‘End of an era’: AA to stop publishing free maps and travel guides

The New Zealand Car Affiliation (AA) has stopped publishing its extended-running no cost maps and travel guides, with one particular hospitality worker describing it as “the close of an era”.

AA main partnerships officer Greig Leighton stated the association’s tourism publishing small business would close, that means the maps and guides would no extended be printed in September as common.

Included in domestic tourism given that the 1920s, the AA’s vacation arm AA Traveller prints extra than three million guides and maps a 12 months. Electronic versions are also available, and these will also be discontinued.

With titles these as New Zealand Highway Atlas, South Island Road Excursions and New Zealand Ought to Dos, the guides have been staples in Kiwi airports, AA centres, iSites, motels, motels, and motor vehicle glove compartments for decades, as have the maps.

Suzanne Cooper, who operates Clarks Seashore Holiday Park with her spouse Gavin, explained the discontinuation of the maps and guides as “the end of an era” as generations of New Zealanders have grown up with them.

“I try to remember observing the aged AA maps on the dashboards of travellers’ cars back in the 1970s,” she stated.

“The brochures with the maps in them have been priceless to give to travellers, particularly individuals just starting up out their holiday… A great deal of travellers would maintain the maps and consider them house as a souvenir from their trip to New Zealand.”

Leighton claimed the expense of creating the print goods, a decrease in advertising and marketing, and transforming traveller behaviour experienced manufactured the continuation of the tourism publishing business enterprise untenable.

“I probably really don’t have to inform you about the tension on print in conditions of paper costs and distribution expenditures,” he explained.

“The tourism segment has been via a difficult several a long time, and they’ve looked truly hard at what they do with their funds.”

A lot of advertisers have turned to electronic platforms, as have travellers, he stated.

Cooper, on the other hand, said she thinks there is nevertheless a place for great-top quality printed maps and brochures.

“When that cyclone hits, and there is a trouble with the online access, these maps have been very critical.”

When the guides and maps had been very first printed, Leighton mentioned most Kiwis holidayed domestically.

“It was high-priced and a bit of a luxurious to journey internationally – which is improved. It’s modified again in current several years, but as capacity will come back again you are going to see price ranges drop internationally.

“But in the early days (of the guides) a ton of individuals went to holiday parks or baches if they ended up blessed plenty of to have them, or they went and stayed at local motels, and the vacation was finished by motor auto. So you received out your map, you acquired out your guide, and you went to spots they recommended.”

Leighton explained AA Traveller’s bi-yearly magazine AA Directions, which has a travel portion, would proceed, and that vacation-linked rewards for AA customers would continue to be in place.

AA Traveller’s Expedia-powered accommodation booking program will also continue to keep on heading.

Some associates of staff who worked on the guides have been moved to other components of the business, but there have been “some redundancies”, Leightson stated.

“We had an remarkable crew of designers, photographers, cartographers – who are pretty exceptional these days –and writers. It was a lean group that place a excellent publication collectively. They did a huge task for us. It is just that things have adjusted.”

Maps and guides will stay on the shelves until eventually they operate out, and digital versions are obtainable on the AA Traveller website and on electronic publishing system Issuu.