The idea for this post came from a recent trip to our local town centre in Kingston upon Thames to buy a book. Until recently there was both a Borders and a Waterstones. Unfortunately Borders closed back in December soon after the Borders chain went into administration.
My recent sortie was rather depressing. I walked right past the location where the Borders branch once proudly stood, occupying a commanding position next to the historic market square. I arrived at Waterstones only to find that they didn’t have the book I was looking for. They offered to order it for me but said that it would probably take about a week to arrive. I politely declined, walked home and ordered the book on Amazon. It arrived the next day.
I’ve rather reluctantly concluded that this experience was probably the end of the road for me in terms of popping into my local town centre to buy a book. Borders (my favourite by some distance) has gone and Waterstones seem to devote so much space to books from celebrity chefs that there’s no room left for the business and marketing books which I’m looking for (yes I probably should find some other interests!)
Waterstones was widely expected to benefit from the demise of Borders, as the collapse meant that they became the only specialist bookseller with High Street stores across the UK. However, yesterday the HMV group (which Waterstones is part of) put out some very disappointing numbers showing that same-store sales in Waterstones declined by 8.5% in the five weeks to 2 January.
Waterstones and other book stores are clearly under enormous pressure from the supermarkets and the likes of Amazon. If they didn’t have enough to contend with electronic reading devices such as the Kindle are also becoming more and more popular.
I do wonder what all of this means for the travel industry though. The days of spending an hour or two in the travel section of the local bookshop and coming away with three or four travel books to read before making a final decision appear to be coming to an end.
Maybe there’s an opportunity in all of this? Perhaps it’s time for us to open our first high street shop, piled high with great travel agents and the best travel books, guides and maps. In fact come to think of it I know just the place …
Paul Furner – Travel Republic