception of the power of guidebooks to change tourist destinations, usually described as for the worse The unspecified yearning for an idealised and ahistorical

‘undiscovered destination’ which, once included in a guidebook is then irrevocably lost, assumes a commonplace reading of the agency of guidebooks

in destination development Is this borne out in fact and how is it realised in differing geographical and socio-economic contexts?

Lacunae 6: The future of the guidebook Like many sections of print

publishing, guidebooks have been changed by the move from print to digital, with a concomitant reduction in book sales Western media commentary on the recent turbulence in the guidebook publishing industry frequently heralds its rapid demise Journalist musings on the future of

guidebooks contrast their performance and relevance against travel-related internet sites, smartphone apps and social media platforms offering user-generated travel information content Inevitably, the traditional book text

is found wanting in terms of its currency, inclusiveness, portability and user-friendliness

Yet, little or nothing by way of serious analysis can be found to support the contention that the death of the guidebook is imminent Such projections are hampered by the lack of fundamental conceptualisation

of the guidebook without which it is left to the implicit discretion of

a writer whether to view, for example a travel app from a guidebook publisher as something that expands the concept of guidebook, or something that transcends it and calls for another concept In Chapter 11,

we explore the future of guidebooks in the context of Web 2.0 and the growth of user-generated digital information Can these innovations replace the guidebook, and where do they succeed or fall short in the eyes of information seekers? By throwing light on such questions, it is possible to add substance to the discussion and deepen understanding

of the ongoing transformation of print travel information in the digital environment

Lacunae 7: The cultural stigma of the guidebook In the final chapter, we

specifically address the lack of deconstruction of the cultural stigma routinely associated with guidebooks and their use As observed in the introduction to this chapter, rather than being seen as a critical agent in the democratising of modern independent travel, the guidebook is often popularly framed as regulating the practical, subjective and intellectual freedom which has been defined as the aim of the seasoned independent tourist Scientific discourse on guidebooks also emits similar disparaging signals This is less (albeit still discernible) in research where guidebooks are the explicit subject of investigations, but noticeable in the frequent casual references to guidebooks scattered throughout tourism research

We confront this outlook – not for the illusory purpose of correction, but for elucidation and to propound a reflexive and more self-critical foundation for further research on the interplay of guidebooks, tourism and culture Tourism research is riddled with schematics, typologies and taxonomies, but even the simplest and most descriptive and empiricist structures have yet

to be made for clarifying the intersection of guidebooks, guidebook usage, tourism businesses and tourism destinations In destabilising established but unarticulated perspectives on the guidebook, we aim to problematise its role in the practice of tourism and to emphasise the guidebook as worthy of focused research

Research Approach and Future Agenda

In the context of the research lacunae identified here and in the pursuit of our multilayered ambitions, there is no singular approach to be had This book harnesses what little empirical analysis exists regarding the role of guidebooks in the performance of tourism, drawing together threads of discussion on guidebooks across disciplinary boundaries Ours is a determinedly interdisciplinary stance In centralising the guidebook in the performance of tourism and extrapolating its possible future, we draw on the ideas of sociologists, historians, geographers and literary theorists as well as tourism researchers of diverse disciplinary backgrounds

We also contribute fresh evidence concerning the role of the guidebook

in tourism from a range of empirical sources This is a wide-ranging exploration, both conceptually and empirically, and to that end, the sources of evidence used in argument are unashamedly eclectic Our empirical research on guidebook usage has been ongoing for the last

15 years and comprises the ethnographic practice of observation and immersion, textual content analysis through commentary on guidebooks

in the English-speaking media and online blogs and more positivist empirical techniques including surveys and standardised interviews In Chapter 5, a content analysis approach is used to evaluate the information provided in each edition of a guidebook series over more than three decades, while Chapters 6, 7 and 11 draw especially from online blog commentary to identify elements of preference and use of guidebooks Chapters 8 to 10 rely more heavily on observation and interview data to explore guidebook user typology, and guidebook impact on businesses and destinations, respectively Where particular methodologies are applied, these are addressed in detail in the appropriate chapters

Most of the online sources are secondary data, and in only a few of these cases have individuals been contacted with requests for further information The online sources have thus enriched the data corpus but have not shaped its main structures Fieldwork data have been both purposely collected in Denmark, Australia, Indonesia and Fiji and opportunistically while engaged in fieldwork on other topics in other parts of Asia, Africa or Europe whenever guidebook users have been

encountered in situ At the time of writing, we have conducted more than

a hundred lengthy interviews Data and impressions from several hundred conversations have provided additional substance, and the online data collection has further enriched the body of research

