Thank you Pauline Frommer for joining me on my podcast!
I was honored to speak at the Travel and Adventure Show in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles–just like my travel idol, Pauline Frommer! I loved having her on my podcast and I know you will learn so much from listening to her extensive travel knowledge! Want more? Listen to her podcast, The Frommers Travel Show! And BUY the brand new guidebooks she talked about from their website or at your favorite local bookstore.
Lisa Niver and Pauline Frommer both speakers at the New York Travel and Adventure Show Jan 2023
Watch our interview on Spotify, YouTube or your favorite PODCAST platform. Enjoy the transcript here:
Lisa Niver:
Good morning. I’m so excited to be here with one of the most impressive people in travel publishing. Pauline Frommer. Thank you, so much, for being here.
Pauline Frommer:
Well, it’s such a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.
Lisa Niver:
It was such an honor for me to speak at the Travel and Adventure show this year, and to see you in so many cities. And I can’t believe that, what started with you and your dad, The Frommer Travel Guides, that you’ve published, is it really true 75 million books?
Pauline Frommer:
Yes. It started well, before I was born. It started in 1957. My dad was drafted into the Korean War, and luckily, the day before he would have been sent to Korea, the powers that be discovered that he spoke Russian and German, because he was the son of immigrants. So, instead of being sent off to Korea, which was a very bloody war, he was sent to Berlin, and started traveling all over Europe. But this is after World War II, so, Europe was in rubble, and most of his fellow GIs just stayed on the base. They were too nervous to travel, because they thought if they couldn’t spend a lot of money, it wouldn’t be worthwhile, and when he came back to the base, they would pepper him with questions. And he thought, well, maybe I’ll write a little book for my fellow GIs. He called it the GIs guide to Europe, and he self-published it. The day it went on sale, it sold out at the PXs across Europe, and so when he got out of the army, he thought, well, maybe civilians would like this, too. And again, he self-published. He self-published a little book called Europe on $5 a day, which became the bestselling guidebook of all time when it came out in 1957. And so that was the start of it all. But I wasn’t born until well, after that.
Lisa Niver:
Wow. I had no idea. That’s such an incredible story.
Pauline Frommer:
He was very lucky, because the jet age was starting, and after World War II, Americans had a lot more money than people in Europe did, for the most part, and so, they were finally able to go out and see the world. If you ever go to the World War II Museum in New Orleans, the weight of that war, and the numbers involved, it was the bloodiest war in the history of humanity. Getting through the other side of that, there was this feeling of great possibilities, and joy and relief, and that’s what spurred travel.
I think it’s spurring travel, right now, getting out of that awful pandemic. Everybody wants to be on the road. So, even though inflation is high, travel numbers are higher still, because we came out of that pandemic, with the understanding that life is short, and that you have to grab life when you can, and there’s no better way to grab it, then through travel.
Pauline Frommer, Lisa Niver and Patricia Schultz at the New York Travel and Adventure Show 2023
Lisa Niver:
I can see why your travel show podcast is on the New York Times top travel show to listen to, because you’re so interesting. I’m fascinated. Please thank your dad for his service, and does he still work with you in the company?
Pauline Frommer:
It’s not easy being 93. I see him, at least once a week, and I tell him everything that’s going on, but on a day-to-day basis, he’s not involved anymore.
My father wrote the first book, and he wrote it in a very personal way. The thing people would always say about his writing was, I felt like I was traveling with a friend, and we try and keep that going with the current books. All of our books are written by local writers.
I write New York City, since I’m based in New York. I have a wonderful woman named Margie Rin, who lives in Paris, and she writes Paris. I have a great author named, Liz Heath, in Rome, and she writes Rome, and so on. And we tell them that our biggest rival isn’t Lonely Planet, and it isn’t Rick Steves. It’s TripAdvisor and Yelp. People often think–I can’t trust travel guides. It’s all an institution. It’s written by committees, and so, we tell our writers, you need to show the reader that you’re a human being. Tell them what doesn’t work, as well as, what does, because unlike a lot of travel journalism, we don’t get paid to put a hotel in the book, or on our website, or a restaurant.
People assume that we’re all influencers now, and that the ethics have gone out of travel journalism, and that isn’t the case with Frommers. Our wonderful England writer, Jason Cochran says, “Don’t waste your time on the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. They’re going to play Abba tunes, it’s just gotten really silly. It’s a total mob scene. And you can actually go to another part of London where they do a smaller changing of the guard, and get right up to it, and show up five minutes before it starts, rather than having to waste two hours of your time waiting for the thing to happen.” Our reader is our only client, and we take that seriously.
