Travel guides

Let's Go is a world-renowned travel guide series researched, written, edited, and run entirely by students at Harvard University. The first of the now-famous budget/backpacker-oriented travel guides, Let's Go promotes itself as "the student travel guide" but is aimed at readers "both young and young at heart." Let's Go was founded in 1960 and is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Founding
The first Let's Go guide was a 25-page mimeographed pamphlet put together by an 18-year-old Harvard freshman named Oliver Koppell and 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 described how to travel from Europe to Asia on just four cents: by taking the ferry across the Bosphorus, from the European to the Asian side of the city of Istanbul, Turkey.

As the guide became more popular throughout the 1960s, more and more were printed every year. Let's Go also commissioned an artist, Richard Copaken, to give the series a logo: its trademark hot-air balloon. (That other Let's Go logo, the hitchhiker thumb, did not appear until 1973.) Maps and a "general introduction" section (the "Before You Go" of modern guidebooks) were added, and the venture went national. Sales skyrocketed after Let's Go Business Manager Andrew Tobias promoted the books on the Today show in 1966.

The company's success inspired it to produce spin-off titles in the late 1960s. One of Let's Go's most irreverent titles, Let's Go II: The Student Guide to Adventure, covered "exotic" destinations such as "Red China" and wrote in its Vietnam chapter, "Just about no one wants to go to Vietnam these days. Most Americans who do travel there go with the army and leave as soon as they can." Additional one-offs for budget travelers included Let's Go: The Student Guide to America and Let's Go: Caribbean.

Expansion
In 1971, Let's Go became weary of self-publishing (i.e., "cutting and pasting on Oliver's living-room floor") and signed on with publisher E.P. Dutton. At this time, Let's Go's only title remained the original flagship Let's Go: Europe. The book's popularity, however, caused its staff to consider additional titles. The first permanent new guide, Let's Go: Britain and Ireland, was published in 1976. After excellent sales, Let's Go: France and Let's Go: Italy soon followed. All four were updated every year thereafter. Indeed, for much of its history, Let's Go was the only travel guide to update each of its titles every single year.

Let's Go continued expanding as it added further European titles as well as a new, permanent book on domestic travel. In 1982, Let's Go signed a contract with new publisher St. Martin's Press to publish its now-six titles. By 1985, Let's Go was publishing 10 books a year, including Let's Go: Mexico, the first new title not written from previously existing content. In 1986, 440,000 copies of Let's Go books were printed and sold in dozens of countries within three months of being researched—a new industry record.

By the 1990s, Let's Go branched out into city-specific guidebooks, allowing expansion to continue at a rate of multiple new guidebooks per year. Around this time, Let's Go earned some of its most famous monikers, including "the granddaddy of budget guides" (the New York Times) and "the Bible of the budget traveler" (the Boston Globe). At 15 titles in 1992, the student-run company emphasizing travel on a budget had become one of the largest travel guides in the world.

Digital era
In 1996, Let's Go launched its website, www.letsgo.com, while publishing 22 titles and a new line of mini map guides. By this time, Let's Go had branched out beyond just Europe (its traditional turf) and North America to Africa and Asia as well. The company's first South American guide, Let's Go: Ecuador and the Galapagos, came in 1997 as the 24th title. Let's Go: Australia and Let's Go: New Zealand followed the next year, putting Let's Go on every continent but Antarctica.

Into the 2000s, the physical books evolved as well, with updated covers, new editorial features like a "Price Diversity" scale, and photos in the guides for the first time. The company was still expanding at a breakneck speed, from 30 titles in 2000 to 33 in 2001, 37 in 2002, 41 in 2003, 45 in 2004, and 48 in 2005. At this point, Let's Go employed over 200 students every year.

Let's Go also expanded its web presence dramatically in this decade. The company profited from strong online advertising and partnerships and gradually populated its website with blogs, videos, and podcasts. In 2008, a redesigned website was unveiled that made Let's Go the first travel guide to offer all of its book content online free of charge. Let's Go has also brought its content to tablets and smartphones as well: since 2011, its guidebooks have also been available for download as e-books, and the company has released dozens of free, destination-specific mobile apps, with more in the works. The Let's Go Travel Guides App has been rated as "a must have brilliant app".

Let's Go also announced a new print publisher, Avalon Travel, upon the expiration of its contract with St. Martin's Press in 2009. The switch led to a new format for the insides of the books, new retro covers for the outsides, and a rebranding to emphasize Let's Go's student origins. Under Avalon, the lineup of physical guidebooks has continued to grow as well; at the time of its 50th birthday in 2010, Let's Go could boast 55 titles.