These are travel guidebook or directory, series and publishers. Some publishers may publish more than one series title.
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| AA TravelGuides |
Amazing range of 300+ guides to destinations all over the world with the emphasis always on being practical. Plenty of guidance on eating, drinking, speaking the language and getting about. |
| Alastair Sawday |
Alastair Sawday has been the implacable enemy of mass-produced and bland accommodation since 1994 when he produced his first guide to French B&Bs. Since then he has built an army of fans who love his Special Places to Stay guides and the extraordinary houses, chateaux, villas, castles, farmhouses and elegant town houses - and the owners - he lists in France, the UK, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Morocco Italy and India. Bear in mind that, in common with most accommodation guides, hotels have to pay to appear in the guide. |
| Berlitz |
As well as dictionaries and phrase books the famous language-learning group also publishes a range of pocket guidebooks to popular destinations. The odd-one-out in their catalogue is the long-standing Berlitz guide to Ocean cruising & Cruise Ships edited by Douglas Ward. |
| Bradt Travelguides |
Hilary Bradt's publishing company goes from strength to strength, building on its reputation for producing timely, expert guides to out-of-the-way destinations just as they become accessible to travellers. For adventurous travellers heading for the likes of Macedonia, Gabon, the Ukraine, the Cape Verde Islands, or Georgia & Armenia there are few guidebooks to choose from but Bradt is always among them. Some say that publishing guidebooks to Kabul (Afghanistan) and Iraq in 2003 was 'pushing it' a little, but sales to military & NGO buyers alone were enough to make both titles a success! |
| BritGuides |
Travel, historical, walking and special interest (royals, cathedrals & churches, etc) guide books to UK destinations. |
| Brits Guide, A |
The 'Brits Guide' series are published by Foulsham and they cover 'honey-pot' destinations for British holiday-makers, namely Las Vegas, New York, Orlando, Disneyland Paris, and Cruising. Their guides to Cruising and the theme parks of Orlando in particular have earned a fearsome reputation for being easy-to-use, practical & accurate guides. Any family going to Orlando would be daft not to take the Brit's Guide to Orlando & Walt Disney World. Its editor, Simon Veness, is also the editor of A Brit's Guide to Cruising (and World of Cruising magazine) which is a very popular challenger to the long-established supremacy of Douglas Ward's Berlitz Guide to Cruising. |
| Cadogan Guides |
Cadogan Guides cover over 80 destinations worldwide. Their guides tend to be richly illustrated and are aimed at independent travellers interested in history & culture. |
| Cicerone Press |
Pocket-sized guidebooks on mountain walks. They've expanded the subject range a little since they launched 30 years ago (04) to cover: long distance walks and treks, day walks, family walks, rock climbing, ice climbing, rock scrambling, mountaineering, bike guides, hill and mountain skills, nature walks and outdoor photography. |
| DK Eyewitness |
Dorling Kindersley created their travel guides series in 1993 based on the style of their hugely popular 'Eyewitness' guides with lots of graphics and cutaways. They cover over 100 destinations in over 30 languages. They've won several awards including the Guardian readers 'Best Guidebook 2004' award. As well as the standard DK Eyewitness destination guides DK have a series of smaller, simpler 'Top Ten' guides highlighting key things to see and do and aimed at younger travellers on short breaks. In Feb 07 DK launched a DIY guidebook site (www.travel.dk.com) where you can compile the pages you want on a particular destination and print them out to take with you on your travels. The site has already collected several awards for its simple and effective use of technology. |
| Fisher's Travel SOS |
Not guidebooks in the traditional sense, Julian Fisher publishes emergency guides with critical contact information, contact numbers, addresses and other information (emergency or other), for over 200 destinations around the world, in printed and online formats. |
| Fodor's |
Well-known US travel publisher with an ever-increasing range of travel 'products' including software city guides for your PDA. |
| Footprint |
Long-standing guide book publishers. Their South American Handbook was first published in 1924, which as they never tire of telling you, makes them the publishers of the oldest english-language guidebooks in the business. They used to be called Trade & Travel Handbooks until they changed their name to the snappier 'Footprint' name in the mid-nineties. Unfortunately soon after that they stopped using their unique style of printing tons of detailed information on thin paper bound in hardback covers. Now they look and feel just like all their competitors. A catalogue of roughly eighty guides, particularly strong on South America, the Caribbean and the Far East. |
| Frommers |
Long-standing U.S. guidebook publisher, turned travel agency. While quite pricey, their guidebooks are easy to use, and tell you what highlights to see and what to avoid. They often come with useful tear out maps. The down-side is that they are, in marketing-speak "leveraging the brand". They claim a strict editorial independence, but there's a strong emphasis on driving readers to the online Frommers travel portal. |
| Globetrotters Guides |
See 'New Holland' |
| Globetrotters Logbook |
Small series of pocket-sized travel logbooks published by Morton, Diaz & Cook, that double as notebooks and souvenir booklets with useful information. Now, with the publication of their 6 Flanders Cities guide, the series is moving to being a travel guide... where you can add your own notes. |
| A Hedonist's Guide To (Hg2) |
Stylish series of regularly updated city guides aimed at well-heeled travellers looking for tops spots. The guides are also published and regularly updated on the Internet. The founder, Tremayne Carew Pole, published his first 6 Hg2 guides in 2004. Now (May 08) the range covers Almaty & Astana, Berlin, Beirut, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Marrakech, Miami, Milan, Moscow, New York, Paris, Prague, Rome, Stockholm and Tallinn. Hg2 guides are fiercely independent. Hg2 journalists spend two months living in a city to research it, with the mandate and budget to eat in all the best restaurants, drink in all the bars and go wild in all the clubs. All the reviewing is done incognito and they charge no-one for the privilege of appearing in the guide. Every place is reviewed and included at Hg2's discretion. |
| Insight Guides |
Insight Guides claim to be the world’s largest collection of illustrated travel guides (over 185 of them). They are intended to appeal equally to armchair travellers and dedicated tourists, so they place a lot of emphasis on photographic content. There is a range of 'products' from the standard 'Insight Guide', through 'pocket guides' (Over 120 titles), 'compact guides' (over 130 titles) and 'fleximaps' (130+) to 'museum & gallery guides' and 'shopping & eating guides'. They also launched a new series of Insight City Guides in Oct 04. |
| In Your Pocket |
City guide series to Eastern European cities and available in both online and printed form. |
| JPM Guides |
JPM publish the 'This Way' series of chatty & informative guides to over 70 destinations. |
| Let's Go |
Started in 1960 by Harvard students, this series is aimed at young independent travellers and now runs to 45 titles covering destinations worldwide. |
| Lonely Planet |
The top dog, head honcho, king of the beasts. Since Tony & Maureen Wheeler sat down at their kitchen table to write their first guidebook in 1973, Lonely Planet has become one of the most recognised brand names in the world (even though apparently it was the result of a song lyric mis-heard by Tony. It should have been 'Lovely Planet'!). LP, which was bought by BBC Worldwide in Sept 07, has 650+ titles in their range of country guides, city guides, maps, phrasebooks, and other publications. |
| Luxe City Guides |
Desperately trendy pocket-sized city guides for a small selection (it's early days) of cities, aimed at "sophisticated travellers". |
| Mad Dog |
Mad Dog Resort Guides was launched in 2004 as a publisher for a range of independent resort guides for popular ski resorts. Written by skiers and snowboarders who have lived and worked in the resorts, the pocket-sized guides cover the ski area,off piste, and resort facilities from restaurants to shops and bars. The series has started with four guides - Courchevel & the 3 Valleys; Méribel & the 3 Valleys; Tignes and the Espace Killy; Val d'lsère and the Espace Killy (to be published Nov 05) - with further guides scheduled to appear in 2006. |
| Michelin |
One of the best-known names in the business. Michelin's red guides continue to list the world's best hotels and restaurants. Their Green guides list the cultural, historic and natural attractions of cities & regions, and they also have a series of 'Charming Places to Stay' guides (rather like the Alastair Sawday books above) listing quirky and elegant hotels, inns and guesthouses. Michelin gave its Green Guide series a 'facelift' in April 06, changing the layouts and modernising the style on a batch of 20 existing titles. |
| Mr & Mrs Smith |
Hotel guide for luxury, boutique & designer hotels in the UK. Hotels must pay to be in it and the website takes bookings from 'members' so don't expect any critical reviews. |
| New Holland |
NH produce the Globetrotters series of travel guides and maps, now (May 04) covering over 80 destinations worldwide. They also publish some excellent special interest guides under the Globetrotters brand such as trekking and climbing guides, golf guides, and scuba dive guides. Rather confusingly NH also publish a number of travel books and special interest/activity books under the New Holland name. The result is that there are New Holland books on, for example, reef fish in the Red Sea, and Globetrotter books dive guides to the Red Sea. |
| Pallas Athene |
Travel books and guides focused on culture and art in the UK and Europe. |
| Purple Guide, The |
The publication in Nov 2004 of a second guidebook by Hope Caton, has turned The Purple Guide into a 'series'. Her first title was Tuscany & Assisi. The second takes a behind the scenes look at Venice, and the third (Aug 2005), a guide to Rome, claims a couple of 'firsts': the first guidebook to get the Roman buses right (with a clear and accurate bus map that doesn't look like a plate of spaghetti) and the introduction of GPS data to locate key sights (for those equipped with GPS handhelds or new generation mobile phones). |
| Rooms for Romance |
Small directories listing the best hotels, guesthouses, chateaux & auberges to find all you need for a romantic getaway à deux, - including four-poster beds, whirlpool baths, etc - in the UK & Ireland (90 properties) and France (120 properties). |
| Rough Guides |
Another of the 'big beasts' in the travel guide publishing world and probably LP's closet rival. They have a huge catalogue of guidebooks, detailed and mini-guides, to cities & destination around the world. They have also spun off into other niche areas such as world music guides and phrase books. |
| Smooth Ride Guides |
A small series of travel guides for people with mobility difficulties or using a wheelchair, covering activities, attractions, accommodation and leisure and sporting facilities in France (pub May 04) and the UK (2nd Ed pub Apr 03). Earlier guides to East Coast USA & Australia have sold out. |
| Survival Books |
Series of guidebooks on living, working, buying property and retiring abroad. They cover a range of destinations worldwide. |
| Thomas Cook Publishing |
TC publish a wide range of travel books & guides. Their Travellers series is the main destination guidebook (it comes with a CD-rom with links, music & pictures). Then there is a mini-series called Hotspots covering popular mass-market destinations; a series of Independent Travellers guides for backpackers and budget travelling; a guidebook series called Signposts for motorists covering accommodation, restaurants and points of interest on the continental road network; a set of city guides for the gay market called Out Around; and B&B France covering, well, B&Bs in France. |
| Time Out |
Highly rated, up-to-date guides covering many of the world's most popular cites and destinations. |
| Tomorrow's Guides |
Guidebooks and directories to UK hotels, B&Bs, museums, galleries, historic houses, and national attractions |
| Trailblazer Guides |
"Route guides" for adventure & activity travellers in the UK and overseas. Trailblazer produce walking guides, cycle guides, overland route guides, rail guides and an eclectic range of other specialist guides such as the Good Honeymoon Guide and the Adventure Motorcycling Handbook. |
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