James Hamilton-Paterson on the standardization of travel

“One plausible distinction between travel and tourism is that the traveler makes his or her own way, whereas tourists’ paths have been beaten into submission long before they go, whether singly or as a group. The elision between the two types has often been a consequence of pocket guides. In the nineteenth century the Thorough Guides and Baedeker’s made it easy for the less intrepid to plan in advance, to know where they might stay, what to see, what to expect. The information acted as insulation against the threat of too much raw reality. In our day the Lonely Planet and Rough Guides have simply done for the demotic mass what the earlier guides did for the middle classes, now greatly aided by the huge expansion of cheap air travel in the last twenty-five years. The whole experience of dashing about the planet has become commonplace and increasingly standardized.”
–James Hamilton-Paterson, “The End of Travel,” Granta #94 (2006)