In October 2025, shoppers at Banana Republic’s New York City flagship found something unexpected: a travel bookshop tucked inside the store, harking back to the clothing retailer’s origins as an expedition-themed brand and the on-site bookstores it hosted in select locations beginning in 1986.
The new book nook was a joint venture between BR and New York City’s nearly century-old Strand Bookstore. As Strand marketing director Kat Pongrace explains, “Banana Republic reached out to us as a fellow heritage brand, to collaborate on a pop-in within their SoHo store.” In addition to supplying branded merch, she says, the Strand was tasked with choosing books “focused on experiencing the world from a different point of view.”
The setup is emblematic of the kind of experimentation PW is seeing across the travel category. We spoke with retailers and reps about innovative partnerships, thoughtful merchandising, and favorite forthcoming travel books.
SoHo safari
For the Banana Republic pop-in, the Strand team concentrated mainly on travel narratives and memoir, such as Elaine Sciolino’s Adventures in the Louvre, David Coggins’s Paris in Winter, Rachel Cusk’s The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy, and Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever’s World Travel: An Irreverent Guide.
Now that the monthlong collaboration is completed, Pongrace says she’s looking ahead to the kinds of titles that appeal to Strand clientele—“pictorial books that offer a deep sense of time and place”—including America Obscura by Joshua Foer and Dylan Thuras (Ten Speed, Oct.).
The Strand x Banana Republic was temporary, but Postcard Bookshop in Portland, Ore., one of the very few dedicated travel bookstores in the country, is a long-term proposition. Patrick Leonard opened Postcard in 2024, occupying a 300-square-foot stall inside Cargo Emporium, a warehouse of wall-to-wall importers’ shops. Rather than carry an exhaustive set of guidebook brands, Leonard says he chooses books that offer “different lenses” on destinations.
To populate his shelves, he consults the publications World Literature Today and Words Without Borders—“literature has been the surprise success of the store,” he notes—and uses Seattle distributor Asterism to find translated literature and small presses. He accesses indies through Ingram Publisher Services and orders widely from major publishers. One store favorite, DK’s 2023 Run: Races and Trails Around the World, is snapped up by “customers who compete in bucket-list races or have a family member who does,” he says.
In 2026, Leonard will champion books with a distinct point of view, such as Tiziana Rinaldi Castro’s Rebel City: A Guide to New York’s Wild Side, due out from Europa later this year and a complement to the Rough Guides New York Moods and New York Seasons (both pubbing May). He’ll recommend the world lit anthology A Compass on the Navigable Sea (Restless, Feb.), edited by Dan Simon and with a foreword by Pico Iyer, and Tokyo Story by Steve Wide and Michelle Mackintosh (Hardie Grant Explore, Feb.), a neighborhoods-oriented tour of Japan’s capital. Typical handsells include Lonely Planet Experience guides as well as Bradt Guides, which cover less-touristed countries; updated editions of Bradt’s Senegal and Ghana will be out in February.
Surveying the landscape
“When I get curious about a place, I want to experience everything about it,” Leonard says. “I’ve always sought out novels and nonfiction” along with geographical info. To help readers scratch that experiential itch, he hosts an in-person monthly book club where, “rather than read a common book, we read from a common country.” Before each meetup, he recommends titles and authors related to the featured destination—to date, Mexico, Portugal, Japan, and Nigeria—and participants may choose from his list or come up with a book on their own.
While some bookshops emphasize globe-trotting when stocking their travel shelves, others highlight local expertise. Patricia Nelson, sales representative for Princeton University Press, says she’s partial to “stores that serve their places and all those who discover them.” She cites Back of Beyond Books in Moab, Utah, devoted to titles about the Colorado Plateau region; Kingfisher Bookstore in Coupeville, Wash., whose lower level is dedicated to place-based Pacific Northwest titles; and Title Wave in Anchorage, Alaska, featuring an array of nature books for the northernmost state’s intrepid explorers.
In North Carolina’s Outer Banks, visitors can stop by three Island Bookstore locations, where owner Susan Sawin sells travel literature to locals, seasonal-business owners, and youngish retirees. She says that while her customers in Duck, N.C., represent “a more conservative clientele,” she finds “translated fiction sells well in the Kitty Hawk and Corolla stores.” She places the travel and nature categories side by side so guests can grab a hiking journal for the Appalachian Trail, surfing recommendations for Costa Rica, or a field guide to Iceland.
Hachette sales rep Julie Isgrigg admires Sawin’s success in promoting global destinations, saying there’s a logical explanation: “What better place to be than on vacation in the Outer Banks, roasting in the sun, planning something for the fall, and marking up a travel book?”
Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C., goes even further (and farther), with a selection of Frommer’s, Fodor’s, Globe Pequot, Insight, Marco Polo, and other guides for every travel taste. Anton Bogomazov, head buyer at P&P, notes that the Lonely Planet Epic Hikes books are popular gifts, as are history-rich tours of D-Day landmarks. He also says “people love weird travel stuff” such as Loren Rhoads’s 222 Cemeteries to Visit Before You Die.
Going abroad is more than aspirational at P&P, which partners with travel tour outfit Wild Blue Yonder Trips to offer boutique reading and roaming opportunities. The store lines up a reading list, a bookseller, and a subject-matter expert, and a maximum 18 travelers for several global voyages annually. This year’s excursions to English country houses, Madrid, Paris, and Istanbul are already waitlisted, and planning is underway for Egypt in 2027.
P&P director of programs Bob Attardi facilitates some 150 events per year, and he’s always on the lookout for regional outings in addition to glamorous overseas excursions. For instance, Erica Armstrong Dunbar’s Harriet Tubman bio, She Came to Slay, is the basis for an upcoming P&P-organized day trip to Maryland’s Eastern Shore; Andrea Seiger and photographer John Dean, creators of 111 Places in Washington That You Must Not Miss, conduct periodic tours of D.C.’s Oak Hill Cemetery, the setting for George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo.
“What I do is education based, and it’s another revenue stream for the bookstore,” Attardi says. He encourages others
to follow his example. “If you have a museum, charter a bus and sell books related to the trip; if you know a teacher in your community, do a walk—it’s all lifelong learning.”
Paper trails
For all the interest in personal narratives and eye-opening itineraries, publishers and retailers say travelers still want paper maps and practical, info-packed guides. At Metsker Maps in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, assistant manager Emily Allen often fields niche requests. “We’ve had people asking for guides geared toward food travel, traveling with children, and budget-friendly ideas,” she says. “History buffs gravitate toward the DK Eyewitness series because they tell you why this painting is interesting or why you should care about this castle.”
Also on travelers’ wish lists: what Allen calls “slightly obscure” regions. “2026 is turning into a year of off-the-beaten-path destinations,” she says. “Publishers and people are realizing there is more to this world than Paris, London, and Rome. Not to say those are overrated, but it’s nice to see the horizons expanding.” She notes that DK Travel’s Albania arrived in 2025, and Lonely Planet’s Albania is on deck for March. Kuperard is issuing updated Culture Smart! guides to Georgia and Romania in February, and Rough Guides Mini destinations include Slovenia (Feb.), Algarve (May), and Sardinia (July).
Among Metsker’s map suppliers is International Travel Maps and Books, an independent publisher and distributor with a retail outlet and wholesale hub in Richmond, B.C. Founded in the early1980s, ITMB releases 30 of its own maps and materials each year and distributes hundreds more, says founder and president Jack Joyce. “Books are an important component of the travel market, but maps encompass education, armchair travel, geopolitics, and much more,” Joyce notes. ITMB’s map of Antarctica is popular among educators, he notes, and orders of Ukraine maps have soared.
Bry Hoeg, general manager at Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Ore., has seen a similar impulse. “When our customers are traveling, they feel drawn to history or travel writing by someone who lives in that country.” And when it comes to logistics, Powell’s patrons “gear toward maps, or a travel book with a map in it, despite the prevalence of GPS.”
The same holds true at outdoor recreation retailer REI, says book and maps buyer David Henkes. “Even though we’re in the full force of the digital age, there’s still the analog component of physical maps that you can unfold and look at, as opposed to all the map apps and GPS,” Henkes notes. “The map customer is still there.” REI has “a great partner in National Geographic Maps—they continually update and create new maps every year. We also have a good relationship with the people who create the Falcon Guides, which are dialed into the U.S. as far as trails and parks, and Mountaineers Books does a great job with their guides and Green Trail Maps.”
REI’s hikers and climbers also like adventure narratives, Henkes says. Cassidy Randall’s Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All-Women’s Ascent of Denali is a staple at REI’s two Alaska stores, and customers seek inspiration in tales of trekking the Appalachian Trail, Continental Divide, and Camino de Santiago.
Lately, Henkes has seen increased attention on activity decks. REI customers flock to Sibley Backyard Birding Flashcards from Clarkson Potter and Chronicle’s Nature Meditations Deck, and he expects they’ll be drawn to Richard Hamblyn’s The Cloud Deck (Mar.). The compact size is a plus for backpackers, Henkes says, because they’re the sorts of travelers who ask, “Can it fit in a day pack? How heavy is it?”
Portable travel media, coffee-table keepsakes, and translated literature all transport readers to other places. According to retailers, that imaginative journey can be as important as the destination. “People want things that have an object value,” says the Strand’s Pongrace. “We’re seeing a trend toward more content and more beauty.”
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