Guides vs Internet
 

Given the plethora of information now available for free on the internet (Wikitravel etc.) how many of you use conventional guides like Lonely Planet, Rough Guides etc.?

I do find the Lonely Planet itinerary suggestions helpful but that is available for free as a preview and then I use Wikitravel a lot and various sites on the internet to research.

I'm wondering if it's really worth it to purchase one of the LP guides, especially on a Round the world itinerary involving many different countries...

I love the guides-the detail in the best of them outweighs (heh!) the packing space consumption. Michelin Greens are the best for history, culture, and detailed maps and descriptions.

Lonely Planet has definitely improved the past few years, and though moderately stale, the Steves' books still have some great shortcuts and practical travel advice.

I love the internet for planning; maps, hours, fees, etc.

Not to be overlooked are audioguides\podcasts widely available for most of the popular tourist destinations. Load a well-done tour to your mobile and enjoy the sights even more.

In some locales like SE Asia there seems to be a "Lonely Planet Effect" where places written up in the guide have since turned in to tourist traps or are trying to move folks through as quickly as possible. "... is so lonely about Khao San Road?"

Some also seem geared a bit towards the backpacker/budget traveler. I definitely like a good value but don't always want the absolute cheapest place.

WikiTravel seems to be pretty good - obviously more up to date. Plus you can print off just the bits you are interested in rather than lugging a guide book around.

I’ll use Wikitravel to get some basic ideas about a place, but when it comes to actual planning I go pick up the Lonely Planet guide. It may have started as a backpackers’ guide, but that only lives on in the “shoestring” series. The rest have plenty of suggestions for every budget, college student or middle-aged businessman.

Another issue I have with Wikitravel is there’s absolutely no review process for their hotel listings, and personally Tripadvisor gives me a headache (can’t stand the reviews on that site). LP’s lodging recommendations have always been spot-on for me.

Rick Steve’s is also good, I personally enjoy his the many self-guided walking tours he includes in his books and his method of prioritizing sites is useful when I’m only in a place for a day or two.

Note that I’ve only travelled extensively in Europe, so this may or may not apply to other parts of the world.

Having field tested most of the major guidebooks in a number of European countries, the ones I particularly recommend are:

Rough Guides, which are the best for the independent traveler, and much better than Lonely Planet. They often have hotel and restaurant selections for good, authentic places where you won't find a lot of tourists.

DK Eyewitness Guides, usually excellent, especially for first time trips. The ones to Vienna and Prague are particularly good. The DK guides have excellent, well indexed city maps, and offer useful selections of what the most important things to see and do are. Their "Top Ten" books, giving concise lists of attractions in various categories, are also useful. The DK guides listings of hotels and restaurants are reliable but not extensive, so they may need to be supplemented with other sources.

I have given up on guidebooks, and use the internet now for planning, and pick up free maps of the city at the hotel. When I first started travelling, I used to read the guide books voraciously, but now I just can't be bothered. Damn internet is wrecking my brain!

I've actually planned a 15 country RTW trip starting next month and I haven't even bought a guidebook. There is just too much good information on the internet to make a guidebook necessary...besides the thought of reading through a guidebook gives me a migraine - information overload. And how many guidebooks would one buy for a 15 country trip? 15 guides? I think not.

I use WikiTravel to give me a gist of the place, then research it on the net using various other sites. I do use the LP itineraries as a suggestion. The LP itinerary for the country is free as part of the preview.

interesting read:
http://www.thelongestwayhome.com/blo...lonely-planet/

Disclaimer: I work in travel guide publishing, on both the dead-trees and internet sides of the equation.

Paper guides go out of date in a flash and are a bit of pain to lug around, but they never run out of batteries, cause interference with navigational equipment on aircraft or stop working because you spill a glass of water on them. I virtually always carry one, although often I first perform radical surgery to only get the bits I want.

Lonely Planet also chooses "good, authentic" hotels and restaurants. Only problem is, as soon as the book hits the shelves, they fill up with LP-toting travelers! Precisely the same happens with Rough Guides, only perhaps a little more slowly, because they're less popular. Alas, Rough Guides also cover less of the world and update less often, so the odds of their "good, authentic" place being 'spoiled' or disappearing entirely by the time you get around to it are correspondingly higher. Damned if you, damned if you don't?

So all things being equal, I'd simply pick the most recently updated guide to a place.

Similar to the zombies following Rick Steves around Europe.:D

Although I haven't picked one up in a while, I've generally liked the Time Out guide books if they are available for the city / area I'm visiting. They seem aimed at the young to mid-aged market with an urban sensibility. Their books are typically small enough to be fairly portable. The drawback is they are urban centric and have a limited number of places they represent.

As others have mentioned, Lonely Planet can suffer from over exposure due to it's popularity. I don't like going to restaurants or locations and seeing that half the folks there have their LP book open to the same page that references the place they are currently at. I do find it useful for broad info such as transiting, brief local history or as a quick reference for basic phrases.

Can't beat the web for current info or additional details on places of interest. The big problem is availability or ease of access. I'll typically use it to create a list of things I'm interested in seeing and doing before I travel. I'll print out that list so I can have a short list to refer to and store relevant links on a site like delicious. Once I'm on the road, I'll use it to recheck details or get more info about interests I've picked up on the road or to crosscheck info in the guidebooks.

