The president was Eisenhower. The Dodgers belonged to Brooklyn. The cost of a round-trip flight from Los Angeles to London was $720 – a staggering amount in 1956. Yet, during his off hours, a young Manhattan lawyer, Arthur Frommer, came up with a crazy idea .
As a U.S. Army serviceman in postwar Europe a few years earlier, Frommer had seen the wonders of the continent and the purchasing power of a dollar abroad. He realized that many Americans could do the same, if they knew where to go and how to make money. He came up with the idea for a guide, tested it by self-publishing a booklet for service members overseas, and quickly sold every copy.
Frommer therefore attempted an even more daring move. In 1957, he published “Europe on $5 a Day” and ushered in a new era of travel, persuading legions of middle-class Americans that the art, architecture and cuisine of London, Paris and Rome were not reserved for aristocrats.
First rule of economy stated in this guide: “Never specify that you want a private bathroom with your hotel room. »
As technological advances and deregulation reduced the cost of transatlantic flights over the following years and decades, Frommer's words found an increasingly wider audience. By 1961, he had left law to devote himself full-time to writing about affordable travel. By 1962, he was hiring other writers to produce guides like “Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas on $5 and $10 a Day.”
“I kept the '$5' (in the book's title) until about 1964,” Frommer once told me. “I remember the first year I had to change it for $10, I was filled with the most horrible feeling of dread. …I thought, “Well, that’s it. »
Far from it. Before his death at his home in New York on Monday at age 95, Frommer built and sold a guidebook empire, ran a travel agency, created and sold a magazine, launched a travel website, a radio show and a podcast, bought back his empire of guides and mentored generations. travelers and travel writers.
Without Frommer's pioneering work, it's hard to imagine the Lonely Planet guidebooks (founded by Tony and Maureen Wheeler in 1973) or the career of Rick Steves, the teacher turned editor turned public television anchor whose first edition from “Europe through the Back Door” was released in 1980.
“Arthur's work gave people like my parents the confidence to travel independently through Europe at a time when it was a novelty for middle-class Americans,” Steves wrote in a blog post in 2013. “It could be argued that if it weren't for Arthur Frommer opening that door for my family in 1969, I would still be teaching piano lessons.”
Arthur Frommer, right, and his daughter, Pauline Frommer, photographed in New York in 2007.
(Jim Cooper / Associated Press)
Frommer's partner in much of this work has been his daughter Pauline, co-president of FrommerMedia and editorial director of Frommer's Guides. Throughout his life, Pauline Frommer wrote that her father “democratized travel, showing average Americans how anyone can afford to travel extensively and better understand the world.”
As the industry grew and evolved, Frommer endured and adapted, speaking with the aplomb of a litigator and the enthusiasm of a beginner, but also with the skepticism of someone who saw a lot. He sold trips, but Frommer saw time abroad as a chance to learn, humble himself, and become a better global neighbor. He had little patience for people and businesses who viewed travel as a wealth trap.
This was evident in his syndicated columns on budget travel (which appeared in the LA Times from 1998 to 2007) and in his appearances on shows and in person at travel trade shows and conferences. By the time I met him in the mid-1990s, his signature title had become “$50 a Day.” (Frommer abandoned this format after reaching $95 in 2007.)
In one of our first conversations, Frommer told me how Pauline had just gotten married. In planning her honeymoon, the proud father said she booked a room in Bali's rural highlands, $12 a night, with a shared bathroom down the hall.
Arthur and Pauline prepare for “The Travel Show”, their weekly radio show, in 2012.
(Seth Wenig / Associated Press)
For 25 years, we have spoken many times, discussing travelers checks, the role of travel agents, the rise of the cruise industry, the ethics of boycotting travel, the scourge of hidden fees, the pleasure of discovering a new place. I have always been impressed by his sense of mission.
He was not the only American guidebook publisher. He wasn't even the only one focused on the budget. But her voice was forceful and she wasn't always happy. In 1988, Frommer warned that “most vacation trips undertaken by Americans were insignificant and bland, devoid of important content, cheaply commercial, and unworthy of our best instincts and ideals.” In an effort to change that, he published “Arthur Frommer's New World of Travel,” focusing on “alternative vacations that will change your life,” including educational programs, volunteer work, and exchanges between households, ideas he continued to defend for decades. .
In 2009, when my LA Times colleague Susan Spano asked Frommer if he was still a budget traveler, he had a typically energetic response ready.
“I’ve always believed that the less you spend, the more you enjoy,” he says. “The moment you check into a first-class hotel, you find yourself cut off from life, in a world devoted to creature comforts. High-end hotels offer the imaginary experience of living like an aristocrat. But when you fall asleep, you no longer know whether you are in a one-star or a five-star hotel. The large rooms and amenities are just absurd. Go to a guest house. It's a lot more fun.
In 2013, Frommer was 80 years old. Instead of retiring, he bought out the rights to his guide serieswhich continues, covering destinations around the world with pocket guides and e-books. “Fifty-seven years later, I’m getting back to what I was originally doing,” Frommer said. “I’m probably the oldest fledgling editor in the history of the world.”
The grand old man of guidebooks may be gone, but many of us will be following his example for a long time to come.