Pauline Frommer speaking at the Los Angeles Travel & Adventure Show Feb 18 2023, Photo by Lisa Niver
Lisa Niver:
That is really good to know, because I do think people are confused about what’s sponsored content, and what’s paid for, what’s advertorial. That’s a really important commitment. And I know, when you speak at the travel show, I’ve always been mesmerized with your talk. You really share the best travel tips. One of the things that I think is really important for people, and I’ve heard you speak about this many times and has been a challenge on the COVID coaster. Can you speak to people about why it’s important to have travel insurance?
Pauline Frommer:
Well, it’s not important if you just take your flight. It’s not important if you’re driving somewhere and staying in a hotel. But if you’re paying a lot of money for a cruise, or a tour, or if you have to put down a hefty deposit on a vacation rental, you’re crazy not to get travel insurance, because that money could be gone. But there’s no one travel insurance company that’s always the best one. I like the Travel Insurance Marketplaces. They have names like Square Mouth, Insure My Trip, Travel Insurance.com. There are other fine ones. What you do is, you go to them, you put in your name, you put in your age and the details of your trip, and within 30 seconds, they’ve spat back a list of 500 different policies. And inevitably, the one that covers the most, isn’t the most expensive one. Usually, it’s one from somewhere in the middle of the list. I’ve used this and each time I’ve done it, I’ve ended up with an insurance policy from a different provider. When I went on safari in Africa, John Hancock had the best one. When I went to walk the Wu trail in Patagonia in Chile, Allianz did best for us. So, you never know what it’s going to be.
Pauline Frommer speaking at the 10th Women in Travel Fest in NYC March 5, 2023. Photo by Lisa Niver
Lisa Niver:
Thank you. Because I do think it’s really important that people understand that it’s complicated. I’ve heard you speak about travel insurance several times, and just after September 11, the cruise company that I was working for went bankrupt. And people who bought the insurance from the now-defunct company realized that was a mistake when things didn’t go their way.
Can you tell people about some of the new books that are out, and places that you’re recommending for 2023 and 2024?
Pauline Frommer:
Greece was one of the very first countries to come out of the pandemic and start welcoming tourists again. In the last decade, Athens has done so much to make itself more visitor friendly. They’ve built a glamorous new Archaeological Museum rather than the dusty old place that used to exist near the Parthenon. When you go there, it gives you context for what you’re seeing all these ancient master works. They really help you understand it. They have great restaurants now. The islands have always been spectacular, and they still are.
We have a new Athens and the Greek Islands book, written by author Stephen Brewer, who’s an incredible expert and a very erudite guy. He helps our readers understand why things may feel familiar in Greece, because so much of American culture comes from the classical era. He really does an amazing job of drawing the strands of history, so that it feels contemporary, so that you understand why history is still shaping our lives today. We’re really, really proud of the Athens and the Greek Islands book.
I’m working on the Maui book, which will be out in a couple of months. It’s really interesting. The dirty little secret is, you can go to Frommers.com, and see all of our guidebooks online, too. You can’t carry them with you, so, we still know that people buy the books, but you can see the text. As I was editing the Maui guide, I was looking to see what the prices were before. I realized that from pre-pandemic to today, prices for hotels have doubled in Maui, literally doubled. A cheap hotel in Maui right now is $300 a night, which is insane. For moderate hotels, you’re looking at $6-7-800 dollars a night. If you want really the glamorous ones, that’s over $1,000.
Lisa Niver:
Oh, my goodness, that’s very pricey!
Pauline Frommer:
I spoke to Jeanne Cooper, who’s our author who explained that because of understaffing, a lot of these hotels are only 50% full. They cannot handle a full hotel, and so, they’re charging what they think the market will bear. What we’re finding is you have to make your reservation a couple of months before going to Maui, but the week before you travel, go to one of the private clubs, that gets better rates on hotels. Travel & Leisure magazine has one called the Travel & Leisure club. There’s one called Room Steals. The one I tend to use, which has some problems, but still has very good prices is one done by Trip Scout, and it’s only found on Instagram.
So, you write to Trip Scout, or you go to @hotels and you say where you want to go and they give you a list of what the prices will be. The reason it has problems is they don’t often surface all the information you might need to make a decision. So, for example, I was looking last year, for a place near Acadia National Park. I found really good rates. I didn’t realize until I looked at other sources of information that it was a hotel with a bathroom down the hall, which some people wouldn’t want, but the prices were still 25 to 50% less than they were everywhere else.
