I have been a fan of Lonely Planet travel guides for several years now, after I converted over from Rough Guides. Lonely Planet captured me with both a text-forward approach (like Rough Guides) but with more graphic appeal - wonderfully colorful charts, maps, section dividers - all in all a travel guide tour de force. So I was very looking forward to LP's 12th edition, published July 25 and pre-ordered it. I eagerly opened the Amazon package and sat down to look it over. Um, something different about it. The old layout was gone. The book is now way too graphic-heavy with color, photos and maps dominating. Detailed info about travel (i.e., how to get round England by train) was reduced to one graph. Something was wrong. LP has revised its guide (apparently all future guides will be like this?) for what I can only call the 'Gen Z' generation or people glued to screens and not print. Gone are the detailed text info about hotels, restaurants, visiting sites. I submitted a review to Amazon which has gone live: "Very disappointed in this new edition. I loved previous Lonely Planet guides because they were text heavy with complementary appealing layout and graphics. This edition is clearly for the Gen Z generation accustomed to looking at screens and with short attention spans. Very little text, graphics and maps heavy. In a phrase, dumbed down."...So I've packed up the book, put it in a new envelope, printed out a return label, and will drop it off tonight. I've ordered the 11th edition (2021) instead. Maybe I'll have to go back to Rough Guides.
- Ron Stang, Windsor Ontario Canada, a frequent traveller
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