In order to broaden the coverage, we attempted to ensure data from consumers who used guidebooks other than those in English or Scandinavian languages This approach was fairly successful regarding users from Western countries (mainly European), but less successful in the context of guidebook consumers from Asian countries who fielded guidebooks in their native languages The problem was not only one of

a language barrier but it was also something as simple as the difficulty to visually identify whether a publication was a guidebook in our sense of the term In many cases, the design and visual appearance did not correspond with what we realised was our preconceived ideas about the design of a guidebook Furthermore, when asking the potential informant about the publication, language barriers were often encountered When such barriers were overcome by the informants’ ability to speak English (or, if need be, the languages in which we can manage a broken conversation),

we often found that the publication which the informant identified as a guidebook had been provided by a tour operator as part of a package These publications did not meet the definition of a guidebook that we outline in Chapter 2, since they were not commercially distributed as an entity and often did not have a comprehensive content Our primary data (interviews, observations, conversations), therefore, are still uncomfortably Western-centric Lee’s (2001) critique of the Eurocentrism prevalent in tourism theories in general, and guidebook research in particular, is therefore also relevant for the present study

Undeniably, the composite character of the data corpus, combined with the opportunistically collected data in which locations were selected with studies of other subjects in mind, challenges the overall consistency

of the amassed evidence The data collection process has been somewhat irregular and opportunistic and the data collected are therefore not qualified for quantitative analysis or comprehensive generalisations However, constancy was upheld in the type of knowledge that was secured through interviews and, at most locations, the insights were substantiated

by means of ethnographic participant observation

Additionally, given that the present study is exploratory with the aim

of identifying patterns of guidebook usage, the authors find that the use of the composite dataset is justifiable The need for ‘multisited’ studies of social and cultural phenomena has been discussed and recognised in social science disciplines in the last two decades (Appadurai, 1996; Augé, 1995; Marcus, 1998; Urry, 2000), laying the groundwork for the mobilities perspective in

social science in general (Creswell, 2010; Hannam et al., 2006) including

tourism studies specifically (Cohen & Cohen, 2012, Coles, 2015) These

discussions have produced insights as regards potentials and challenges

to the explanatory value of multisited or mobile data collection, which are useful for the present study In short, working inductively rather than deductively is appropriate for what is exploratory research aiming to deliver

a deeper understanding of the guidebook phenomenon at the start of an era

of mass media convergence

by traces of the travelogue, atlas, geographical survey, art-history guide, restaurant and

hotel guide, tourist brochure, address book, and civic primer.

Koshar, 2000: 15–16

Introduction

Tourism research has a tradition for conceptualisation While the quality

of this work at times may be criticised as overly empiricist and lacking relevance beyond the confines of the tourism academy, it has served the indispensable function of improving communication across the disciplinary boundaries which contribute to the tourism research domain Conceptual clarifications and challenges have been central in the problematisation and exploration of issues that at first glance seem straightforward, yet are inherently more complex Travel guidebooks, however, have not been subjected to much conceptual groundwork despite receiving frequent, passing mention in the research literature As argued in Chapter 1, this lack

of critique or conceptualisation contributes to perpetuating conventional wisdoms about guidebooks and their influence, which may indeed be flawed

or at least deserving of closer scrutiny

In this chapter, we therefore lay the conceptual groundwork to demarcate the travel guidebook through identifying key features and characteristics We view conceptualisation to be both a matter of distinction between guidebooks and other types of related material, and a matter of elucidating the breadth of the genre Our understanding

of travel guidebooks necessitates that both text and use be taken into account, requiring that conceptualisation moves beyond the physical artefact and includes practise Thus, the conceptualisation necessarily incorporates heuristic contemplation, literary analysis, textual comparison and inductive insights This approach is also intended to circumvent the apparent distinction between the printed book and the digitally stored text

(smartphones, tablets, apps, etc.) in order to develop a conceptualisation that is platform independent.

Guidebook Terminology in Tourism Research

Lack of terminological clarity impedes something as seemingly simple

as gauging how often guidebooks are mentioned in the tourism research literature An impression of how frequently the term ‘guidebook’ is mentioned in the tourism research literature can be attained by means

of a simple text scan of published tourism research At the same time, however, such scans also reveal resounding ambiguities in terminology Analysis of a database of approximately 13,200 journal articles (full papers and research notes) from 22 peer-reviewed international English-language tourism journals, mostly published after 2000 (see list of journals and volumes at the end of the chapter), yielded 1048 papers in which the word ‘guidebook’ appears one or more times A further scan of articles

from Annals of Tourism Research, a leading journal in the field, extending

from the journal’s fourth volume in 1976 until and including volume 52

in 2015, yielded 212 out of 1983 papers in which the word ‘guidebook’ appears one or more times Put simply, 1 out of every 13 of the papers

scanned, and 1 out of every 9 papers in Annals of Tourism Research contains

the word ‘guidebook’

