Tom Brosnahan, founder and principal of Travel Info Exchange, Inc., joined the US Peace Corps after graduating from Tufts University in 1967, and went to Turkey to teach English
Tom Brosnahan, founder and principal of Travel Info Exchange, Inc., knows travel information: how to research, compose, and sequence it to guide travelers and help them to find their way.
He started as a travel guidebook writer in 1968. Since then his travel guidebooks have sold nearly four million copies worldwide in more than ten languages, and his articles and photographs appear regularly in top travel periodicals in North America and Europe. He counts among his consultancy clients a number of major corporations, publishers, foundations and government entities. He has appeared on major television and radio programs.
Biography
Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Tom joined the US Peace Corps after graduating from Tufts University in 1967, and went to Turkey to teach English. During his Peace Corps service he learned to speak Turkish fluently, and spent his weekends and vacations traveling throughout the country. He discovered a beautiful, fascinating land which was virtually unknown in the United States. Tom wrote his first guidebook, Turkey on $5 a Day, as a Peace Corps project. The book was accepted for publication by Arthur Frommer in 1970, and went through seven editions, its final one being Turkey '92-'93 on $40 a Day.
Tom returned home from Peace Corps service in 1970 and entered the Tufts University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences on a US Title V Fellowship, anticipating a doctoral degree and a college teaching career in history. After passing his doctoral exams, Tom was granted a Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Fellowship, and went to Istanbul for 15 months' research in the Ottoman archives reading medieval Turkish legal documents.
Upon his return to the United States from the Fulbright in 1976, he gradually discovered that a career in travel was more promising and appealing than one in academia, so he left the university to devote himself to writing, photography and consulting full-time. His 30 guidebooks for Insight, Berlitz, Frommer's and Lonely Planet cover Belize, Canada, Egypt, England, France, Guatemala, Israel, Mexico, Morocco, New England, Tunisia and Turkey. Some of these guides have been translated into more than ten languages.
Tom Brosnahan has served as a Contributing Editor to Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel magazine, and has had many articles and photographs published in leading magazines and newspapers such as ASTA Travel News, BBC World, Chicago Tribune, Daily Telegraph (London), Diversion, New York Daily News, New York Times, Odyssey, Travel & Leisure, Travel Life and TWA Ambassador.
He has appeared on numerous television and radio programs, including ABC's Good Morning America, NPR's Talk of the Nation, the Travel Channel and PRI's The Connection. He has given lectures on Turkey at the American Turkish Council's annual conference, the Smithsonian Institution, the Cooper-Hewitt National Musem of Design, and other organizations.
He has been a consultant on tourism, public relations and online publication to Arriva World Tours, AT&T, Burson-Marsteller, Discovery Communications, Hill & Knowlton, Nabila Tours & Cruises (a division of Naggar Travel Group), Orion-Tour, Pacha Tours, the Quincentennial Foundation of Istanbul, Strategic Interactive Group, the Turkish Embassy, the Turkish Ministry of Tourism, Tursem Tours International, Travel in Style, Inc., and other organizations.
In February 1994, Tom founded the Travel Info Exchange™, an online travel information service with special conferences for travel authors. The Travel Info Exchange was the recipient of the gold medal in the Electronic Media category of the Society of American Travel Writers' 1994 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Competition. He was also a co-founder of the Society of American Travel Writers' Institute for Travel & Guidebook Writing. He is the North American representative and commissioning editor for TravelIntelligence.net based in London, UK.
Tom is a member of the board of directors of the Society of American Travel Writers, and a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Authors Guild, and the National Writers Union.
He lives in Concord, Massachusetts, with his wife Jane A Fisher, MBA (Harvard), Principal of Cambridge-Concord Associates, a strategic planning and organizational management consultancy. They have one child.
