Let's Go Turns 50

Let’s Go, the organization that publishes budget-friendly travel guidebooks, is turning the big 5-0 this year.

According to Let’s Go Head of Sales and Marketing Ashley R. Laporte '10, there will be two different events commemorating the organization's 50th anniversary.

The "Wine and Cheese and Travel Workshop," which will help prospective travelers plan their vacations, is set to take place on Jan. 26 at the Harvard Book Store. In addition, Let’s Go, OCS, OIP and STA Travel have teamed up to organize a “Summer Travel Opportunities Kickoff” information session that will take place on Feb. 4 in Ticknor Lounge.

Let's Go staff members told us that they certainly plan to keep the original spirit of the books alive.

“Let’s Go started out as student travel guide, and we’d like to keep that philosophy in mind. It does not have the staid, formal prose of other guides. It is witty, sarcastic, and has true and honest opinions,” said Managing Editor Iya Megre ’11.

Founder G. Oliver Koppell ’62 said he was enthusiastic about the progress that Let's Go has made over the past five decades. “I’m very excited that the guide has been published for 50 years," he said. "I never anticipated the growth the guide itself has undergone. I use the guides myself, and I’m very impressed.”

As a freshman in 1959, Koppell began organizing charter flights to Europe for Harvard faculty and students. The Let's Go guidebooks, he said, grew out of this initiative.

“My father, who had worked in both the travel business and publishing, said, ‘Oliver, since you're organizing these charter flights, why don’t you make a guide book for the students on these flights?' So I made a pamphlet in 1960,” said Koppell.

Since then, Let’s Go has evolved quite a bit—it now boasts an impressive collection of 49 guides. It was also the first travel guide series to post all of its content online free of charge, according to Executive Editor Nathaniel S. Rakich '10, who is also a Crimson editorial editor.

Although Let's Go faced some challenges when its publisher, St. Martin's Press, terminated their 25-year relationship (around the same time that the national economy started going downhill), Rakich told the Crimson last year that he was optimistic about the series' future.

So what is it about Let's Go that makes it so special? “We’re not just about giving you information about all these different places," Megre told us. "We’re telling you why you want to visit them.”

Cheers to you, Let’s Go! Here's to another half century of success.