Obviously, all sorts of caveats surround these findings However, while limited and barely systematic, they offer a starting point in identifying traits in the representation of guidebooks in the research literature which require closer scrutiny

At first sight, the findings signal that the term ‘guidebook’ is widely used, which suggests a commonly accepted understanding of the term Yet, a closer reading of a large portion of the papers indicates that ‘guidebook’ is used to refer to a varied range of texts While often taken to mean the types of purchasable commercial publications that are conventionally denoted as ‘travel guidebooks’, the term is also occasionally used to denote promotional publications from tourism organisations, lists of camp sites, restaurants or attractions and the like For instance, in separate studies of marketing activities in Taiwanese and

American bed and breakfasts (Chen et al., 2013; Lee et al., 2003), the term

‘guidebook’ is used to cover listings and compilations of accommodation where bed and breakfasts in Taiwan and the USA can be listed for a fee

In other papers, the term is used as an answer option in questionnaires

(e.g Kim et al., 2011; Okazaki & Hirose, 2009; Shoemaker, 2000)

Depending on the data collection technique, this may leave respondents

with the task of determining meaning and researchers with data which reflect a diversity of interpretations In addition, the word ‘guidebook’ is also used to describe various writings not connected to tourism such as instruction manuals and field guides.

At the same time, the travel guidebook, in the sense of a purchasable commercial publication, is denoted by a number of terms in the research literature Many of these are also used to represent other types of texts, causing terminological confusion and misunderstanding Using the same database of literature as above for a simple count of terms frequently interchanged with ‘guidebook’, such as ‘guide’, ‘travel guide’, ‘traveller’s guide’, ‘handbook’ and ‘travel handbook’, yielded substantial counts and an even wider field of denotations for each word Conversely, searches in the collection for ostensibly more precise phrases such as

‘tourist guidebook’, ‘tourism guidebook’ or ‘travel guidebook’ elicited significantly fewer hits

Thus, simple indexing by means of words or phrases lacks precision unless each result is individually assessed and even then there is much terminological ambiguity Nevertheless, travel guidebooks, in the sense of

a purchasable commercial publication used in tourism, are undoubtedly often referred to in the tourism research literature Frequently, this is

in the shape of a remark, an aside, an example or an exemplification Exemplifications, at the same time, can also be in the shape of a referral to

a specific guidebook or guidebook publisher A scan of the same database

as used above for specific mentions of 10 leading English-language guidebook publishers elicits some interesting findings, as evidenced in Table 2.1

Table 2.1 Number of articles mentioning 10 leading English language guidebook

publishers from a database of 13,200 academic tourism journal papers

A number of limitations have to be invoked when interpreting these numbers Firstly, several of the publishers’ names consist of commonly used English words or phrases, meaning that each result of the scan had to

be confirmed manually Secondly, there is a chance that other guidebook publishers might have yielded higher numbers than those at the lower end

of the scores What is of interest in these limited findings is not the exact numbers but the broad trends in academic interest, in particular guidebook publishers The publisher Lonely Planet is referenced in more than four times as many papers as any other single guidebook publication and appears

in more papers than the other nine combined Indeed, since many references

to these nine publishers occur conjointly, with two or more of them mentioned (most often together with Lonely Planet), it can be assumed that Lonely Planet appears in twice as many papers as the other nine publishers combined At the very least, the numbers attest to the propensity in the research community to use, illustrate or denote travel guidebooks and their publishers chiefly by way of Lonely Planet publications

Outside the tourism research domain, it is perhaps surprising that Lonely Planet is preferred as the exemplification of the contemporary guidebook genre Longer established, more characteristically conventional publications from the Michelin, Fodor or Baedeker publishing houses, rather than the leading example of what used to be called ‘alternative guidebooks’, might seem more appropriate However, as will be demonstrated in Chapter 5, Lonely Planet guidebooks have in the last decade moved away from a foundation approach exuding counterculture and anti-tourism distancing from the masses According to Iaquinto (2011: 718), Lonely Planet is now not just the world’s largest publisher of guidebooks, but has also been

‘mainstreamed’ in terms of content, style, retail approach, language range and in a targeted online strategy It is therefore perhaps the appropriate exemplification of a contemporary Western guidebook

In addition, it might also be argued that the prevalence of and preference for Lonely Planet in tourism research lies in the sociocultural experience

of researchers themselves, many of whom are part of the generation most imprinted by the Lonely Planet oeuvre Certainly, the growth of Lonely Planet and of Western academic tourism research shows simultaneous development histories with both emerging strongly in the late 1970s and becoming institutionalised from the 1990s It is therefore tempting

to speculate that the academy’s tendency to invoke Lonely Planet as a representation of guidebooks in general, and to critically distance and differentiate the researcher from that symbol of guidebooks and what

it represents in tourism, are confirmations of the Western middle-class foundation of academia in general and tourism academia in particular

As tourism researchers, we have ourselves frequently wrestled with allowing our work on guidebook research to be curbed by our personal histories of Lonely Planet guidebook use.

