Andalucia minus the Costa del Sol
My attention has been drawn to a mini-row rumbling along on Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree forum. It seems as though the Lonely Planet’s new Andalucia guide has not covered Marbella and the Costa del Sol. According to the first commenter, the guide dismisses the area as not worth bothering with.
I’ve not seen or read the book in question (I perhaps should have) and I’ve also not been to the Costa del Sol since I was four years old. I’m therefore not the right person to comment on whether the assessment is correct.
It does throw up an interesting talking point, however: Should guide books ignore popular areas and attractions just because they think they’re not worth going to?
Tourist traps
My initial reaction is supportive of the Lonely Planet stance. My (possibly inaccurate) perception of the Costa del Sol is of a hellworld of Only Fools and Horses theme pubs and sunburned simpletons whose idea of a holiday is to be surgically attached to a pint of Carling. If, indeed, it is like that, then fair play to authors – the Costa is best avoided.
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Frankly, this should be extended to a lot of other tourist traps as well. I’ll not weep if Madame Tussauds never gets another guide book mention again.
Snobbish attitude
But another side of me gets extremely annoyed with the snobbish LP attitude. I’m regularly infuriated by Lonely Planet’s refusal to include things like theme parks, slightly tacky wildlife attractions and other things that are just plain fun. They often do the same thing with hotels, far happier to recommend an overpriced ‘boutique’ joint where the bedroom light is attached to a camel’s backside and the bath is made of Fairtrade chocolate than a chain hotel which is clearly better in every way. The relentless preaching about responsible travel gets on my nerves too, and the information on tours is always frustratingly scant.
One forum commenter congratulates the authors on knowing their audience. But I’m not sure they do. My suspicion is that some of the people buying that Lonely Planet Andalucia guide will, for one reason or another, be people who have booked to stay on the Costa del Sol but still want to explore. People with young children, perhaps, or those in financial difficulties who have to go where it’s cheapest. Just because they’re in package holiday central, it doesn’t mean that they only want to stay in the resort all week.
I’d argue that it’s cases like this where a guide book author’s mettle is really tested. Anyone can say the Alhambra in Granada or Mezquita in Córdoba is great. But finding pleasant places to stay in Torremolinos that aren’t overrun by chair-throwing chavs is a challenge. Same with finding bars that have a bit of character or things to do that don’t involve sunloungers and being sick in Lineker’s.
Sure, the LP may be right to say the area is best avoided. But it should also explain why it’s best avoided and then it should pick out the specks of gold in the sea of turd. It’s not right to just ignore it – too many people reading the book will be going there, whether the author approves or not.
When the going gets tough…
A guide book author earns his or her stripes when the going’s hard. It’s not right to just say there’s no budget accommodation in New York or London just because it’s really tough to find – it’s the author’s job to go and track it down.
I’m sure it’d also be a lot easier to just strip Cancun out of the Mexico guidebook, Las Vegas out of the relevant US guides and the Gold Coast out of the Australia tome. But sneering in disapproval is a cowardly way out. A good researcher goes in, explains the situation and snuffles out the best of a bad bunch. Explanation and illustration are far better tools than omission.
Do you think the Costa Del Sol should be left out of an Andalucia guidebook? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.
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Think it needs a case by case approach. In our own case, we don’t cover Pattaya in Thailand because I find it to be especially unsavoury and consider it a tourist trap. However we receive semi-regular requests for coverage to it and it is the #1 search term within the site – after 7 years of pretending it doesn’t exist we’ll probably add it later this year. On the other hand we covered Kuta in Bali from the beginning, because, while I consider it a tourist trap hell hole, it is just too big to ignore.
I’d have thought Marbella and the Costa del Sol were in the too big to ignore category, though perhaps they don’t need the detailed coverage other areas would get, as I assume most arrive on a package and don’t need 100 hotel reviews to wade through…
On themeparks, we used to ignore them because we didn’t have kids and so never ever went to them, but now, with kids, I can see the need and we do cover them. It’s not like you need a ride by ride review… though thanks to the web, the punters probably expect that nowadays.
Interesting argument going on here. Again I tend to shy away from some of the LP guidebook recommendations as they seem like a kiss of death to “off the beaten track” places which suddenly become inundated with Lonely Planet tourists. But they are useful for getting an overview and finding out about towns you might be passing through. It seems strange to leave something so major out of a guidebook. I don’t think LP are strictly the “beaten track” people any more; many of the people I know who use it are young professionals going on annual leave trips and staying in hotels.
