Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder, and much more to the point, Adrian Phillips, managing director of Brad Travel Guides. Thank you very much indeed for taking a bit of time to tell me what's happening to Travel Gu guys. It's impossible, surely, for any travel

publisher like you to have any travel guide record ready because, well, nobody's been able to go

and research for three years, basically. It's certainly been a challenge. We had a whole suite of

books lining up like grounded airplanes on a runway during the pandemic and we had to find

very imaginative ways to repurpose our editorial team but once travel started opening up again we started

getting those books back out there again and and actually January just gone we've seen our best

sales for the best part of two years so there is. After all the bleak doom of the last two

years, there's finally some hope for travel guides and travel. Well, people's habits have changed

dramatically in the past couple of years. Have their travel guide requirements changed as well?

I think it's a bit too early to tell that. Certainly there seems to be a,

I mean certainly here, we're at a travel show here as you know Simon and the feedback seems to be

that people are looking for longer form, longer haul travel to go for a longer period of time,

I should say, and do more immersive travel. I think that's pent up over, you know, sort of people having a bit of cabin fever during the

pandemic and now wanting to feel that they're really getting out there again and immersing

themselves in a different place.

How long that remains the case, I don't know.

I mean, these things may find next year that people start moving back towards fly and flop holidays all over again, which I would find personally rather depressing. But certainly the general industry, and talking to tour operators as well, the general industry feedback is that a great many tour operators are seeing people looking for more immersive experiences, more experiential trips that mean they're giving something back is such a virtuous

phrase, isn't it? It's horrible, but feeling that they are travelling in a more sustainable

and engaging way and giving something back to the local communities. Now, what books have you

had stacking? I presume, well, let's go back

and I'm sorry to give you horrible recollections of that time, but here we are February, March,

2020, so three years ago, you literally had books all ready to go presumably to meet the

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