In summary, the word ‘guidebook’ is used to denote a broad variety of texts reaching far beyond the term’s routine use, and travel guidebooks are themselves denoted by means of a number of synonymic terms In addition, analysis of travel guidebooks in the academic sphere is not framed by a conceptualisation but through definition by means of exemplification The publications by Lonely Planet dominate in this respect, suggesting that this might reveal more about the researchers than about the research

Conceptions of Travel Guidebooks in the Research Literature

The many cases of definition by means of Lonely Planet exemplification demonstrate the tenuous conceptual foundation of travel guidebooks

in tourism research The term ‘guidebook’ is most often used without much clarification as a seemingly self-evident notion which overlooks the breadth of travel guidebook variation Since Jacobsen (1999) highlighted the near absence of definitions or conceptualisations of the travel guidebook, a substantial body of tourism research has been published, including some on guidebooks Yet, there remains little sign of delimiting the phenomenon It is a challenging task as summed up by Koshar in the quote which opens this chapter He further argues that ‘Even so, it

is possible to select a number of guidebooks to illustrate broader themes’ (Koshar, 2000: 16) With the appearance of online mobile platforms, Web 2.0 and social media, guidebook conceptualisation has not become any easier since Jacobsen (1999) and Koshar (2000) However, precisely because of that challenge, it has become all the more important to explicate conceptualisations and delimitations to provide a less ambiguous framework for exploration and comparison

In some cases, guidebooks are tentatively identified, although this is frequently by means of a description of what they are not for the sake of excluding them from the subject to be analysed Thus, in Fussell’s (1980: back cover) ‘Elegy for the lost art of travel’, he eliminates the guidebook from analysis of the travel book by claiming that it is not autobiographical and it is

‘not sustained by a narrative exploiting the devices of fiction’ (Fussell, 1980: 203) More scientifically, Dann (1992: 59) distinguishes the guidebook from the travelogue by identifying the latter as ‘an impressionistic and evaluative post-trip published account of one or more destination areas authored for

purposes of promotion, information and entertainment’, while pointing to the supposedly low entertainment value of the guidebook (Dann, 1992: 60)

In the same vein, Robinson (2004) nuances yet reaffirms the distinction about what travel writing is by what it is not:

Travel books are not guidebooks While we can identify a shift to more playful and elaborate textual infilling such as that found within the Rough Guide and the Lonely Planet Series, guides more or less as repositories of ‘factual’ (albeit value-laden) information that the tourist can reliably use to navigate him- or herself to, and around, spaces generally already designated as having touristic interest (Robinson, 2004: 305)

The exclusion of the travel guidebook from the analysis of travel books, negative as it may seem, is nevertheless useful for our attempts at conceptualisation, by providing input for delimitation

Lack of explicit definitions has not deterred research from being conducted in which guidebooks are examined extensively For example, Garrod and Kosowska’s (2012) comparison of the representation of Goa in brochures and in guidebooks found that the image of Goa differs between the two types of printed media while advising that destination managers

attempt to streamline the image representation However, no bibliographic

information on brochures or guidebooks can be found in Garrod and Kosowska’s paper, and the reader thus cannot assess the representativeness

of the selected material Furthermore, no definition of a guidebook (or brochure for that matter) can be found beyond the authors’ assurances that they acquired the brochures from British travel agent shops and purchased English language guidebooks with Goa in the title Thus, while the analysis

is interesting and seems credible, the findings are inevitably incomplete

In most analysis of guidebook texts there is an unstated assumption that a ‘guidebook’ is a universally understood term This supposition

is present in Andsager and Drzewiecka’s (2002) exploration of readers’ reception of images from guidebooks for South Africa and New York The research offers new thinking on destination familiarity and desirability, although this is achieved without either clarifying the term or specifying which guidebooks were used in the research McGregor (2000) also challenges the assumption that tourists automatically accept the claims made in guidebooks when he investigates the effects of guidebooks upon users in Tana Toraja, Indonesia McGregor (2000: 28) argues that

