“To travelers around the world, Edward Hasbrouck is The Practical Nomad, the go-to authority on international travel, and an expert on airfares and how to get the best deals on the Internet”, says Business Week. Hasbrouck is the world’s best-known authority on around-the-world travel: consumer advocate, investigative journalist, speaker, blogger, author of the acclaimed Practical Nomad series of travel how-to and advice books, and consultant on travel-related human rights and civil liberties issues with the Identity Project.
Backpackers and business travellers alike — people who are on their own without a tour guide — rely on Edward Hasbrouck’s expertise and advice about independent travel:
“I write and speak about travel as an aspect of life: something we do, not something we buy. There is an industry of companies and people who sell services to travellers, but travel is an activity, not an industry; an experience, not a product. We may pay for transportation and for places to sleep, just as we may pay for schooling, but we can’t buy experience any more than we can buy enlightenment — even if, in the best of worlds, travel sometimes brings us both. I abhor the commodification of travel, and I write and speak about how my readers and listeners can avoid it.”
“A journalist and travel expert, Mr. Hasbrouck brings to the table in-depth knowledge of the travel industry,” says the Wall Street Journal.”That rare person, the expert who’s willing to tell all. Edward Hasbrouck knows as much about cheap airline tickets as anyone,” according to the Whole Internet Catalog. Amazon.com recommends, “If you’ve decided to put your money where your fantasy is, and save for the trip of trips, Edward Hasbrouck is your travel guru”. Tripod.com calls him, “A nationally renowned expert [on how to] get the best of the budget deals without getting burned.”
Hasbrouck’s blog has been recognized and recommended by reviewers from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to the Times and the Telegraph (UK) as one of the leading travel blogs. The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World — in print for more than 20 years and through five editions — has been hailed by reviewers and readers alike as the bible of independent international travel how-tos.
Hasbrouck has been featured in a BBC-TV travel documentary, spoken at National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, and been quoted and interviewed as a travel expert by “The Savvy Traveler” and “Marketplace” on NPR, the “TODAY Show” on NBC-TV, “Computer Chronicles” on PBS, CNN, C-SPAN, CNBC, TechTV, CBC Radio, Pacifica Radio, Voice of America, on the front pages of the the New York Times and the Washington Post, and in the Toronto Star, London Sunday Times, Guardian (U.K.), Le Monde (France), Heise (Germany), Zeit (Germany), Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, AP, UPI, Reuters, Newsweek, Business Week, Wired News, Salon.com, CBS MarketWatch.com, FoxNews.com, TheStreet.com, Bankrate.com, Aviation Week, TravelAge West, Travel Weekly, Airline Financial News, World Airline News, Business Travel News, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, National Geographic Traveler, National Geographic Adventure, The New Yorker, The Nation, The Intercept, The Verge, Ars Technica, Techdirt, Forbes, The Atlantic, and numerous other media outlets. In the San Francisco Bay Area, he’s been seen on KGO, KRON, and KTVU television; heard on KPFA, KQED, KPOO, and KALW public radio; and quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune, and Contra Costa Times.
The winner of a 2003 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism award for investigative reporting from the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation for his in-depth reporting on the privacy of travel records, Hasbrouck has been in the forefront of efforts to protect the freedom to travel (as a human right recognized and guaranteed by international human rights law as well as as the First Amendment to the U.S Constitution), the privacy of travellers, and their right to control how their personal travel records are used by travel companies and government agencies. He has testified before the U.S. Department of Transportation Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protection, the TSA, the DHS Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee, state legislatures in California and other states, the Canadian House of Commons, and the European Parliament. He works with the Identity Project and has contributed articles on travel and privacy to Privacy Journal, Privacy International’s Privacy and Human Rights yearbook, and Privacy Laws & Business International Report, and has participated in numerous U.S. and European Union regulatory proceedings. Hasbrouck has provided declarations as an expert witness on airline reservations technology, data, and business practices in successful public interest and consumer litigation and arbitration against government agencies, airlines, and other travel companies in both the USA and Canada, and his investigative reporting has been cited in briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Hasbrouck is a passionate, articulate, and dedicated defender of travellers’ rights. His consumer and civil rights advocacy has earned him praise and respect from his readers, supporters, and allies, and the personal animus of both politicians and businesses he has criticized. Industry commentators and politicans have denounced him on the op-ed pages of The New York Times (as a “yuppie”) and the Wall Street Journal (as a “privocrat”), while internal e-mail messages between high-level TSA and DHS officials, later released in response to requests under the Freedom Of Information Act, call him everything from “a well-known Privacy Advocate” to “crazy as a loon” and “impossible to deal with”.
