what is the size of the market/industry($) for travel guide books
(Fodor's, Frommer's, Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, etc.) in the US
and/or worldwide?
sample answer: "in 2004, total sales for all travel guide books in the
US was $x." (substantiated by credible source-- I am using this data
in a business plan and must be able to substantiate it to potential
investors. |
Request for Question Clarification by
websearcher-ga
on
28 Apr 2005 09:09 PDT
hello jchap:
Thanks for the interesting question.
I've done some thorough searching for you and have not been able to
find on the Web a definitive sales figure for 2004.
However, I have been able to find figures for earlier years:
The Clickable Corporation: Successful Strategies for Capturing the
Internet Advantage
URL: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?show=HARDCOVER:USED:0684855534:5.95&page=excerpt
Quote: "Microsoft originally planned a CD-ROM of travel information
culled from some twenty printed guides and travel magazines. The
company simply wanted a piece of the $200 million travel-guide
industry, which seemed ripe for a user-friendly alternative to print
media."
Note: This book was published in 1999, so the sales figures are probably for 1998.
Guidebook sales rebound slowly
URL: http://www.detnews.com/2002/business/0203/19/b03-443875.htm
Quote: "Travel books have been a growing niche in the publishing
market in recent years. Guidebook sales grew 23 percent to $222
million from 1997 through 2000, according to the most recent data from
Ipsos-NPD BookTrends, a market research firm. The market has expanded
to include everyone from backpackers to five-star jetsetters.
But this year, industrywide sales are down a little more than 10
percent to 1.72 million books through mid-February, according to
BookScan, which tracks sales at chain stores and wholesale clubs."
Note: That would put sales for 2001 at around $200 million as well.
I have contacted a very authoritative source and am currently
negotiating with them about what the cost of such a figure for 2004
would be. I will let you know as soon as I have completed my
negotiations.
Thanks for your patience.
websearcher
|
Clarification of Question by
jchap-ga
on
28 Apr 2005 10:47 PDT
I really need current data-- especially post 2001 to account for the
interruption in the travel industry due to Sep 11th.
Please let me know what you find. Thanks.
|
Request for Question Clarification by
websearcher-ga
on
29 Apr 2005 10:17 PDT
hi jchap:
Well, I'm still waiting on a reply from my source (about cost and
procedure for getting the data you require).
I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything. Do you have a
"drop-dead" date by which you need this information?
Thanks for your patience.
websearcher
|
Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
29 Apr 2005 11:57 PDT
jchap-ga,
I agree with my fellow researcher, webresearcher-ga, that current
market numbers are hard to come by.
However, I have come across some recent data that makes it possible to
put an up-to-date estimate on the size of the market.
The data concerns Lonely Planet, which an article notes sells about 6
million guides per year, and which accounts for about 25% of the total
sales of English-language travel guides.
With those numbers, it is clear that total sales are about 24 million
travel guides worldwide. With a typical price that I estimate is
about $15/book, this would put the market at 24 million x $15 = $360
million.
It's an estimate, but it makes a lot of sense, given the citation that
websearcher-ga mentioned of a $200 million market back in 1998.
In addition to the data, I've also found a lot of non-numerical
statements about the state of the travel guide market, and trends in
publishing. For instance, here's an excerpt from an August 2004
article:
-----
"Judging from our guidebook sales this year," says Douglas Amrine,
publisher, DK Eyewitness Travel Guides, "travel has certainly
rebounded and seems to be stronger than ever. Over the last three
years, there has been an increase in domestic travel at the expense of
foreign travel, and road trips at the expense of air travel, so our
commissioning of new guidebooks has reflected that, with a greater
number of North American destinations."
Gastro-tourism, he adds, is another trend "that seems to get stronger
every year. There's no point ignoring the fact that enjoying good food
and wine and finding special places to stay can be just as important
as the museums, palaces and cathedrals you visit. Our response to that
need has been France: Best Places to Eat & Stay, a theme we plan to
continue with similar guides to Italy and Spain.
DK is launching in February a series of "e.guides," in which each
book is backed up with a dedicated Web site to that destination, which
will keep the guide up-to-date and save hours of online browsing.
-----
There's a lot more of those sorts of quotes and excerpts, from a
number of different travel guide publishers.
Let me know if this sort of information would serve your purposes as
an answer to your question.
pafalafa-ga
|
Request for Question Clarification by
websearcher-ga
on
04 May 2005 06:16 PDT
Hi jchap:
I am afraid that the person I was negotiating with has decided NOT to
work with me at this time. I'm not 100% sure why he has chosen this
route. However, he did seem interested in speaking with my client
(you) directly. My suggestion to you is to contact him yourself. I
truly believe he has access to the exact information you need (or he
can compute it from his base data).
The contact is:
Jim King
VP Sales and Service
Nielsen BookScan U.S.
(914) 684-5537 Ph.
jking@nielsenbookscan.com
URL: http://www.bookscan.com/contact.html
From their website:
Nielsen BookScan operates the world's first continuous retail sales
monitoring service for books, with purchase information representing
sales through a majority of the major retailers each week. In a
typical week, sales of over 300,000 different titles are collected,
coded and analysed, producing complete market information for
retailers, publishers and the media.
...
Nielsen BookScan categorizes first under the headings: Adult fiction,
Adult non-fiction, Children and Other. Within these categories
subjects or genres are broken out further in order to reflect common
subject groups such as mystery, romance, art, cooking, study aids,
toddler and young adult, etc.. Nielsen BookScan uses BISAC codes, a
system of over 3,000 tags devised by the Book Industry Study Group
used to determine where a title falls in the subject groupings.
URL: http://www.bookscan.com/about.html
I wish you luck in your endeavor. Please let me know (in this
question) how you get on.
If you decide to go with an estimate for the total sales of travel
guides in 2004, then I would suggest that the U.S. total is around
$210 million. The $200 figure that I found for earlier years was the
*U.S* total and I feel that even though 9-11 is years past, that the
war in Iraq would have continued to dampen trave guide sales.
Thanks again.
websearcher
|
Request for Question Clarification by
websearcher-ga
on
06 May 2005 08:19 PDT
Without typos, the paragraph from my last clarification request would read:
If you decide to go with an estimate for the total sales of travel
guides in 2004, then I would suggest that the U.S. total is around
$210 million. The $200 million figure that I found for earlier years was the
*U.S* total and I feel that even though 9-11 is years past, that the
war in Iraq would have continued to dampen travel guide sales.
Have you contacted BookScan? Any luck?
websearcher
|
Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
22 May 2005 16:37 PDT
Just checking in here, jchap-ga.
There have been a number of (hopefully informative) posts by me and
others. Do you have the information you need at this point? Is there
more that we can do for you? Or does the question appear not
answerable to your satisfaction?
Please let us know.
pafalafa-ga
|