‘texts have no intrinsic meaning independent of the process of conscious interpretation; in other words, meaning is (re)created at the point of

reception’, highlighting the existence of a dynamic relationship between guidebook and consumer The study avoids any need to specify the term

‘guidebook’ since only two published titles were found in use in Tana Toraja In passing, however, McGregor (2000: 37) mentions that ‘many travellers shunned the locally-produced guidebooks’ leaving the meaning

of the term unexplained and a conceptual ambiguity unresolved

While the analyses undertaken in these examples suggest that, despite the lack of conceptual explication, the guidebooks addressed fall within

a common understanding of the term, in other cases this is less certain

For instance, when Edelheim et al (2011) investigate the concept of

award-winning restaurants utilising so-called ‘food guidebooks’, it is unclear whether these can also be perceived as travel guidebooks A similar ambiguity

is evinced in Mackensie’s (2005) book chapter addressing guidebooks in the British Empire from 1860 to 1939 Mackensie (2005) notes that many of these texts were by-products of other travel business such as that of travel agent Thomas Cook or of shipping lines, leaving unclear whether these books are independent from, or integrated with, other travel products such

as tours or packages

Peres et al (2011) suggest that most published analyses on tourist

information searching address that undertaken during the pre-departure phase of travel and that there is little addressing when a tourist is at the destination At the same time, the paper titled ‘The indicators of

intention to adopt mobile electronic tourist guides’ by Peres et al (2011)

itself harbours terminological ambiguity since the term ‘mobile electronic tourist guide’ is left largely unspecified The reader can only assume that the findings include such mobile electronic guides as Google maps, electronic guidebooks (e-guidebooks), museum guides and various peer-to-peer apps such as TripAdvisor Thus, as regards grasping at least some

of the consequences of technological change on information provision for

tourists in situ, some sort of conceptual clarification is necessary, not least

in order to locate travel guidebooks (printed or electronic) in that larger context

In several publications with an explicit focus on guidebook research there are at least some pronounced components of delineation which serve to deepen understanding of travel guidebooks Indeed, Michalski (2004: 190) goes so far as to argue that, in recent years, historians have begun to describe a typology of guidebooks However, the studies cited by Michalski are part of the relatively extensive body of historical research

on guidebooks and, as will be argued in the next chapter, historical studies of travel guidebooks are almost exclusively based on analysis of guidebook text and images We have not found evidence of extensive

historical analysis of guidebook use, for example, pre-trip, in the field or post-trip.

The few tourism scholars who have investigated guidebook delineation rely on two components with which to demarcate the guidebook: specific purpose and as a description of characteristics or criteria which might be readily identified as belonging in a guidebook text A quote from Dann (1999) demonstrates the first of these components while also showing how categorisation of the guidebook is interlaced with evaluations:

[A guidebook] is there to rationalize and bring together the disparities

of the tourism infrastructure, to help, advise and warn tourists, to steer them through the morass of alien lifeways (…) Indeed, successors to

Murray and Baedeker, such as Le Guide Bleu or Michelin, through their borrowed systems of asterisking and textual ‘marking’ of vivenda, can

be considered as linguistic agents of touristic social control (…) Even

more recent and diversified guides, such as Lonely Planet and Rough Guides, although targeted at the adventuresome, independent tourist,

do not entirely escape this criticism, since the authoritative textual

‘recommendations’ of compilers and fellow wanderers as implicit narrators can also be considered semiotically constraining (…) (Dann, 1999: 163)

Lew (1991) offers an illustration of the second component in a characterisation

of guidebooks as a type of travel literature distinct from promotional material:

Like brochures and advertisements, guidebooks serve both functional and symbolic objectives Guidebooks, however, are usually more comprehensive and attempt a more accurate assessment of places Because they are purchased, instead of being obtained free of charge, their utilitarian value and reliability are perceived to be higher (Lew, 1991: 126)

Lew (1991) thus highlights some important characteristics that a proper conceptualisation ought to take into account: Guidebooks serve both functional and symbolic objectives, are ‘comprehensive’ and are purchased and by this are attributed with higher reliability than the mass

of destination marketing material available free from public and private providers

Most recently, Antonescu and Stock (2014) make an interesting attempt at developing a methodology for the use of guidebooks to trace

the historical development of the globalisation of tourism While the very attempt of such research points to the need for a stringent system of in/exclusion of source material, it also points to the need for a conceptualisation that can include two centuries of changes in text and tourism Looking forward, it thus also points to the necessity of a conceptualisation that

is open enough to anticipate and incorporate ongoing developments However, Antonescu and Stock (2014), while establishing some interesting criteria for inclusion in the guidebook category, are less interested in the expansion of scholarly knowledge about guidebooks or their use Rather, their purpose is to utilise guidebooks as a data source for mapping tourism globalisation In this context, guidebooks are the means rather than the end and the actual usage of travel guidebooks does not have a prominent place in their criteria for inclusion