In 2011, Hasbrouck sued the US Department of Homeland Security under the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the government’s files of his travel history, airline reservations, etc. from the DHS “Automated Targeting System”. (In response, the DHS retroactively exempted these records from the U.S. Privacy Act.) In 2016, hackers publicly confirmed severe security and privacy vulnerabilities in the Web sites that give access to airline reservations that Hasbrouck had been the first to write about 15 years earlier.
The Washington Post calls Hasbrouck “an expert on travel data privacy”, and his groundbreaking investigative reporting and research on privacy policy and technology issues for travellers has been cited everywhere from Scientific American, Inside ID, and Reason to Surveillance & Society and the Columbia Science and Technology Law Review.
Hasbrouck has spoken at:
Hasbrouck’s travel how-to and advice books include a consumer guide to using the Internet for travel planning and purchasing, The Practical Nomad Guide to the Online Travel Marketplace (2001), and the definitive guide to independent international travel, The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World (5th edition, 2011).
Hasbrouck has gone around the world three times himself, once in each of the last three decades. While updating the most recent edition of The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World, he spent 13 months on an 80,000-mile trip through 28 countries on 6 continents. Hasbrouck has visited all 50 states of the USA, 8 Canadian provinces, and more than 60 other countries, travelling by foot, bicycle, train, bus, boat, car, taxi, rickshaw, donkey and pony cart, and on more than 60 different airlines. In recent years, he has bicycled thousands of miles across the USA, Canada, Europe, and Argentina.
Long active in peace and human rights organizations, Hasbrouck is an evangelist for travel as a positive force for global change. Hasbrouck has written for a variety of publications on peace and justice, militarism and war, military conscription, and human rights, including the Peace Chronicle, Peacework, The Nonviolent Activist, Waging Nonviolence, Antiwar.com, Fifth Estate, On Watch, Counterpunch, and Peoples World. In 2021, he received a Social Courage Award from the Peace and Justice Studies Association “for exemplifying courage and honor in speaking truth to power”.
For more than 15 years, Hasbrouck worked for offline and Internet travel agencies specializing in independent around-the-world travel, with clients including individual travellers and groups as well as travel technology and consulting organizations. From 1998 to 2006, he was the staff staff “Travel Guru” at Airtreks.com.
Hasbrouck is a member of numerous professional associations and peace and human rights groups, including the National Writers Union (Co-Chair, Book Division, 2009-2021); the International Federation of Journalists (member, Authors Right Expert Group); the Bay Area Travel Writers (former member, Board of Directors), the National Lawyers Guild (non-lawyer legal worker and member of the Steering Committee of the Military Law Task Force) the War Resisters League, Hostelling International (life member and member of the Honorary Committee for HI-USA’s 75th Anniversary Campaign for Hostelling), the National Association of Railroad Passengers, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, and the Peace and Justice Studies Association.
As a member of the National Writers Union, Hasbrouck has been active in the NWU’s advocacy, legislative, and litigation work for writers in the USA and abroad. From 2009 to 2021, he served as Co-Chair of the Book Division of the NWU, and he continues to serve as the NWU’s delegate to several international federations of writers, authors, and journalists with which the NWU is affiliated, including the International Authors Forum (IAF) and the International Federation of Journalists. From 2016 through 2019, he served on the Board of Directors of the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations (IFRRO), holding the sole seat on that board reserved for an elected representative of writers worldwide; he continues to serve as the representative to IFRRO of both the NWU and IFJ. Hasbrouck has testified for the NWU to Congress and the U.S. Copyright Office on issues related to writers’ rights and economic interests, and represented the NWU in meetings with Congress, foreign governments, and international organizations,
The Practical Nomad series of books by Edward Hasbrouck was published by Avalon Travel Publishing, a division of the Hachette Book Group. Other Avalon Travel imprints include Moon Handbooks, Rick Steves’ Guides, Living Abroad In…, Road Trip USA, The Peoples Guide to Mexico, and Foghorn Outdoors. In addition to having won raves from reviewers and readers, “The Practical Nomad” even makes a cameo appearance (on a library shelf) in a Hugo and Nebula Award winning science-fiction story about travel guidebooks!
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This page published or republished here 5 April 1999; most recently modified 12 January 2024. Copyright © 1991-2024 Edward Hasbrouck, except as noted. ORCID 0000-0001-9698-7556. Mirroring, syndication, and/or archiving of this Web site for purposes of redistribution, or use of information from this site to send unsolicited bulk e-mail or any SMS messages, is prohibited.
