Frequent Miler on the Air - A quick chat with Pauline Frommer of Frommer's Travel Guides and Frommer's Travel Show | Coffee Break Ep73 | 10-14-25

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

(00:49) - Background of Frommer's Travel guides and Frommer's Travel Show(04:25) - What makes Frommer's Travel guides different from other guides and travel websites?(05:39) - How is AI changing the landscape of travel guides?(08:01) - Hidden gems with free activities may not get the presence on Google that places with paid activities will(09:47) - When did Pauline get interested in joining her father's business?(11:45) - Frommer's NYC 2026 Guide(13:42) - Dynamic pricing for the city's top attractions(15:49) - When does a sightseeing pass make sense?(16:53) - How to get better deals on vacation rentals(19:30) - Tips for hotel dealsVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn Heads

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Welcome to Frequent Miler's Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. So here on the Frequent Miler podcast, we don't usually have guests on our show, but we had a unique opportunity to have Pauline Fromer from the Fromer's Travel Show, from Fromers Travel Guides, join us today. And we just couldn't say no. We're excited to have her as a guest, as one of our few of only, I think we've only done maybe one or two guests in the past.

So I'm excited to meet Pauline. And I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. We have some topics we want to talk about today. But first, I'm interested in your background. Like most of our audience has probably heard of Fromer's travel guides, which I understand were started by your father. Many may know of the Frommers travel show, which, if I understand right, for many years it was a radio show, right? And now it's the podcast.

So can you tell us a little bit about that, the background, the evolution of Frommers? Sure. Frommers was a total fluke on the day. that my father graduated from law school, something happened to him that didn't happen to anybody else in his law school class because he was the son of not wealthy immigrants. He had no connections, unlike many people in his law school class. And so on the day he graduated, he was drafted to fight in the Korean War. And very luckily, the day before he was going to be sent to Korea, somebody realized that he spoke Russian and German because his parents were immigrants

from those two areas of the world. And so instead, he got sent to Germany. He was a guy who never thought he'd have the ability to travel. I mean, this was the 1950s. This was something that really only very wealthy people got to do. And so anytime he had off, he would run around Europe, to Paris, to Rome, to Madrid, you know, he was based in Berlin. And when he got back to the base, his fellow GIs would pepper him with questions, because you have to remember this is right after World War II. A lot of Europe is in rubble. And his fellow GIs thought that if they didn't have money, they wouldn't be able to travel or travel comfortably. And so he thought, well, maybe I'll write a little book for my fellow GIs. So he wrote a little book called G.I.'s

Guide to Europe, self-published it, got out of the army, and the week it went on sale, it sold out within one day. Yeah. Cut forward a year later, he's practicing law, and it suddenly occurs to him, you know, I bet civilians would be interested in this type of book. So he ran back to Europe to update it and wrote a little book called a Europe on $5 a day, which became the best-selling guidebook of all time and changed his life. Wow, that's so cool. And so then he went on to do a number of other guidebooks, right, different parts of the world. You grew up in this environment, right, of your father. I presume he's traveling all over the place. Is he taking you with you? Oh, yeah. Every year we went to Europe to update the guidebook. And so the first time I went to Europe, I was four months old. In fact, this is before there was horticribs or disposable diapers. So this was not an easy thing to do. In fact, they told me they would push me into a drawer for the night. And that's where I would sleep. So, yeah, we ran all over Europe. And then he started hiring other authors to write for him.

And eventually, long story, he had to sell the guides, but eventually we got them back in 2012. And since the very beginning, it's always been about travel journalism for us. So no hotel, no restaurant, no attraction ever pays to be in the guide. We know that our only client is our reader. And I think a lot of people just assume we're taking pay off. but we do not. And I think that makes us different than a lot of the media you see online. Often if you're, you know, following an influencer, they're often paid to gush about that hotel or that restaurant. We're clean. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's really important. I think that

really is a key for us as well. I mean, that's something that we really value is being able to provide information, advice, things that will benefit the reader with a reader focus. So I thought that was really interesting when I read that about your guides, because I think that'll really resonate with a lot of people. Well, I hope so. Yeah. Now we hire local writers. It's because we think you get better insider information when you rely on locals. So I actually write the New York City guide. I've got a wonderful Paris named Anna Brooke who writes Paris. You know, it's goes on from there. So do you run into a lot of skepticism?