A consequence of the near absence of conceptualisations of the guidebook is the prevailing empiricist approach to analysis Thus, the materials most frequently analysed as guidebook texts are those

commonly recognised as guidebooks with particularly extensive reference

to the publications of Lonely Planet While providing insight into mainstream guidebooks, the consequent focus on such texts is constantly

in danger of producing tautological knowledge by which preconceptions are reproduced through repeated apparent confirmation Moreover, the limited knowledge on actual guidebook usage, as suggested in Chapter 1, does not redress this hazard

Genre, Genre Theory and Guidebook Texts in ActionEven when disregarding explicit marketing material, the variation and volume of travel-related writings are vast These include, but are not limited to, such diverse items as travelogues and travel narratives, glossy souvenir picture books, in-depth ethnographic accounts, travel blogs, wikis and online reviews To some degree, all these writings can and do function

as sources of information for visitors to a destination and can be used in ways similar to that of the conventional travel guidebook Similarly, other writings without an overt travel dimension can serve as guides to practical

or factual information and advice These include handbook-like writings

on specific subjects, for instance culinary guides, architectural reference books, museum catalogues and others Likewise, writings that convey deep insight into the social, cultural, political, economic and historical aspects of a destination can supplement or replace the information offered

on such matters by conventional guidebooks And yet, guidebooks differ from these writings

Given the extensive range of contemporary guidebooks, attempts

of definition should be approached cautiously Any demarcation must encompass the popular use of the term ‘guidebook’ while maintaining a degree of analytical detachment that moves beyond everyday usage of the term in order to facilitate exploration It is therefore essential to impose a conceptually devised depiction on a subject area which hitherto has been delineated in a predominantly empiricist manner

Some research (Koshar, 2000; Marine-Roig, 2011) uses the term ‘genre’

in the depiction of guidebook texts, albeit without specifying the term further We concur that it is useful to conceive of guidebooks as a distinct literary genre Genre theory and genre analysis are a complex field with

a number of conflicting views, contesting theories and analyses and the diversity is further exacerbated by the growing diversity of subjects where a concept of genre is employed analytically Traditionally used in literary studies and later in film and media studies, the concept of genre is now utilised in varied fields of analyses including social science research

(Lewin et al., 2000).

It is beyond the scope of this chapter to investigate the complex field of genre theory, yet even at an elementary level, the concept of genre yields insights on conceptions of travel guidebooks In particular, Duff’s (2000: xiii) depiction of genre as ‘a recurring type or category of text, as defined by structural, thematic and/or functional criteria’ identifies a concept that can

be used readily in the analysis of travel guidebooks

We contend, however, that some of the characteristics of guidebooks only come into being through actual use When viewed purely as a literary entity, the complex interaction of certain essential dimensions

of the object routinely identified as a guidebook, such as representation, place and user, are omitted Simultaneously, the guidebook producer’s assumption that there are individuals who use the guidebook in the field is a necessary foundation for any conceptualisation Therefore, the identification of travel guidebooks as genre presupposes that certain elements of both content and use are taken into account This assumes

a genre concept that is not limited to prescriptive classificatory use by means of predefined literary criteria, but instead has a primary ambition

to minimise classification and maximise clarification and interpretation (Cohen, 2000: 296) On that basis, the concept of genre as applied here identifies properties and characteristics of the genre of guidebooks as text while at the same time introducing the trans-textual property of usage.Pursuing Duff’s depiction and Cohen’s ambition as above, we find strong inspiration in Seaton (2002) and Jack and Phipps (2003) for the

outer framing of travel guidebooks as genre Jack and Phipps (2003) use the term ‘apodemic literature’ or ‘instructional literature’ in the context of the guidebook They explain the term this way: ‘Apodemic literature is a didactic, instructional literature which exerts a significant performative role upon the reader’ (Jack & Phipps, 2003: 283) When used in combination

with Seaton’s (2002) elucidations on belle lettres and vade mecum in travel

texts, a fitting anchorage for the comprehension of travel guidebooks

is delivered Seaton (2002) argues that the twin needs of the tourist are fulfilled by two kinds of travel text; ‘stage directions’ indicating where to

go and what to see and, less obviously, ‘how to play the part of responding

as a bone fide traveller/tourist’ These two roles are met by the vade mecum text and the belles lettres travel text:

