The reputation of Lonely Planet, a commercial travel book company owned by the BBC, is under threat. One of its former writers claims that when writing the travel books he was responsible for, he had made up some sections from other sources.

Although author Thomas Kohnstamm admitted as much in his new book, Do Travel Writers Go to Hell, Lonely Planet says that it hasn’t discovered any inaccuracies in his work. However, the BBC reports that despite being hired to write about Columbia, the author never visited it.

“They didn’t pay me enough to go to Colombia. I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating - an intern at the Colombian consulate.”

In response, Lonely Planet says that as Kohnstamm was merely expected to update the introduction, it was never expected that he would visit the country. However, the scandal brings up some rather controversial if interesting opinions. According to a Gadling post Thomas Kohnstamm isn’t the first and only one who has plagiarized.

know writers for LP, Time Out, Let’s Go, DP and a few others. While certainly I am not suggesting I have first hand knowledge that they are guilty of the kind of intellectual laziness and deceitfulness that should surely turn Thomas Kohnstamm’s name into a punchline, I know them to call in favors, farm out their work, barter, happily receive comps and overall travel in a way that is, well, rather less than incognito (I witnessed once a writer for a well-known guidebook series making a pitiful pitch over e-mail to get a free weekend at a new, five-star Central European hotel by throwing around his title’s name).

On the other hand, Courant.com isn’t impressed with Kohnstamm.

The really sickening thing is that Kohnstamm doesn’t seem the least bit concerned about his responsibility to the travelers who bought those books and trusted his guidance. Kohnstamm’s excuse, that Lonely Planet didn’t pay enough to cover his expenses, is pathetic. Maybe Lonely Planet should pay its writers more. But that’s not the point. If you can’t do something honorably, there’s an alternative to doing it dishonorably. You can choose not to do it at all.

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