Culture | Frequent travellers

Why travel guidebooks are not going anywhere

Despite predictions that the internet would kill them

Young woman reads a Lonely Planet guide in Kandy train station, Sri Lanka.
Photograph: Getty Images

THEY DECLARED that it was dead—or, if it wasn’t dead yet, it soon would be. The cause of the malady was viral: first blogs, then influencers on Instagram and TikTok. Yet, for all journalists’ poor prognoses, the printed travel guide is still in fine fettle. Sales in Britain were mostly flat in 2014-19, a period when smartphones became both ubiquitous and powerful.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Not going anywhere”

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