The vade mecum text directs attention through the senses to objects

in the external world for the tourist gaze, by objectively inventorying

places, sites, routes and their features (…) Belles lettres texts, in contrast,

are a more diverse category, which encompasses travel memoirs and diaries, poetry, novels and the how-to-do-it texts (…) that, implicitly

or explicitly, offer discursive modes of apprehension of, and response

to, travel and place (…) If the vade mecum text inventories the external world, the belles lettres text inculcates mind sets for apprehending it

‘proper’ gaze and approach is also clearly required Thus, while the vade mecum is conspicuously and instrumentally present in the text, the belles lettres, while more subtly, is no less present, and may be more enduring

(explored further in Chapter 11) The balance between these two to a large

extent determines the character of the guidebook as apodemic text.

Conceptualisation

Any exploratory conceptualisation is necessarily heuristic in nature and the overall notion of genre does not in itself direct the conceptualisation towards any specific factors that need to be incorporated However, the review and contemplations above point to a concept of guidebooks that

transcends the boundary between literature and usage, text and actual tourism Through a distillation of our research into the guidebook phenomenon, including observations, interviews and blog analysis in addition to extensive reading of the extant secondary data, we argue that any conceptualisation must take into account the following five constituents with complementary features:

• Utility: The fielding of the guidebook

• Substance: The properties of the textual substance

• Ephemerality: The ephemeral convergence of user, description and place

• Authority: The construction of textual authority

• Assistance: The facilitating function of the guidebook

Each of these five constituents can be conveyed by means of two complementary features which express both distinguishing factors and characteristics pertaining to the travel guidebook These 10 features essential

to the conceptualisation of the guidebook are presented and discussed

Utility: Enactment and entity The necessity to include actual guidebook

usage in the conceptualisation is illustrated at the outset since a first feature

is the practical enactment A travel guidebook can be utilised in the field;

in the actual experience of the represented object, place or experience From a production side, this entails that guidebooks are made to be used

in the field and that these instrumental intentions are related to the areas

or attractions covered in the guidebook A second feature, however, is that while guidebooks need not necessarily be printed text, they share a basic attribute with the printed book in that they are discrete entities Thus, while

a collection of downloads from various websites can provide on-site usable information and thereby substitute for a guidebook, this substitution is not

a guidebook since it is not a predefined entity Similarly, a travel essay in a magazine may provide destination information, travel advice and facility suggestions which may supplant the guidebook However, it cannot itself

be termed a ‘guidebook’ if the magazine entity includes matters unrelated

to travel

Substance: Place representation and comprehensiveness A third feature

of the guidebook is place representation In one way or another, the coverage of a guidebook is expressed in geographical terms and, within the geographical area in question, the guidebook communicates selected aspects related to the site, region or route By nature, guidebooks are selective, not exhaustive A textual analysis of various guidebooks would

be able to induce some sort of typology of curatorial criteria offering an opinionated selection rather than an indifferent listing However, while

a guidebook is selective, at the same time it contains a diverse range of information Thus, a fourth feature is the matter of comprehensiveness While the focus may be on special interests such as golf, trekking or cycling, guidebooks are distinguished from special interest literature in that they contain instrumental and/or place representing information that goes beyond the special interest in question.

Ephemerality: Distance and transience A fifth feature is the intended

non-local audience of the guidebook Guidebooks can be used by non-locals both for the ‘view from afar’ that the guidebook expresses, and for the instrumental

or informational content – indeed, non-locally made guidebooks may be considered superior by locals – but providing new knowledge for a local

audience is not the raison d’etre of the guidebook A corresponding sixth

feature is the focus on the transitory visit to the area in question In this way, the guidebook differs both from the pathfinders for residents with directory-like inclusions on businesses, institutions and authorities, and from the manual or handbook for expatriates or migrants focused on guiding the semi-permanent resident Locals, immigrants or expatriates may use the guidebook, but its principle target is the transient visitor

Authority: Identity and contention A seventh feature is the sender

identity Contrary to commercial place promotion or tourism marketing where distinct authorship or sender identity is often lacking (Dann, 1996: 62–63), travel guidebooks display clear sender identity, usually in the shape of recognised authorship or publisher Indeed, part of guidebook authority comes from non-anonymity Authority is also part of the eighth feature, which identifies the guidebook as containing elements

of contention While a guidebook need not necessarily be independent

of external commercial interests (e.g advertisements or payment for listings), its assemblage of information and advice is distinct from

‘official’ information or marketing listings, and to some degree contests the authority of such information

Assistance: Facilitation and evaluation In continuation of the above, a

ninth feature is the facilitation of selection, as opposed to a description of progression The guidebook is different from a tour description with its structured progression A guidebook may suggest tours, programmes and itineraries, but while the usage of a guidebook may take the appearance of a pursuit of a scripted experience, the guidebook transcends the linearity of a script since it can be used capriciously Finally, a tenth feature is the presence

of evaluation in that guidebooks appraise elements of the tourism experience

of a destination area The evaluation does not necessarily purport to be neutral or objective Like the eighth feature identified here, the evaluation

is designed to assist the guidebook user to distinguish the guidebook from

promotional material or informative listings distributed by promotional organisations.

