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The legendary U.S. travel journalist and entrepreneur Arthur Frommer passed away November 18 at the age of 95. Born in Virginia and with an early boyhood in a small town in Missouri, Arthur became a lawyer, then ultimately a pioneering and great travel journalist who will be remembered as having helped open the joys of travel to the masses. While serving in the U.S. Army in Europe in the 1950s, he got the travel bug, came out with a travel guide for servicemen, and followed up in 1957 with Europe of 5 Dollars a Day, which would transform the world of travel from one reserved mostly for the wealthy into one in which “regular people” – especially budget travelers – could freely participate, enriching millions of lives in the process.



In the decades that followed, Arthur not only built his Frommer´s travel guides into one of the USA´s most beloved and respected media brands but also wrote syndicated newspaper columns; for many years hosted a weekly, two-hour, call-in radio show; in the 1990s founded the magazine Arthur Frommer´s Budget Travel, the first glossy monthly that resolutely departed from the usual travel-magazine fare of luxury and glitz from the likes of Travel+Leisure and Condé Nast Traveler; and made thousands of television and in-person appearances in venues across the world. Plus in between all that he even founded a tour operator and small chain of hotels, in Aruba, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Curaçao.

I first met Arthur in 1997 when he interviewed me for a senior editor position at AFBT, and in my four years at this ground-breaking magazine – which I ended as executive editor before resigning in 2002 to move to Miami – I was privileged to bear witness not only to his journalistic acumen and remarkable, multitasking stamina – juggling all the above endeavors except the hotels and tour operator, which by then he no longer owned – but also his uncommon decency as a boss and as a person in general. To cite just three of my many great memories from those years:

• I was delighted by Arthur´s enthusiasm during several licensed group trips my Cuban-American husband José Balido and I organized for Budget Travel advertisers to Cuba – which I think fulfilled a dream of his as well.
• One time he published an editorial expressing his opinion that Americans needed more guaranteed vacation time, like their European cousins. The amazing anger – even vitriol – and name calling that he received was a sad foreshadowing of the blinkered mob mentality that now smears U.S. Democrats as “communists” and “baby killers” and perversely votes against its interests, as we sadly saw in the USA´s recent presidential and congressional elections.
• He walked away from the radio show – which by then he was doing with his also enormously talented daughter Pauline Frommer – because the station which hosted it added to its roster a racist, retrograde right winger named Bob Grant. It was a supremely principled stance for which he was willing to pay the price – very typical of the ethical attitude he brought to nearly everything he did.

AFBT was was ground-breaking because unlike most others at its level (most notably Condé Nast Traveler and Travel+Leisure) because it was firmly focused on travel for regular people, not the well-heeled. Arthur and his staff (including myself, starting as senior editor and ending up as executive editor) took the "budget" in the title very seriously, and was present in every article we researched, reported, and published - for example, we rarely covered lodging costing more than 100USD a night unless it was as an occasional "splurge." Once I was sent to Paris to review all of the city´s budget Ibis hotels (I don´t recall how many, but it was dozens, and it was no easy task, as many of them were extremely similar, differing only by location).

Within a couple of years, Budget Travel was sold to Newsweek; and several years after my departure Arthur himself parted company with the magazine due to creative differences (especially pressure to make its coverage not quite to relentlessly budget-oriented - which he refused to do as a matter of principle. In 2010 the magazine was again sold, to a Wall Street investor, who ended up shuttering it in 2012.The story was not over, however, because in 2014 Lonely Planet bought Budget Travel´s assets and revived the brand as a multi-media platform minus Arthur´s name..

Afterward, throughout the 22 years since my departure from AFBT, José and I always made it a point to spend quality time with him and his charming wife Roberta (top left) during  our myriad return visits to New York City. Among other things, we enjoyed a seder at their home; Arthur gave the toast at my wedding to José: and he and Roberta touched me by attending mother´s funeral. In truth, beyond cherishing them both as friends, in a sense I also saw Arthur as a kind and supportive father figure, and in addition I like to think we learned quite a bit from each other. 

And in addition to his towering and pioneering professional achievements, what especially impressed me about Arthur Frommer was what a great human being he was – kind, generous, and open-minded – an increasingly rare commodity these days, especially as we seem to be on the cusp of an age of both darkness and stupidity in the United States and beyond. As the Jews say, Arthur was a “mensch” (a good guy) in the purest sense of the word, and one whom I was proud and honored to call my friend.

Both the travel and media worlds have lost a giant this week. Rest in peace, dear sir – and as the Jews also say, may your memory be a blessing.