And you’re right, even the best of us love a theme park or two. I must admit there is a little bit on Dollywood in the USA guide – who would not want to visit a Dolly Parton theme park?
A guidebook should be a guidebook, not the author’s endless harping on about his/her own particular opinion, particularly when it means that certain information is omitted purely because it doesn’t fit with the author’s own personal view. I own roughly ten LPs and the most recent one I bought (for Taiwan) is likely to be my last (I’m like a bitter Windows user continuing to persevere with it who really should have switched to a Mac long ago), for some of the reasons you mention above, and for me personally, the ongoing frustration with the pathetic excuses for maps that they include. They also continue to ass kiss a particular group of establishments that few real people are interested in. The LP Japan lists about ten bars in the city I’ve lived in for seven years. None of them are particularly well known or frequented by the foreign population, though there are others that are. I know they can’t go everywhere but these wonderfully knowledgeable “real” travelers that they claim to employ could actually ask around a bit.
They also fail to mention the hundreds upon hundreds of Japanese chain restaurants that are literally everywhere. Yeah, so they’re watered down versions of the real thing but they do sell Japanese food, are user friendly for someone who doesn’t speak Japanese and are budget priced to boot. To completely ignore them is plain snobbery.
So in answer to the original question, how can a guidebook be a guidebook if it doesn’t cover the area it’s supposed to be a guide for?
I was so horrified by what has become of Marbella and the Costa del Sol, that on a private visit to Spain, I drove through, without stopping.
But, no genuine guide-book writer should leave something out due to their own (subjective) view. Or to its reputation. Such a place presents a challenge!
I am, frankly, astonished.
Ditto re the comment by Stuart on Pattaya.
Thanks.
I’m with the majority view here. LP don’t have a real clue (about anywhere, that is) – but most other guidebooks will include “unsavoury” places: in my own Rough Guides, I’ve written full accounts of, for instance, Limone on Lake Garda and Bourton-on-the-Water in the Cotswolds, even though they both stink. I’ve taken particularly harsh flak on Amazon for my descriptions of the worst – but most heavily visited – resorts on Lake Garda, Limone among them.
The point is to GUIDE readers – that is, to give them context and help them find what THEY want from a destination: if they’re in Limone because that’s where the tour company hotel is, my job is to provide them with the knowledge to make best use of a day/an afternoon/a couple of hours of independent exploration.
Unfortunately, most people don’t like to be told that the place they’re on holiday is a hole, even if it is – and even if you explain why (economics of tourism) before steering them towards better places nearby. Hence flak. People love to slag off guidebooks.
I’m an author for Lonely Planet, so I’ll skate over Matthew T’s cheeky remark about not having a clue and say instead that I’m also in broad agreement with the points here. Our job is to guide the readers, even if we know that our tastes aren’t necessarily going to match ours.
That said, I do want to stick up for LP here, who sometimes get a kicking for things they’re perceived to do rather than actually do (Matthew is certainly on the money when he says people love to slag off guidebooks!) I’m not familiar with the Andalucia book, but I’m typing this with a copy of LP’s Dominican Republic & Haiti guide on my desk. Now there’s a chalk and cheese title: I wrote the Haiti coverage, which is as off the beaten track as you’re likely to find, tourist-wise. But when I look at the DR section, there’s listings aplenty for places like Punta Cana (the centre of Dominican package tourism), and in the book’s directory there’s a whole section about how to choose an all-inclusive hotel. Hell, there are even golf listings in there. Similarly, when I worked on the Tunisia guidebook, I spent plenty of time in resort places like Djerba reviewing chain hotels (which, for the record, I hated but knew was necessary for the book). I guess the lesson here is to know who your market is and make sure the book matches the readers’ expectations: stuff they expect to see, as well as stuff they didn’t know about but are glad to discover.
But I’m glad to see that Dollywood gets listed in the USA book. What’s not to love about that? We’re not all hair-shirted worthies you know!
I went to the Costa DS a few years ago and while hell-holes were par for the course, there were some half-decent spots, too. For instance, I actually enjoyed walking round the old town of Marbella. It was a pretty – and pleasant – surprise, though, granted, the beach-front area was hit and miss. My mates and I had a decent night out bar hoppping around the harbour near Benalmadena. It wasn’t chavvy at all. Most of the people there were Spanish and noone was throwing chairs or flashing their bits. Completely writing off an area like the CDS is poor guidebooking.