Discussion and Defi nition

Clearly, much in the conceptualisation above is an explicit articulation

of common, tacit understanding of the concept of the travel guidebook Simultaneously, however, the 5 constituents and the 10 features also serve to demarcate the guidebook as a subject area by providing a framework for the reasoned assessment of a given text Thus, while the inclusion or exclusion of various texts from the guidebook genre is noted in these features as outlined,

a combination of them excludes an additional number of borderline texts from the genre of guidebooks This is the case for a vast number of apodemic

or instructional travel ‘handbooks’, whether they are for pre-departure (e.g Hasbrouck, 2007; Lansky, 2013), travel health (e.g Wilson-Howarth, 2009), practical details such as packing or toilets (e.g Gilford, 2006; Newman, 2000)

or travel dangers (e.g Pelton, 2003; Piven & Borgenicht, 2001) Conversely, the guidebook genre would include a volume such as the ubiquitous ‘South American Handbook’ (Box, 2014), despite its similarity in title As regards empirical investigations of guidebooks in action, this conceptual groundwork allows for reasonably coherent frames of reference for analyses and comparison

of usage by excluding the use of a variety of texts such as ornithological field guides, glossy souvenir books, culinary-only guides, architectural reference books and museum catalogues In some ways, the usage of these texts might resemble that of guidebooks as defined but, while providing insight into tourists’ information acquisition, their inclusion in this study would provide little insight into the usage of texts conventionally known as guidebooks Thus, the presence of an explicit conceptualisation allows for reasoned inclusion or exclusion of text, and the genre-based approach enables both text and usage to

be included in a conceptualisation

In our view, the above also enables a comprehensive inclusion of much

of the knowledge from the various ways that guidebooks are covered in both the research literature and in broader communications It enables us not only to investigate guidebooks, guidebook use and guidebook impacts, but within the same conceptualisation to investigate the characteristics of guidebook presence in public discourses This aim takes inspiration from MacCannell’s (1976: 10) argument that ‘The modern critique of tourists

is not an analytical reflection on the problem of tourism – it is part of the problem’ As stressed in Chapter 1, we find that in order to reach a more comprehensive understanding of travel guidebooks, it is indispensable to include the critique of guidebooks in the investigation

Drawing together the deliberations above, the following therefore offers

a distillation of these factors and in this volume serves as a definition of the guidebook:

A travel guidebook is a commercially distributed entity, made for transient non-locals to be used in the field It contains place representations and is comprehensive as it includes practical information beyond that of a special interest subject Yet, it is selective, and by evaluating more than just listing

it facilitates a selection process Authority is asserted through sender identity and through the potential to contend ‘official’ information.Conclusion

In this chapter, we have conceptualised the travel guidebook While somewhat challenging work, we find the exercise necessary since basic and reflected conceptualisation is remarkably absent in the published research on travel guidebooks Consequently, it was found necessary to conceptualise the guidebook in a way that moves beyond a purely literary representation The conceptualisation suggested in this chapter is not intended to provide a clear, unambiguous and operational definition to

be used in, for example, quantitative surveying Instead, the purpose has been to probe and demarcate in order to suggest and outline boundaries

to be considered when devising operational definitions In the chapters that follow, this conceptualisation and consequent definition has been employed by us, both in the collection of primary data and in the identification of apposite secondary data such as blogs and other online postings, so as to enhance subject consistency

The creation of a conceptual perspective that combines the literary representation and facets of usage elucidates certain characteristics of the guidebook as a genre This, in turn, facilitates analysis of actual tourist usage of guidebooks by enabling the analysis to move beyond the simplistic causal view of tourist practice as simply produced by the guidebook Instead, this perspective suggests that the guidebook and guidebook usage be viewed as a complex and varied totality Only

in this way is it possible to come to terms with a number of apparent contradictions without renouncing the general level in the analysis of guidebook usage These apparent contradictions include tourists using the same guidebook differently, varied representation of the same place

in diverse guidebooks which are apparently consumed by tourists in a similar manner, and the varying degree of supplementation of guidebook information with other tourist resources