Because because so many sites and books and everything do get paid to, you know, write good things about hotels or whatever, I know, like for us at Frequent Myler, like if we're gushing about a credit card benefit, you know, we'll get, we'll get people saying, oh, you're getting paid to write that. And, you know, most of the time, we have no. business connection to that credit card issuer at all when that happens. But people are understandably, you know, suspicious of almost all publishers these days. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons publishers are going out of business because right now we have AI stealing a lot of our

content. When you go to Google and you ask a question and you get that paragraph long blurb, Because of that, many sites online have lost a lot of their traffic. I was just in Washington, D.C. lobbying Congress about fair compensation for publishers. So I think the incentive to not be clean to do disguised advertising is higher. But in our defense and frankly in the defense of the other major guidebook publishers, like photos, like Lonely Planet, like Rick Steves, None of them are being paid to include things. So that may be the difference with books and online.

You know, if you go into a actual bookstore and buy a guidebook, it's going to be a journalistic thing. Not so much. Interestingly, there's been this rash of AI-generated guidebooks on Amazon. So if it's a brand you've never heard of, it may be something that somebody just, you know, cobbled together in 20 minutes. I once read an AI generated guide to Ireland. And when it came to the section on the seasons, you know, they talked about spring in Ireland,

summer in Ireland. When it got to fall, it all became about the dangers of falling. So it was clear that nobody was even editing these things. Right, right. Well, I also found it interesting, you know, when you talk about the AI blur, that answer a question. I found it interesting. I was listening to an anecdote. You were relaying about a town in France that you'd Googled and there didn't appear to be much to do there, but you eventually came to find. I think that there was, there were plenty of things to do. It was just that many of them

were free. And so they weren't necessarily profitable for people writing guidebooks. Absolutely. Not so much writing guidebooks, but for Google to surface. So the town was Dijon in France. And if you look up Dijon, it will tell you you don't want to be in the town, you want to be going to the surrounding wineries, which is a wonderful thing to do. But the truth is, Dijon has marvelous museums, and most of them are free because they're supported by the local government. And so they don't get as much press as the sites that third-party sellers can make money off of. And so you go look up Dijon, Google, it looks like there's nothing to do in the city, and that couldn't be farther from the truth. Yeah. Yeah. I'm more and more finding that one way to find good things to do is to Google and then do other stuff besides what surfaces, at least on the first page on Google. Because what happens more and more when traveling to Europe, for example, is the things that surface to the top,

are mobbed with American tourists, and you don't get any of the, or it's harder to get that sort of local, you know, connection to the place you're going, and it feels more like Disneyland than a true travel experience to me. So one of the things I'm curious about, Pauline, is you're growing up, like, when did you decide you wanted to join your father's business? It's like, when did you get interested enough in travel, that that's what you wanted to do? I thought I was going to be an actor. In fact, the day I graduated from college, I thought to myself, thank God, I'll never have to write again.

And I toured the country with the National Broadway production of Les Mizz. And I was in the union. I actually made a living at it for quite some time. But you get tired as an actor of being a product, especially. a woman as a woman. You know, you're always trying to fit yourself into a nook. And my father in between acting jobs would give me assignments. And I started realizing that I preferred that. And so in my early 30s, I made the switch to editing and never looked back. Got it. So there's hope for my son. He's 25 and has had no interest in the points and miles stuff that I do. But maybe.

Maybe. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nick, what do you think? Your kids are quick. a bit younger. Do you think they'll ever join the dad's business? You know, my seven-year-old has been very interested. We took a trip to Europe last year towards the end of the school year. And so his assignment was to write a daily journal, but we decided to also film some video. And so I edited it for him and he got to show his class. And he then started telling people he's a YouTuber. So I don't know. We'll see. Oh, that's funny. Hopefully, hopefully he at least take something away from the travel. You know, the whole idea behind traveling for us as a family is hopefully you expose the kids to enough different things and they'll find whatever that thing is that they're meant to be doing down the road.

And it may not come right away, just as you said, Pauline, but maybe eventually they'll come back to it. Yeah, there's no better education, I think, than getting out and seeing the world. Absolutely. All right. Let's jump to present day. So, Paula, you just wrote, I believe, Frummer's New York City, 26 guide. Yes, it just came out this week. I was going to show, I can't find it on my bookshelves. I mean, here's the 2025 copy, but the new 2026 is out. And it was an unusually difficult year to update the book for a couple of reasons. A couple of years ago, New York City made Airbnb illegal. So it is illegal to rent an apartment in this city, unless, the owner is staying in it with you so you can rent a room in an apartment but not the whole

apartment for less than 30 days. Wow. Yeah. And that came at the same time as as a hotel room crunch. There just are not enough hotels in the city. And so for the first time ever, actually it was the addition before this last one. It broke my heart. I had to review places in New Jersey, because, you know, I wanted to give things in all price ranges. You know, two weeks ago, or three weeks ago, when the General Assembly of the United Nations was in town, a friend called me in desperation because she had to bring in business clients, and the average hotel room was $700 a night here, which is insane. So I said, if you have points, use those.

That was good, right? Absolutely good advice. But they didn't have the points. And so I've had to add New Jersey, mostly New Jersey places, but I only added places where you can get into the city very, very easily and quickly via public transportation because you don't want to drive into New York City. So like via the path, for example. Exactly. The other crazy thing that's happening that I think it's going to start in New York City and spread to the right. rest of the world, sadly, is dynamic pricing has come to attractions. So I started trying to figure out

what the hell is the cost to do the Empire State Building or the circle line crews, and they weren't putting on the website a list of costs anymore. Instead, you had to put in when you wanted to visit what time of day, and that's when they showed you the price. And they didn't let you know that, like for the Empire State Building, there's a $20 difference between going at 10 a.m. in the morning and going during the golden hour when you have really great light for photography at like 5 p.m. when the sun is setting. Right. Nowhere do they tell you that it's going to be $20 dollars more. So I had to spend hours upon hours, you know, figuring out what the patterns were at all of these different attractions. And now, and I've asked all of our writers to do this

because I think it's going to be very common very soon. So do you have a short list of tips like that? So 10 a.m. for Empire State Building. What else? Well, that's in the book. I mean, a lot of people come to New York City and want to go to a Broadway show. And they assume that they have to pay full price to see what they want to see. But the reality is maybe 10% of the shows can get away with charging full price. And so there's a very good app called Today Tix, which you can actually book weeks in advance. It's not just for day out tickets. There's a booth in Times Square that if you're desperate you can go to.

I don't believe in waiting online on vacation. And often you have to wait there for an hour. So I'd say use the app first. Yeah. But those are the kinds of tips we give in the book. We also talk a lot about sightseeing passes, not only in New York, but worldwide. And a lot of sightseeing passes are a total rip-off because either they say, oh, you're going to have a choice of 70 places to go. And if you use this well, you're going to save $100. Well, nobody can go to

70 places in one day. And a lot of time, these sightseeing passes will like steer you to the torture museum, you know, instead of the, or the ice cream museum, these chain museums that are at the same in every damn city, instead of the ones that are really authentic to the place you're visiting. So we talk about which of the sightseeing passes and New York City pass is pretty good actually. It will save you money and it will send you to places you actually want to go. But, you know, things like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's great to know. Okay. Another thing that I, listening to one of your podcasts recently, you mentioned how booking vacation, rentals through sites like Airbnb or

Verbo. Verbo. You have a trick, I think, for getting a better deal. Can you talk a little about that? Yeah, I actually will go to industry conferences where it's mostly CEOs of different travel companies. And I feel like I'm a mole or a spy. They're bragging about how much they can raise prices. And I go and look for ways for people to

save. But surprisingly, the founder of one of the vacation rental companies that no longer exists, it was subsumed, got on stage and gave one of the best tips I'd ever heard. He said that for many, many vacation rentals, there's a management company that actually does the renting for the individual owners. And you can find on Verbo more so than on Airbnb, the name of that management company. And then if you go directly to the management company to rent, rather than going through Verbo, you save on all the extra fees.

So there will be, sure, there will be a fee on cleaning, but there won't be a fee on the fee on cleaning. Right. Or a fee on the fee on renting it. Right, right, right. Because Verbo, Airbnb, they make money on each of these rentals. And so that money is not going to the management company. And so the management company, of course, would be happy to rent for less to you if you come

to them directly. That makes a ton of sense. Aren't you losing out, though, on some protections that way? Well, yeah. If you're not happy, you may not be able to move. But you have to remember a lot of these management companies have multitudes of apartments that they are managing. Very few will manage just one.

