My future wife wasn’t best impressed when she left the travel arrangements to me and we promptly missed our flight to Lanzarote.
Look on the bright side, said I, we get to spend a night in Madrid en route to the Canaries! So having scoured a niche Madrid hotels guide at W H Smith at Gatwick, we arrived in the city that night and booked into a former bordello. With Jacuzzi in the room. I didn’t tell her that bit, and she was even less impressed.
I love W H Smith. It has helped me out with Madrid, Syria and Mallorca travel guides in the past year. Its airport shops have restocked my library with Theroux and Dalrymple in the same time, and made me impulse buy new travel literature.
The same is true of its railway station shops. The reassuring blue facade is the link between travel plans made and the imminent adventure, the last chance to buy the killer Bradt or Time Out guide and the great-new-read-everyone-is-talking-about.
But now W H Smith has sold out. From today, the chain will sell only foreign travel guides from the Penguin stable at its 450 airport, station and motorway shops.
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That’s fine if you want DK, Rough Guides or Sawday books (all very fine publications).
But it isn’t if you want a browse, a choice, the opportunity to buy a guide from a dozen or more other travel publishers. Or if you want a guide related to the places Penguin doesn’t cover.
Inevitably, it is money and protectionism talking. According to The Bookseller Nielsen BookScan figures show that in 2008, travel book sales fell 8.7 per cent in value year-on-year, with Penguin’s share of the entire travel market being 18 per cent (9.8 per cent DK and 8 per cent Rough Guides).
But Penguin’s market share fell in the first four months of 2009, with DK sales down 16.5 per cent and Rough Guides reporting a drop of 30 per cent.
W H Smith is renowned for its tough negotiations when it comes to racking magazines.
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And with travel guide sales also falling, it makes economic sense to the bean counters to tie in one of the biggest publishers, which needs help - but will also give it a good deal.
According to The Bookseller, the terms of the deal include a 72 per cent discount on the cover price - with added cash upfront.
In an excellent riposte from the British Guild of Travel Writers, chairman Melissa Shales said: “Penguin and WHS are set to neatly truss up the rest of the industry with this exclusivity deal.”
Lonely Planet, Bradt, Michelin, Insight, Frommers, Time Out and Berlitz are among titles that will vanish from WHSmith racks.
Jobs will be lost, said Shales, adding: “It also means that travellers won’t be able to get a book to many destinations at an airport – the DK/Rough Guide list is far from universal.” DK and Rough Guides accounted for only 40 of the top 100 international travel guides last year.
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Many publishers are terrified of Smith’s clout and will not publicly speak out Those who have - Lonely Planet and retailer Stanfords - point out the clear restrictions of choice. Guild member and Frommers guidebook writer Jeremy Head put it succinctly: “The market is being carved up.”
Penguin has not commented on the decision. And a spokesperson from W H Smith has said that trials had indicated that the move would make travel guide shopping “easier for the customer”, as travel customers were “extremely time pressed”.
TimesOnline is awaiting comment from W H Smith. I expect no different a line from that already touted - a mealy mouthed way of saying economies of scale and a hard-driven deal with a struggling publisher who needs protection is in some way better for customers.
As for being extremely time-pressed, Lanzarote excepting, one of the few remaining pleasures of the demeaning airport shuffle has always been the chance to browse at W H Smith.
Online is one of the reasons travel publishing has been hard hit. Now it’s time to go online and pre-order your travel guides and literature, or to visit an independent bookshop.
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And not, as Shales puts it, to visit W H Smith if our only choice is to pick up a Penguin.
Postscript: The statement given to TimesOnline by a W H Smith spokesperson:
“‘In travel locations our customers are often extremely pressed for time. We are therefore trying to simplify our range and the way it is presented so that it is easier for customers to find and select a suitable product. We have trialled a number of options for our range of travel guides and we now intend to roll out one which received extremely positive customer feedback.”
Yes...