The Philippines by Lonely Planet

Read the full post at - The Philippines by Lonely Planet I grew up in the Philippines. I last visited about 20 years ago. So when I saw the latest Lonely Planet Philippines on the shelf at my local library, I picked it up on a lark. Part of it was practical – I want to get back there in the next few years and figured I should start thinking about it. But the bigger reason was that I wanted to see how the country has changed, and specifically how domestic tourism has changed. I got both. But I also got an argument I wasn’t expecting to make about guidebooks in general. What I Liked The Old Criticism of Guidebooks Is Now Backwards The classic knock on Lonely Planet was that it concentrated crowds. Name a beach in a guidebook, and every backpacker in the hemisphere shows up at that beach. Print the recommendation, ruin the place. That criticism made sense in 1998. In 2026, TikTok and Instagram have concentrated crowds on the trendiest, most photogenic places in ways that a guidebook…