Let’s Go Guides Undergo Changes

After a trying year for Let’s Go Incorporated in which Sept. 11 disrupted the travel industry, a researcher died in a bus crash and a report commissioned by publisher St. Martin’s Press found the student-produced series of budget travel guides to be “out of step” with its market, Let’s Go guides will have a new look when they hit stores this November.

Most noticeably, the series has redesigned its covers and eliminated its trademark thumb logo, which has long identified Let’s Go as friendly to those traveling on a budget. According to St. Martin’s Press editorial liaison Esti M. Iturralde ’00, the thumb is outdated.

“There was a bohemian hitchhiker thing going on [30 years ago],” Iturralde said, “but we don’t want to narrow our brand image to one vagabond readership.”

The 2003 series will de-emphasize Let’s Go’s reputation as a budget travel guide and will review establishments in every price range, featuring “moderately priced options” and “Big Splurges.”

The guides will also add a new section on “alternatives to tourism,” first-person accounts by researchers and interviews with locals in an attempt to appeal to an audience believed to be more sophisticated and socially conscious.

There will also be scholarly and first-person essays to help readers understand more about the places they explore from a non-tour guide perspective, many of which are written by Harvard professors, said Let’s Go publicity manager Michelle R. Bowman ’04.

Michelle Filippo, marketing manager at St. Martin’s Press, said the decision to revamp the series to target a wider audience was not made unilaterally by the publishing company.

Bowman insisted the overhaul was a “cooperative” effort, though she would not say which, if any, of the upcoming changes originated at Let’s Go.

The changes to the series, while seemingly drastic, represent a victory for Let’s Go in light of the St. Martin’s report issued last July, which recommended discontinuing the Let’s Go name and introducing an entirely new series of guides.

“It is extremely difficult to change the image of a brand which has lost its stature as a leading brand,” the report said.

Ankur Ghosh ’01, then Let’s Go editor-in-chief, disputed the report’s findings at the time, but Bowman said editors are now excited about the changes that apparently grew out of the report’s criticism.

“We [and Let’s Go] realized that the industry is becoming crowded,” said Iturralde, who worked at Let’s Go while at the College. “We have to do something to break from the competition and give us an edge.”

The series aims to reassess notions of what it means to be a budget traveler today.

“All budget travelers are willing to spend more money on things they deem to be of high value,” Iturralde said.

Let’s Go has also realized that “the budget traveler is more than just students,” according to Iturralde.

The series will now also cater more to people in their twenties and early thirties.

“We talked to Let’s Go, and they said they get a lot of feedback from older people,” Filippo said. “Not everyone wants to stay in a youth hostel anymore.”

But as Let’s Go includes more non-budget coverage, the guides are also trying to appeal to the traveler who wants to get down and dirty.

Iturralde said the “alternatives to tourism” section—which suggests work and study opportunities abroad, as well as ways to volunteer or even to settle in the community—will make Let’s Go stand out from other travel guides.

“It’s something that’s not addressed by any of our competitors,” she said. “And it speaks to a student-budget audience that is less interested in the fancy tourist industry and more interested in engaging in local culture.”

The revamped series will also introduce four new titles—guides to Hawaii, Costa Rica, Chile and Thailand.

Local travel industry experts were divided on the changes.

Jennifer K. Bowser, who works at STA Student Travel next door to Let’s Go’s offices, said the addition of the “alternatives to tourism” section would benefit many budget travelers.

“People come in all the time and ask, ‘I want to work on a farm in the middle of nowhere—How do I do that?’” Bowser said. “It’s an excellent idea.”

But Tim M. Curry, salesperson at the Globe Corner Travel Bookstore in Harvard Square, said he was skeptical of the series’ change in target audience, noting that he has always recommended the Let’s Go brand to college students but not to older customers.

“I can’t imagine that it will appeal to people in their thirties,” he said.

—Staff writer Eugenia B. Schraa can be reached at schraa@fas.harvard.edu.