You get to a point with independent travel (roughly around the time you're putting in the second set of extra pages into your passport and your budget's grown so that you don't have to stay at hostels) where a lot of the details in guidebooks just aren't useful any more. For example, I no longer look at the restaurant listings. Part of it is the guidebook effect mentioned above, but mainly you start to get a good nose for figuring out where in the city has a cluster of restaurants, and then within that cluster which one seems to be doing good business with locals. (I also avoid like the plague anything with an English menu or, worse, English signage outside.)

Hotels are still useful to look at. Quality generally stays the same (which is usually what you're going for anyway), just realize that prices are probably about 15% higher than what's listed in the book.

What I hate about the guidebooks is how they homogenize everybody's itinerary. Everyone you meet on the road will be going to the same places in roughly the same order, because "the book says to go here." It's really, really easy to fall into the trap of letting the guidebook do all the work for you. I've also found that most of my favorite experiences weren't written up in a guidebook at all--it's all a matter of keeping your eyes open and then just stumbling on something.

Personally I make use of LP's digital chapter downloads. I'll grab the "directory" and "transport" sections (which are extremely useful for figuring out practicalities), then maybe "sights" and "sleeping" if I need it. Everything else goes out the window.

Full disclosure: I used to work in guidebook publishing, only the dead-tree part of it though

Guidebooks all the way. I like to think I am perfecly able to find a good local/authentic place to eat all by my own and don't depend on guidebooks for hotel recommendations. But for cultural info, art, architecture, history, politics, etc. books are just so much better.

Which book I take depends on the destinations. Bradt for Madagacar. Moon for Central America. Footprint South America is a classic. If there's no clear winner, I'll take a Rough Guide as their books have always been the most readable in my experience. For cities, it'd be Time Out guides.

Sorry, jpatokal, but I'm yet to find a good Lonely Planet book.

so for a round the world journey hitting 15 or so countries buying 15 guidebooks does not seem practical or feasible!

I used guide books in the past (both LP and Frommer's) but now I rely on the internet for 100% of my research. As others mentioned, WikiTravel is the best. I also use the tourism sites for specific cities that I visit, which can usually be found by viewing the Wikipedia article on a city.

If you must use a guide book I would suggest browsing it for free at a bookstore and then downloading the chapters that you will actually use.

I think the most useful thing to have on paper as you wander around someplace is a good map or map book. Mobile phone maps with GPS just aren't that reliable world wide yet, when they get there, then maybe the map won't be necessary.

I do tend to buy one guidebook to learn about a tiotally new place and my first decision filter is publication date. Guidebook companies seem to have learned that many of us check this and have become expert in hiding the copyright date somewhere obscure. If I can't find a date, I don't buy.

Hi FT,

First post here.

I am currently living in Buenos Aires, Argentina and came down here with 3 guide books; frommers, fodors, and LP.

In general I was pretty disappointed with them and a lot of the information was outdated. Once I arrived i found a great expat community who suggested an online guide, babible.com - it is free for students and they have an iphone mobile version which is handy. The guide is interesting and worth it since it is free.

The internet has a ton of information, but online guides that can be updated regularly by someone from the specific country is invaluable. Sometimes too much information on the 'nets makes it hard to decide what to do/see/eat.

Quality control in Argentina is a huge issue, thus some "hot" spots quickly become places to skip. Having the flexibility of constantly receiving updates is nice.

Time Out in BA is also a good go to source.


TWG_1

Actually, to amend (and slightly retract) what I said before, my Bradt guide for Tanzania was excellent. There was a section on wildlife and what to see on safari that was very informative. So there is a place for guidebooks in my world.

For cities, though, I'm still of the opinion that better resources can be found online or in free magazines and maps available in most hotels.

I've been around the world, since I turned 18 I've been going by myself too. As a solo traveler in a totally foreign land I rely on a few resources to see me through...

Wikipedia. Learn the history, culture, customs and interesting facts about the country. Must know where people come from to understand where they are now

Wikitravel. Great resource for activities, directions to popular landmarks and general information about any destination

TripAdvisor. The forums are invaluable, get the answer to the most specific questions pretty quickly and accurately. Great information on hotels, restaurants and things to do also. English speakers who live in the area can fill you in on things you would never find otherwise

Language. I rarely go anywhere without being able to hold a basic conversation. I highly recommend it, asking somebody in a bar what they like to do is a great way of experiencing the local scene

I don't recommend guide books to anybody, if you are organised there is much better and up to date information available on the web. You just have to pick out the bits that sound interesting to you. Some people prefer the convenience of having the book with them but I put everything in my iPhone or iPad. Recently in Shanghai I met some of my friends from London. I'd been there before but they had not, and the recommendations in their LP guide were absolutely diabolical. It made an obscure mural in an old bank sound like the greatest attraction on the Bund. I confiscated this tome and took them around instead, we had a great time

I mix and match. I use a combination of guide books, wikitravel, wikipedia, frommers.com, flyertalk (we do have tons of good info here too!), and whatever else I can google up.

For dead trees, I like Time Out. No specific reasons as to why, just had good luck with them. But the bulk of my exploration and planning is done online.

Hi,

I do a mixture of both.

Pre travel planning on the internet but I take a guidebook with me . I generally do not look at the hotel sections as I have prebooked but I like the larger scale city maps and descriptions in the Guidebooks ( I like the rough guides and the Eyewitness guides by DK). Whilst the information/prices may be a litlle out of date the maps and sight descriptions will be generally good for a few years.

I do not take a laptop or iphone or ipad with me.

Regards

TBS

I find the best guidebook varies by author, brand and age. So for one destination it might be LP, another Rough Guide, another In Your Pocket. Hotels and dining are normally researched in depth in advance by Internet and then backed up on the ground.