This week I felt a bit of sadness as I read about the death of Arthur Frommer, the travel guide writer and publisher.
He seemingly led a grand life traveling, researching, publishing and enjoying the best of what the world has to offer. He was 95 years of age when he passed away on Nov. 18 in his home in Manhattan, according to his New York Times obituary.
His first travel guide, “Europe on 5 Dollars a Day” was published in 1957 right at the start of the boom in transatlantic flights but essentially when travel still was a matter of privilege.
The British only started traveling in a way we would recognize now at the tail end of the 1960s. Brits typically went to all-inclusive seaside resorts in Spain, which at the time was governed by a dictatorship.
I started traveling three decades after that book came out, but Frommer's books were my first guides. Later when I became more adventurous, Lonely Planet and Brandt were my guidebooks of choice.
Frommer's original guide came out in annual editions all the way until 2007, the NYT added, at which time the dollar amount had increased in $95. Five dollars today probably would not even cover the price of a cup of coffee.
The Associated Press said Frommer first poked his nose around Europe while serving with the U.S. Army.
His daughter, Pauline Frommer, has run Frommer’s Travel Guides for the last decade.
Arthur Frommer had advice that several obituary writers have noted is not at all radical today. But I suspect it is warranted to remind people that being whisked in a limousine to a first-class flight and then continuing in a helicopter to a mollycoddled existence in an ultra-luxury resort might not be the only manner of travel.
He explained that if you wished to meet locals with stories, then it would be a good idea not to book every meal at your hotel’s restaurant. This type of travel has led to today’s experience culture so loved by every hotel firm’s marketing department, and for the right reasons.
Today, hotel restaurants are local restaurants in essence, run by professional local chefs, not professional hotel chefs, and frequented by both locals and guests.
It is because of pioneers such as Frommer that this type of thinking has not only prevailed but flourished.
The publishing firm has traveled, too. Frommer sold it to giant Simon & Schuster in 1977, who sold it to IDG Books in 1999, who sold it to John Wiley & Sons Publishing in 2001, who sold it to Google in 2012.
The year after that, Google announced it was to discontinue the series, but then Arthur Frommer regained the brand and relaunched it with his daughter and now named Frommer’s Guidebooks.
Maybe his advice of avoiding taxis was the piece that most seeped into me. If I can, I will always avoid them. Horrible things, that is, unless one is carrying too many suitcases, which really one does not need to do. One learns a lot about another place by taking its buses and metros, as one also does by snooping around its supermarkets.
It was Arthur Frommer who blazed this trail.
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