I hear that New York City, Paris, and London are not worth bothering with either. Rome? Totally over.
Ooh. Shall we start a fight between the guide book brands? This wasn’t intended as a Lonely Planet bash, incidentally. It was just the incident that spurred the thought. By and large, I do prefer LP to other guide book series – it just has a few habits that get on my nerves. Each series has its strengths and weaknesses. Although I’ll happily say the Thomas Cook and DK Eyewitness ones are rubbish, while the Bradts tend to be practically unusable as a guide.
Interesting debate. Personally, I prefer to read a guidebook that gives a ‘warts and all’ view and consider myself intelligent enough to decide whether I want to visit a place of not, on that basis. If it’s not included at all, that decision is taken away from me (or I have significantly less information on which to make it). A holiday on the Costa Del Sol is fairly close to my idea of hell, but I’m not arrogant enough to think that there aren’t a few gems along that particular stretch of coast as well. The challenge for a guidebook writer is to find them – this is particularly useful when we find ourselves visiting somewhere through obligation, such as a family wedding or friend’s birthday trip. There are few places I’ve visited and not been able to find some enjoyment in so I’d rather not be dictated to by a guidebook author who assumes they know better for me than I do.
Great debate David. I took over authorship of the Frommer’s Complete Guide to Andalusia last year.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Frommers-Seville-Granada-Andalusia-Complete/dp/0470974311/
I was frankly amazed at how large a chunk of the book was given over to the Costa del Sol on first read. ‘Who on earth would want to visit that hell hole’ was my first impression. And I had plans to drop big chunks of the coverage.
But you know what… I didn’t. In fact I added to it. To write the Costa del Sol off as all awful ‘touristtrapland’ is wrong wrong wrong. Bits of Marbella are for example lovely. The old town in particular. And there’s a big chunk of the travelling public who do want bucket and spade stuff and why not? If they want to go to Torremolinos who I am I to tell the not to? So I slogged my way up an down the coast and I’m glad I did. Estepona, Marbella and Malaga in particular where complete surprises and Gibraltar too.
If LP want to leave all that out, that’s fine by me. As a competitor guidebook writer I’m glad there is something to distinguish the products.
David says: “the Bradts tend to be practically unusable as a guide.” You haven’t travelled through Africa then…..
Hi Kim. No – I’ve not travelled through much of Africa, and I can’t speak for every book in the range. But every book I have used (that’s Bulgaria, Serbia, Taiwan and particularly the Seychelles) I’ve found to be heavily loaded towards the author’s obsessions, with hopeless maps and an overreliance on massive blocks of text that need breaking up.
Now I *was* a Lonely Planet guidebook author (of some 40 titles) (and I’ve also written for Rough Guides, but I’m just not going to even go there) and it has to be said that – and Paul should agree – that sometimes what is included or excluded is not even up to the author.
The CEs (commissioning editors) provide the authors with briefs, and these can vary from 20 pages to over 100 pages depending on the CE and in that brief they tell you what they think has to go in/out. Over the many years we worked for LP we had tonnes of arguments with CEs about content. For example, in one Dubai guide, they didn’t want us to include any golf courses, yet golf is one of the most popular sports there and the city hosts some of the world’s most important golfing destinations.
When we wrote for LP there was always a very clear directive *not* to include chain hotels, again, impossible in a city like Dubai. When they opened the first Ibis, which was and remains one of the best Ibis Hotels in the world (and I am by no means a fan of the Ibis), and it was one of the only decent hotels in that price category (the alternative: a few dozen dodgy 1 & 2-stars in the souqs that single women especially do not want to stay at), we had to argue to be able to include it.
Like Matthew, our Footprint Italian Lakes guide copped a bit of flack too, but that was more to do with all the places we had to leave out. What many readers don’t understand is that authors only get so many pages and prescribed word counts and you have to make decisions as to what goes in and what goes out. I would have loved to have included many of the places on the Lakes we were criticized for not having included, but there just wasn’t room.
That may have been the case with the Spanish guidebook. When an author has to make a decision as to whether to include some enchanting off the beaten track villages that get overlooked or the major tourist destination that everybody knows about, they’re probably going to choose the enchanting villages.