Arthur Frommer, whose Guides revolutionized leisure travel and encouraged budget-friendly holidays abroad, has died. He was 95 years old.
Frommer died of complications from pneumonia, his daughter Pauline Frommer said Monday.
“My father opened the world to so many people,” she said. “He deeply believed that travel could be a rewarding activity that did not require a large budget.”
Frommer began writing about travel while serving in the U.S. Army in Europe in the 1950s. When a guidebook he wrote for American soldiers overseas went out of print, he launched what has become one of the most well-known brands in the travel industry, self-publishing. Europe on 5 dollars a day in 1957.
“It struck a chord and immediately became a bestseller,” he recalled in a 2007 interview with the Associated Press, on the 50th anniversary of the book's release.
Arthur Frommer tells CBC's Midday what kind of travel he thinks is worth it, and what kind of travel isn't worth it.
It didn't hurt that his books hit the market, as the rise of air travel made getting to Europe easier than crossing the Atlantic by ship.
Frommer told CBC Noon in a late 1980s appearance, the journey ideally makes you a “different person than when you started.”
“For me, travel is no longer worth it if it is not associated with ideas and people, if it does not expand horizons,” he said.
“Really pioneering stuff”
The Frommer's brand, run today by his daughter Pauline, remains one of the best-known names in the travel industry, with destination guides around the world, an influential social media presence, podcasts and a radio show.
Frommer's philosophy advocated staying in budget hostels and hotels rather than five-star hotels, sightseeing using public transportation rather than guided tours, and eating with locals in small cafes rather than in restaurants. chic restaurants. He said budget travel was preferable to luxury travel “because it leads to a more authentic experience.” This message encouraged ordinary people, not just the rich, to vacation abroad.
Frommer's advice has also become so commonplace that it's hard to remember how radical it seemed in the days before discount flights and backpacks.
“It was really a pioneering project,” Tony Wheeler, founder of the Lonely Planet guidebook company, said in a 2013 interview. Before Frommer, Wheeler said, you could find guidebooks “that told you everything about the church or temple ruins. But the idea that you want to eat somewhere and find a hotel or get from point A to point B – well, I have enormous respect for Arthur. »
Frommer also remained a well-known figure in 21st century travel, opinionated until the end of his career, speaking out on his blog and radio show. He hated mega-cruise ships and attacked travel websites where consumers posted their own reviews, saying they were too easily manipulated with fake posts.
Frommer sold the guide company to Simon & Schuster. It was then acquired by Wiley Publishing, which in turn sold it to Google in 2012. Google quietly shut down the guides, but Arthur Frommer – in a triumph of David over Goliath – reclaimed his brand from Google. In November 2013, with his daughter Pauline, he relaunched the printed series with dozens of new guide titles.
“I never dreamed at my age that I would work this hard,” the 84-year-old told the AP at the time.
Abandoned a fledgling legal career
Frommer was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, and grew up during the Great Depression in Jefferson City, Missouri, the child of a Polish father and an Austrian mother.
“My father had one job after another, one company after another that went bankrupt,” he remembers. The family moved to New York when he was a teenager.
Arthur Frommer says you should prepare yourself for new experiences when you travel.
He worked as a clerk at Newsweek, went to New York University and was drafted after graduating from Yale Law School in 1953. Because he spoke French and Russian, he was sent to work in military intelligence at an American base in Germany, where the Cold War was intensifying.
His first glimpse of Europe was from the window of a military transport plane. Whenever he had a weekend off or a three-day pass, he took a train to Paris or hitchhiked to England on an Air Force flight. Finally he wrote The GI guide to traveling in Europeand a few weeks before the end of his army service, he had 5,000 copies printed by a composer in a German village. They were priced at 50 cents each, distributed by the military newspaper Stars & Stripes.
Shortly after returning to New York to practice law with the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, he received a cable from Europe requesting a reprint, resulting in the very first Europe on 5 dollars a day.
Eventually, Frommer left law to write guidebooks full time.
Until the end of his life, he said he avoided traveling first class.
“I fly economy class and I try to have the same form of travel, the same experience that the average American and the average citizen of the world has,” he said.
The final editions of Frommer's first series were titled Europe from $95 per day. The concept no longer made sense when hotels could not be found for less than $100 a night, so this series was discontinued in 2007.
As Frommer aged, his daughter Pauline gradually became the force behind the company, promoting the brand, managing the business and even writing some of the content based on her own travels.
Besides Pauline, Frommer's survivors include his second wife, Roberta Brodfeld, and his four grandchildren.