Why is that? Every hotel on the planet, right now, has a contract with Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, Priceline, etcetera, all of the major booking engines. And those contracts state that they cannot give discounts that are searchable, that are much lower than what they’re giving to Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, Priceline, but these hotels still want to move rooms, but they don’t want the whole world to know that they’re willing to let you pay 50% less than what you usually pay. When you go to Trip Scout on Instagram, what comes up can’t be searched by Google. The hotels can move a handful of rooms, and people going to Maui are not paying these insane prices. We’re trying to break this down in the book, so that people can still have it a vacation in Maui, and not pull their hair out for how much they’re paying, and so that will pay for the cost of the book.
Lisa Niver:
Wow. Like I said, I’ve heard you speak many times. You have a vast knowledge from generations of being in this business. I know that you have a new book, and people are so excited about Yellowstone from the TV show. Are you seeing many people buying the book about Yellowstone?
Pauline Frommer:
Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons came out, maybe three weeks ago. We were in the process of updating it, and then these terrible floods hit Yellowstone. This was about maybe a year and a half ago, now, and so we had Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan, who’s our author there, stop her work, and we waited for a good five months, until we had more clarity on what was going to change, because these were really devastating floods. Entire roads were wiped out, and a lot has had to be rebuilt there. As soon as it was clear that that things were going to be as they were going to be for the next year or so, she went back to work. Right now, Lonely Planet is the best seller for the area, but it’s a book that came out pre-flooding. So, I have a feeling a lot of things that are in it probably aren’t as up to date as they need to be. And that’s the hard thing with travel books.
When you go to TripAdvisor and look at a hotel review, you’re taking the advice of someone who’s been to exactly one hotel. They may not know that, right down the road, there’s a place that’s just as nice, but cheaper. Our authors visit every place. So, they have context. They can talk about places in relationship to your other choices, whether it’s hotels, restaurants, attractions, what have you.
Lisa Niver:
One of the things you spoke about at the Travel and Adventure show in New York City, and because the Olympics will be in Paris, many people are going to be thinking about traveling to France. Can you tell us about your bike tour? I remember you spoke about how it was hard to find the information online and ended up being so economical.
Pauline Frommer:
We, actually, have a new France book that’s being researched, right now. It’ll be out in time for the Olympics.
But I went to a city called Dijon, which is in the region of Burgundy, which is of course a major wine growing region, and I looked online to see what I should do. And in Dijon, I, obviously, also looked at the Frommer guide, but when I looked online, Google told me that there was absolutely nothing to do in the city of Dijon, that the only thing to do when you go to Dijon was to get out into the countryside and take a wine tour. And I thought, that’s weird.
Our book has all of these museums in it, and they look great. One is considered the fourth most important museum in all of France. Why aren’t these being brought up by Google? I realized it was because they were all free. And so, all of the sites that cover travel, and then now make a lot of money by selling entrance fees and tours, and the like, weren’t covering these museums because there was no money to be made. Google hoovers all of the information up online, so their search was also kind of screwy.
Dijon was the seat of government for the Dukes of Burgundy. So, it has spectacular architecture, gorgeous museums, ancient mansions, extraordinary restaurants, where everything is made with wine in some way, whether it’s beef bourguignon, or these eggs meurette, which are these eggs that are poached in red wine and come with a red wine sauce, and are really delicious. They’re served at dinner, as appetizers, but you’d never know this, if you just searched online.
Lisa Niver:
You are such an incredible, gracious resource, and I am so honored that you were able to spend time with me here on the podcast. Obviously, people are going to want to know more, so, tell everybody, how can they find your podcast? Where’s the best place to buy the guidebooks? Tell them how do we find more of all of this?
Pauline Frommer:
Well, for the podcast, you go to frommers.com, which is frommers.com/podcast. We cover a lot of the breaking news at frommers.com. Recently, remember when coming out of the pandemic, all of these destinations were saying they would give people free travel. Hong Kong actually followed through on it, and we were able to post, last week, that Americans could get, 5000 free airfares to Hong Kong. When you come to frommers.com, we’ll have great breaking news that you can use like that. Look for our guides at your local bookstore. You can, obviously, find us on Amazon, but I always push people to go to the great independent bookstores because I want to support them.
Lisa Niver:
And if they want to meet you in person, you’ll be next year at the best show, the Travel and Adventure Show. I look forward to seeing you there, and I can’t wait to learn more from you. And again, I just really appreciate you making the time to come speak with me on my podcast.
Pauline Frommer:
This was a lot of fun. Thank you.
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Lisa’s book: Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty
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