MAGAN'S WORLD: MANCHÁN MAGAN'Stales of a travel addict
THE GUIDEBOOK is dead whinnied the Financial Times recently; the sky is falling in (they all but said). They did have some strong statistics to back it up. (What else would you expect from the FT?)
Sales of Lonely Planet's Australiaguide dropped by a third in one year, they reported, while sales of The Rough Guide to Franceplummeted 45 per cent. Guidebook sales in Britain overall fell by 18 per cent between 2007 and 2009, and the 2010 figures are even worse. If the current rate of decline continues, the FT's number-crunchers predict the last guidebook will be sold within seven years.
So, is it the end of the line for us “tourists with typewriters”? Will we soon be panhandling in appropriately discerning spots – on the Florida Panhandle perhaps, or outside the Musée d’Orsay on the first Sunday of every month, informing tourists that museum entrance is free so they can give us the money, or on Seattle’s Skid Row discussing the etymology of the lane’s name and its connection to local history?
Apps are the future of travel literature we are told by those who like to sell us new things, and to prove it they point to the 4.2 million Lonely Planet apps that were downloaded during the Eyjafjallajökull volcano disruption when the company offered them free to stranded passengers. (Compare this with the 1,500 copies per title, which is the average number of travel books sold in Britain by the five leading travel publishers.)
I don’t have a smartphone, nor plan to get one, but apps do seem to be taking over the planet, and the invasion will continue right up until users realise the roaming costs of using their phones as a guidebook. At current prices, their bills would be many times more than the most expensive full-colour coffee-table guidebook. Not to mention the fact that wandering around certain areas with an expensive phone is likely to render your possession of it shortlived.
That said, I admit I'm swayed somewhat by the work of Michael Fewer, a man who has spent the last three decades encouraging people to use Ireland's countryside in books such as Irish Waterside Walks, Rambling Down the Suir, Irish Long Distance Walksand The Wicklow Way.Fewer has now turned to apps, believing that creating guides that are synchronised with the GPS systems that comes standard on many phones could transform the way we use the countryside.
He has spent the last year wandering around the byways of Wicklow collecting GPS coordinates for items featured in his books, so that when you download his app his voice will be there on your phone telling you what’s around you, what to see, what to do, where to eat and where to rest. He’ll be with you every step of the way – wonderfully reassuring, or slightly sinister, depending on one’s attitude.
I like the fact that next time one has visitors, one no longer needs to send them out with a spidery sketch of the N11 hastily scrawled on a Post-it, showing Avoca Handweavers, Glendalough and Johnnie Fox’s pub, or to expose them to the risk of an overly loquacious coach tour guide, now you just implant Fewer in their phone.
But there’s more! The software he is using to create his apps is available to anyone for free. So, in fact, we can all now make our very own personalised tour with software which triggers points of interest automatically as you approach them, and produces an appropriate audio package, describing what you are looking at, and then gives you directions to the next location.
Imagine the possibilities. Ever wanted to create a tour of Ireland’s best apple turnover bakeries, or greatest skinny-dipping spots, or most pornographic Sheela-na-Gig carvings, or easiest grand hotels to steal salt cellars from? Now is your moment.
* Tour guide making app: ingz-inc.com
* Tours on iTunes: touringz.com