Fresh Chat

Yesterday it was reported that one of Lonely Planet guide book authors, Thomas Khonstamm did not travel to one of the countries that he wrote about.  The scandal is sure to be felt at Lonely Planet as it has always been seen as a trusted travel source.

News Ltd reported that Kohnstamm said “They didn’t pay me enough to go to Columbia”.

In this age of ‘transparency’ the scandal has hit the media very quickly with various newspapers around the world picking up the story.

In addition, local Australian travel blogger OzTraveller also highlighted the scandal and said “In a new book entitled Do Travel Writers Go To Hell? Kohnstamm admits to having plagerised and invented information. He claims he didn’t even visit Colombia to write the LP guide ‘because they didn’t pay me enough’; instead, ‘I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating - an intern in the Colombian consulate’.

Interestingly, the story has also appeared in the Lonely Planet forum called Thorn Tree.  Forumites comments included:

•  ’they should pay their authors more’
• ‘hilarous’
• ‘So Kohnstamm’s defence is the same as all lowlifes… “they made me do it”.

One of the more interesting posts said “I can’t see this thread lasting long before the censors move in”.

As with all crisis management issues embracing feedback is critical.  Lonely Planet now have an opportunity to try to rectify the situation as much as possible. Censoring this thread in their forum would be incredibly bad form and would reinforce Lonely Planet as untrustworthy.

In this Internet age word travels fast and companies need to be monitoring the online media and responding to it. Now Lonely Planet have a choice to make.

Update: Today Lonely Planet rejected the above claims - read their prompt release here:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j3rtUd_mHnEgIRhar1C7jYAc1hBgD901DCR80