Let's Go Travel Guides
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Let's Go is a travel guide company run entirely by Harvard University students, founded in 1960 and headquartered in Cambridge, MA. The first Let's Go guide was a 20-page mimeographed pamphlet put together by an ambitious Harvard freshman named Oliver Koppell, to be handed out on student charter flights to Europe. The first professionally published guide was issued in 1961. Early guides tended to be freewheeling, for example advising travelers on motorbiking through Southeast Asia in the late 1960s and financing travel in Europe by singing in the street. The first edition included tips on traveling from Europe to Asia on just four cents, by taking the ferry across the Bosphorus. In 1982, Let's Go travel guides began to be published by St. Martin's Press.
Ever "witty and irreverent," Let's Go books are produced by traveling student researcher-writers, who send raw copy to teams of editors and cartographers (also students) in the United States. Researcher-writers are hired and trained in the spring, with the bulk of travel and research conducted from June to August. In order to keep the writing true to the budget heritage of the series, researcher-writers are paid a daily stipend intended to cover only basic expenses. Every establishment listed in the guides has been visited and recommended by researcher-writers, meaning that tens of thousands of cafes, castles, hostels, hotsprings, nightclubs, national parks, waterfalls, and wax museums are visited every summer. The guides are edited and published over the summer and are often on bookstore shelves by October.
As of 2006, there are 48 books in the series, casting light on places from Australia to Turkey. These guides range from regular country guides to adventure, city, and roadtrip guides, many of which are updated annually. Let's Go also has 10 pocket city guides in its series. Let's Go: Europe is the world's bestselling budget travel guide title.
As of 2007, the publisher of Let's Go Travel Guides, St. Martin's Press in New York, has disclosed that it will not renew its publishing contract with Let's Go. The current five-year contract is set to expire in 2009, and the future of Let's Go lies up in the air (1).
There have been references (in a non-review/article context) to LG in:
