Obituary: Arthur Frommer, guidebook and travel-media giant

Arthur Frommer, who built a travel media empire that included books, magazines, newspaper columns, television and radio, died Nov. 18 at age 95 from complications following pneumonia, according to his daughter, Pauline Frommer.

Helming one of the most recognized guidebook brands in the world, Frommer’s influence on the traveling public over the past seven decades has been profound. More than 75 million guidebooks bearing the Frommer name have been sold since the mid-1950s.

His publishing career began when he was still a draftee in the U.S. Army, stationed in Europe. A polyglot who spoke German, Russian, French and Spanish, he took full advantage of his posting in Germany to travel extensively. In response to his fellow soldiers’ curiosity about his adventures, he self-published “The G.I.’s Guide to Europe” in 1955. It quickly sold out in PXs across the continent

Two years later, the self-published “Europe on $5 a Day” made him a household name.

Frommer was a lawyer by training and worked on notable cases, including successfully defending D.H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” against the U.S. Postal Service, which had refused to carry the novel on the grounds it was “pornographic.” He also worked on a landmark California vs. Arizona water rights case.

Even after the success of “Europe on $5 a Day,” he continued his law career. He worked on guidebooks as a side hustle for another five years before devoting full-time to writing and publishing.

He was at the time married to the actress Hope Arthur, and he enlisted many of her actor friends, including Gene Hackman, to work for his growing publishing company.

Tours and hotels

In 1962, Frommer launched $5-A-Day Tours, which visited London, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Amsterdam and other world capitals. As part of Arthur Frommer International, it became one of the largest tour wholesalers of the day and presciently offered specialty tours, including “meet the locals” experiences which, in New York City, involved a visit to Frommer’s own apartment.

In 1969, he built his first hotel in Amsterdam; these were followed in short order by Hotel Arthur Frommers in Curacao, Aruba and Copenhagen.

Airline deregulation hurt his tour operation badly and, in 1977, he was short of funds to bring passengers home. He quickly licensed the Frommer guides to Simon & Schuster to get the money to return the stranded travelers. The company’s downfall significantly hurt his reputation among travel advisors.

TV, radio, magazines

Frommer hosted one of the first shows on the Travel Channel, which at the time was owned by TWA, and he also penned a newspaper column that was syndicated by King Features and appeared in newspapers around the world for decades.

His weekly radio show offering travel tips to callers ran on WOR in New York for over 20 years, though with a 10-year hiatus beginning in 1996 after the station hired controversial talk show host Bob Grant, whose racially tinged remarks offended Frommer deeply. He returned to the station in 2006 when Grant left and was joined by his daughter Pauline as cohost. She also became editor of the website www.frommers.com and created her own line of guidebooks.

In 1998, Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel Magazine was founded. It was sold to Newsweek a year later, and Frommer stayed on as editor in chief until 2003, growing the circulation to 500,000. Newsweek parent The Washington Post Company sold it to BRG Investments in 2009. Its last print edition published in 2012.

Frommer also penned three editions of “The New World of Travel,” which detailed the ways the travel experience was evolving.

Frommer remained actively involved with the guidebooks even as his eponymous brand changed hands and imprints many times after Simon & Schuster had acquired its license. It was even owned by Google for a year before Frommer reacquired it in 2013.

Arthur Bernard Frommer was born on July 17, 1929, in Campbell, Va., to recent immigrants Nathan Frommer and Pauline Frommer (nee Abrams). He spent most of his childhood in Jefferson City, Mo., where, as a preteen, he sold War Bonds over radio during World War II.

The family moved to New York when he was 14, and while in high school he worked as a copy boy for Newsweek. He initially enrolled at the University of Missouri but transferred to New York University, where he graduated. He received his law degree from Yale University.

Frommer is survived by his wife Roberta, daughter Pauline, stepdaughters Tracy Holder and Jill Guy and four grandchildren.

Services will be held at 11 a.m. on Nov. 21 at Riverside Memorial Chapel, 180 West 76th Street, New York City and are open to the public.