Ask the Travel Guy: Arthur Frommer Will Now Take Your Questions

Travel much? While we’ve written a good bit about traveling on this site, from airplane dining to nightmare vacations to chocolate-friendly hotels, we are plainly pikers compared to Arthur Frommer. He is the founder of the omnipresent Frommer’s Travel Guides as well as Budget Travel magazine.

His career was accidental: after graduating from Yale Law School in the midst of the Korean War, he was drafted into the Army and sent to Germany. He self-published his first travel book, The G.I.’s Guide to Traveling In Europe, in 1955. His first big hit came two years later with Europe on $5 a Day, which was also self-published. It was an instant best-seller and is credited with influencing the way Americans looked at international travel.

Frommer returned to New York to practice law but he quit in 1962 to found Arthur Frommer International, Inc. The company has published more than 350 guides and sold nearly 80 million copies.

At 78, Frommer is still a frequent traveler (he’s about to leave for a 10-day tour of Spain) as well as a radio host, syndicated travel columnist and avid blogger. He has witnessed an awful lot of change in an industry that has changed in virtually every aspect in recent decades — the economics, the politics, the technology — and he has kindly agreed to answer whatever questions you may have. Fire away, and we will post his answers in a few days.

Addendum: You can find the answers to these questions here.