Guidebooks? Don't believe all you read

The Lonely Planet guidebook empire defended its integrity today as one of its authors claimed that he had made up large sections of the books and dealt in drugs to subsidise his poor pay.

Thomas Kohnstamm also says in a new book that he lifted information from other publications, and accepted gifts in contravention of Lonely Planet’s policies.

The 32-year-old, from Seattle, said that he worked on more than a dozen Lonely Planet guides, including its titles on Brazil, Columbia, the Caribbean, Venezuela, Chile and South America. In one case, he said he had not even visited the country that he wrote about.

“They didn’t pay me enough to go to Colombia,” he said. "I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating – an intern in the Colombian Consulate.”

Lonely Planet, which sells six million guidebooks a year, hit back today, saying that Kohnstamm only “wrote about the country’s history” and was not commissioned to review accomodation or restaurants.

A spokeswoman from Lonely Planet in the UK said today: "Kohnstamm was commissioned to write the introduction to the Columbia book - not to review it.

"When he was commissioned it was understood that he wouldn't be going to the destination. He claimed he wasn't paid enough to travel, but he was only employed as an office based researcher. He was never expected to go out there."

The company said that he did contribute restaurant reviews for other books - including guides to Chile & The Easter Islands and the Caribbean Islands, and one called South America on Shoestring, and that these titles were currently being "fact-checked".

The majority of the books to which Mr Kohnstamm wrote were "now out of print titles from South and Central America", the company said, though another book for which he was the co-ordinating author, a guide to Venezuela, was also being checked.

Piers Pickard, Lonely Planet's publisher, said that the company’s reputation was built on the integrity of its books and any inaccuracies would be fixed quickly. “Thomas’s claims are not an accurate reflection of how our authors work,” he said.

Mr Kohnstamm's book, Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, is published on April 22. It tells of his experiences as a delinquent travel guide writer who cuts every corner because he is so short on time and money. He is due to visit Australian next week to promote the work.

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