Lonely Planet rebuts 'fake' claim

Author Thomas Kohnstamm said he had accepted free services, contravening company policy, and did not even visit one of the countries he wrote about.

Lonely Planet says it has reviewed the books that Mr Kohnstamm contributed to but has so far found no inaccuracies.

It also denied that the author's methods were common in travel writing.

"It isn't commonplace, because we have no evidence that the things that he alleges that he did working on the Brazil 5 guide... applied to other books," Stephen Palmer, the chief executive of Lonely Planet, told BBC News.

Free gifts

Mr Kohnstamm has been publicising his new book, Do Travel Writers Go To Hell? It tells how he travelled South America, selling drugs to supplement his income and enjoying casual sex, sometimes in the establishments he wrote about.

He says that after having sex with a waitress on a table after hours, he reviewed the restaurant with the words "the table service is friendly".