Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
Choice reviews of Lonely Planet: Colombia from Amazon.com
In light of the recent news surrounding Thomas Kohnstamm, contributing author for Lonely Planet's Colombia, and his fabrication of the guidebook, I decided to weed through the reviews on Amazon and see what people had to say. It wasn't hard to find a bad one; out 16 total reviews, 14 were given only 1 star. Here are a handful of them:"I have been a lonely planet guide book fan for many years. Unfortunately, this one is a big disappointment. I doubt the writer spent much time in the country. The info on Medellin is practically non existent. If they even bothered to read wikipedia, they could have provided 100x more info." -- San Diego Guy
"I started in Ipiales, worked my way up to Cartegena and back down to Bogota. There were the usually small errors, but by the time I reached Mompos, I wondered if the authors had visited Colombia recently." -- David Mellinger -- Short answer: no!
"This guide does little more than repeat SOME of what the previous guide did. Most likely the writer just checked out phone numbers, maybe eliminated those that did not respond." -- Col
"Go to wikipedia online and you will find out a lot more than reading this book!" -- Jack
I wonder if any of the contributing authors actually visited Colombia?
Thomas Kohnstamm wrote the History, Culture, Environment and Food & Drink chapters.
Filed under: News
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
MaryL Apr 14th 2008 8:52PM
The reviews for Lonely Planet Philippines are eerily similar...
complaints about inaccurate information, glaring omissions... this
looks like a bigger problem than they'd care to admit.
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/1741042895/ref=cm_cr_pr_link_2?%5Fencoding=UTF8&pageNumber=2&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending
DanHarris76 Apr 15th 2008 10:09AM
The question is if we need travel guides in 2008, when we have fellow travelers on-line that are more up to date than a book who was edited 2 years ago. In the case of backpacker places, not once I have found myself following the recommendation of "Lonely Planet" just to find out that the place has lost its reputation longtime ago. With TripAdvisor, WAYN and http://www.triptouch.com , one can find very easily up to date recommendations, travel mates and all the travel info one's need to get oriented while traveling .
Travel guides need to adjust to the new era, minimize their books size and be more up to date if they want to survive the travel 2.0 era.
Molly Apr 16th 2008 12:36PM
I agree with Dan Harris. I have never heard of triptouch, but I like the up-and-coming www.vivatravelguides.com. I feel like it is doing a pretty good job of surviving the "travel 2.0 era." I like that I can find all the information they put in their books on their website and I can add my own reviews about places.
Holz Jun 12th 2008 2:39PM
The lonley planet southamerica on a shoestring is terrible the worst hostels ive stayed in have been in the lonely planet and some of them have been shut for over 10 years when you get there! im sure they dont go to these countrys as they miss out on the best places to visit and the colombia section is particually bad! they say that san augustin is an unsafe town as there is farc around, they left 8 years ago and they dont tell you that there are some areas off the roads that still have land mines, i think that is more of a danger dont you!