And so you can talk to them in advance about, will you be able to move me if something goes wrong? And frankly, that's who you're contacting if something goes wrong. You know, Airbnb is not going to come from its corporate headquarters to Destin, Florida, or Austin, Texas, or wherever you are, to fix a broken sink. It's going to be the management company. Right. That makes a lot of sense. I've actually also heard you talk about tips for saving money on hotels, too. And obviously, most of our audience prefers to use points for hotels, but sometimes that's not viable.

Like you said, maybe you don't have the points or maybe the points prices aren't attractive. And so what about on hotels? I've heard you talk about some tips for like last minute in particular, finding better deals on hotels than what you might see elsewhere. Are there tips you have there? Yeah. And we did a study on Fromers.com where we found that, you know, when you go to a booking engine that isn't through points and they say to you, you need to lock in this

price to get the discount, we found that those discounts are never as good as the discounts you will find at the last minute in business cities. It works differently for resorts, actually. Generally, for resorts, you get the best deals two to three months in advance for business cities, by which I mean New York, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, any place where people go to transact business, usually the best prices are the weak of. So I always get a reservation I can cancel. And then a couple of days before I travel, I just do a quick search and see what I could find. And inevitably, it's much less than it was when I did my initial search months before. Yeah, I think that's a good tip for points travelers to,

actually as programs become more dynamic, there are opportunities, even when you're paying with points sometimes, to get a better deal in the same hotel closer in. And I think that's a very insightful piece of info that business cities are more likely to have that happen than perhaps resort destinations. Yeah, I'm not sure why it was different with resorts, but that's what our little study showed. Very interesting. All right. Pauline, did we miss anything that you'd like to share before we say you have to remember when you're taking our advice versus say trip advisor when you go to trip advisor and you find a really great looking hotel the reviews there are from people who if they're not marketers because you have teams of people putting up fake reviews

it's an entire industry if they're not marketers and they are a real person they've been to exactly one hotel. And our guidebook writers will have been to all of the damn hotels in a major destination so that they can pick the best ones. When we've got the guides back, we felt like there was a lot of information out there for luxury travelers, super luxury travelers. And there was a lot of information for backpackers, but almost nothing for the people in the middle. Which is most people. Which is most people. Yeah. And so our guidebooks are meant to be for the people in the middle. And so our writers are told when you're reviewing hotels, 40% of them or 60% of them have to be straight down the middle in terms of prices. And then sometimes because people

want to splash out 20% high end, 20% hostels and other backpacker accommodations. So I think that's something that people don't realize about guidebooks. And so are your writers paying like full price for their hotel stays? They don't necessarily do the hotel stays. They usually go in and inspect. And these are local writers. So they're going home to sleep in their own beds usually. So, I mean, how can they get a sense then of what, you know, a guest experience is really like?

Or you lie. You don't tell them you're there to inspect. When I go into a hotel in New York, it's because my younger sister is having a baby. And the whole family is coming in. And my brother is in a wheelchair. So what do you have for people with disabilities? My other sister is going to be bringing in her three children. So what do you have in terms of family rooms?

And, oh, I'm walking around. And this elevator sounds loud. Should we be down the hall? And I press the beds. I turn on the water. I try and listen. And if you do this enough, you get a sense of how to. I see.

So you tell that story and then they show you different rooms. So you can actually check them out. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So I'm a big liar by acting training that's coming back in finally. All right. So you tell the truth to the people who read your guidebooks by lying in advance.

Yeah. I love it. All right. Thanks so much, Pauline. It was great having you on our show. Thank you. Thank you. Don't forget.

If you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list, you want to go to Frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email list, follow us on all the various social media, and check out our frequent mile around the air episodes dropping every Friday. Hi, I'm David Brody, co-host of the Travelin'10 podcast. Together, myself and my co-host, Tim Johnson, have traveled to over 150 countries around the world and all seven continents. Now we're sharing our favorite places, some of our best tips and experiences from all around the world in just 10 minutes on Travelin 10.

Join us at voyescape.com. I'm Pauline Fromer. I've spent most of my life writing, talking, and thinking about travel. Not just where to go, but how to go in a way that's meaningful. On the Frommers Travel Show, we explore the trends, people, and ideas shaping how we see the world. If you care about the why, as much as the where, I hope you'll join me. You can find new episodes weekly at Voyescape. dot com.