On September 1st Avalon Travel Publishing will launch the 5th edition of David Stanley's Moon Handbooks Tahiti: Including the Cook Islands. This coincides with the 6th edition of Lonely Planet's Tahiti and French Polynesia released in May, 2003. Tahiti travelers now have an excellent choice of guidebooks.

On September 1st Avalon Travel Publishing will launch the 5th edition of David Stanley's Moon Handbooks Tahiti: Including the Cook Islands. This coincides with the 6th edition of Lonely Planet's Tahiti and French Polynesia released in May, 2003. Tahiti travelers now have an excellent choice of guidebooks.

In 1979 David Stanley's South Pacific Handbook became the second in the California-based Moon Handbooks series which now numbers over 100 titles. The French Polynesia chapter from South Pacific was spun off as a separate Tahiti guide in 1989, and in 1999 the Cook Islands and Easter Island were added to the 4th edition of the book. Moon Handbooks Tahiti 5th edition (ISBN 1566914124) draws on Stanley's quarter century of experience in the region, and the listings are thorough and critical. Stanley researches his books incognito and eschews the "hospitality" most travel writers enjoy.

Lonely Planet's Tahiti & French Polynesia (ISBN 1740592298) was originally written by Honolulu resident Rob Kay, but it has since been revamped by in-house Lonely Planet staff, including the company's founder Tony Wheeler himself. Wheeler first attracted attention in the 1970s with shoestring guides to South East Asia, and he now heads a vast publishing empire headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, with upwards of 600 books in print. Success has not curtailed Wheeler's career as a writer and he has contributed to many of his company's books.

There are several important differences between the Moon and Lonely Planet guides. One is ownership. Moon authors retain their copyrights and earn only royalties (no fees), which gives them a long term personal interest in their books. Lonely Planet owns the copyright to its entire series, and everyone other than Tony Wheeler is a "writer for hire" whose involvement in a book ends the moment the final installment of their fee is paid. In Moon Handbooks Tahiti, the greater depth and stronger author's voice is obvious.

Viewed from a purely technical standpoint, Moon Handbooks Tahiti has 431 pages not counting the frontmatter, whereas Lonely Planet's Tahiti has 282 pages with frontmatter included in the count. Moon provides 56 maps compared to 42 maps in Lonely Planet. All of the Moon maps are clearly labeled while many of the Lonely Planet maps come with long tables of key numbers. For example, Lonely Planet's Papeete map includes 97 numbered items. Moon gets around this by having four Papeete maps instead of two, which allows the use of a slightly larger typeface and direct labeling of sites.

At US$17.95 Moon is four dollars cheaper than the US$21.99 charged by Lonely Planet, even though Moon also includes the Cook Islands and Easter Island in their guide. Lonely Planet has separate guides to the Cook Islands and Easter Island which must be purchased to obtain the same coverage. Both Tahiti books allot around the same number of pages to French Polynesia itself.

Each book has its strengths. Lonely Planet is way ahead in color photography with 12 pages of color plus a two-page color map. Moon has only two color pages and a two-page color map. Moon's typesetting equipment creates confusion by inserting hyphens in the email addresses at line breaks. However, when one considers the high cost of a Tahitian vacation, the price of these guides is relatively low and the savvy traveler will order both. Paradise has been found