Print is NOT Dead
Going abroad, particularly long haul or possibly a once in a lifetime trip, requires plenty of planning! Hotels, excursions, where is best to eat, pubs? It’s true many of us will do most of this online and book some things ahead of time, but what about when you get there and you’re feeling slightly lost and you’re desperate for a decent coffee or you’ve forgot one crucial thing to pack in your case and you need a certain shop? Not everyone wants to run up their phone bill and use data abroad and the Wi-Fi in places isn’t always the most reliable, so what to you turn to now? PRINT! A leaflet, a brochure, a map…
On a recent trip to the USA, my husband Will and I spent 8 days seeing the sights of New York & Washington D.C for our honeymoon. We had our phones, and we had some things already booked prior to flying out there (like a helicopter ride over New York City, eek!) but we had no idea about the best places to eat, drink, grab breakfast or a coffee.
Much to my surprise in both New York & DC, there was nothing to be found. Not a leaflet display stand in any airports, hotel receptions, malls, shops or visitor attractions. No tourism brochures in the hotel bedrooms that we’re so used to seeing in the UK. Not even a leaflet or brochure in any taxis or Ubers. In Washington, I asked at our hotel reception for a map of DC and even the receptionist had no idea if they had anything. He managed to locate a large pull out map for us and explained “it’s the only one I’ve got”.
The pilot on our 15-minute helicopter ride told us so many fun facts about New York in such a small time frame that we’d have never known – how good would it be to get these facts down in a tourism brochure for everyone to know and not just for those who book a trip?!
We found one location in DC that we’d never heard of, and we purposely went here because we’d now seen it on this map. The large, colourful map within made it easy for us to see where we were and where we were going. Without it, we’d have never visited the amazing place that we found.
We hear all the time that ‘print doesn’t work’, ‘print is dead’, ‘we’re focusing on digital’, ‘we only do Facebook because it’s free’, ‘print is for older people’, ‘print won’t exist in a few years’, but PRINT IS NOT DEAD.
I’m pretty sure that apart from the large ‘must do’ attractions in New York, we probably missed so many gems in the city that we could’ve visited if we’d seen it in a brochure or leaflet. We benefited in a great afternoon in DC because we’d found something in print.
Print works! It changes your plans, it makes you visit places you’d never think to visit, you’d eat at places you never knew existed and you’d buy things in shops that you didn’t know were there.
No matter how tech savvy and digital the world gets, print still has it’s place and it’s very much ALIVE!