Midlife media history: Turen går til and tourist guide books in the era of mass travel

Abstract

In the age of Wikitravel, TripAdvisor, and Google Maps, the tourist guidebook seems like an antiquated medium. For centuries, guidebooks served as trusted companions for travellers, providing a ‘mediating link’ between tourists and destinations. Yet after decades of booming sales from the 1960s to the 2000s the market for English-language travel guides shrank by 30–40 per cent between 2005 and 2011. The global financial crisis and the rapid growth of free, user-generated travel advice online appeared to spell the end of the printed travel guide. Industry observers declared it dead and its history ‘bookended’.