There's still wikitravel

I think I'm through with Lonely Planet. When it was something oriented towards backpackers and budget travellers wanting to visit parts of Asia or other lesser known countries, it was in its heyday. Now it's something aimed mainly at the yacht club crowd with restaurant recommendations which are laughably rubbish. On the other hand, I always found the hotel recommendations pretty solid and sometimes excellent. But now they are issuing guidebooks without any hotel suggestions! (eg Malta). So I need to change to something else. Anything recommendations for decent guidebooks these days?

I've been an avid Lonely Planet customer since the 90s when I read "Africa on a Shoestring" from cover to cover whilst dreaming of one day going all over Africa. I still occasionally buy a book from them and I think their advice is pretty solid. Keep in mind their original focus on backpackers has changed given how technology has greatly impacted the way we all travel, even for those on a shoestring. I rarely rely on guidebooks for food and dining suggestions because there's too many options these days, none of which would all fit in a printed guidebook, and when I need a recommendation I just pull out my phone and check TripAdvisor or Yelp. Where I find value in guidebooks is attractions, transportation options, and creating itineraries.

A better summary of current travel and guide books you cannot find. This is an overview of the current status of the travel world. One thing I did like about Lonely were the suggestions of what to see, places to go to.

Other guides I have dabbled with include the Rough Guide, Guide Routard (in French) and the Dumont series (in German). Not sure if the Dumont series was originally written in English.

Rough Guide was IME the only imprint even close to LP for content. Let's Go seemed to employ students who walked into the first hostel they saw upon leaving the train station. Rick Steve's was (is) good for background and cultural info. Lonely Planet and Rough Guides had it all.

for a good laugh, check out the Jet Lag Travel Guides. Fictional parodies of budget guidebooks.

LonelyPlanet and the others seem to have run their course. I had bought a couple books a while back and all of the recommendations seemed a bit odd since everything I looked up on Google Maps had very poor reviews, it felt they were either getting paid off or were just randomly choosing places. Overall it’s an expensive business to run without there being more to pay for it than guidebooks.

WikiTravel is good but I feel the current format can be overwhelming with needless information. If you go to the main Paris page you’ll find everything from info about a graduate school, tips on finding a job, to where to buy a piano. They could really curate down the information to a reasonable amount and have a much more popular resource.

the internet happened and it’s easy enough to research everything without spending a dime…

I liked the books back in the day, but no need now.

That's exactly how I feel. I have a shelf full of travel books that are collecting dust. They've just become so obsolete. Between Google Maps, Yelp, Trip Advisor and Booking.com, I can pretty much figure out where I'm going to stay, what I want to do, and how I'm going to do it. The most valuable-- invaluable-- old fashioned thing that I bring is a paper map. If I don't have a paper map on a driving trip, I usually regret it.
I get the National Geographic map of the country I'm heading for. The Nat Geo maps tend to show the type of things I'm looking for, such as UNESCO sites and random cultural or historical type places. Coupled with Google maps and the ever improving TripIt calendars, the road guide portion of any book can't compare.

But that's why I can't understand why Lonely Planet is blithely refusing to offer any electronic form for their new guidebooks? Frankly, I don't want to carry those heavy things around and, as mentioned above, most information can be gleaned from the internet (although there tends to be too much information out there).

The guides I am interested in, France, Germany and Switzerland, are offered in book format only on the LP site. Not even as a Kindle download. No separate chapters. So I will probably buy the paper versions this time, but it will be the last time.

Anyone happen to have a copy of the latest version of the France guide? I'd appreciate knowing what the Bordeaux hotel suggestions are. Don't think this would be a breach of copyright because it's only a small part of the book and, anyway, I'm going to buy it

I always have paper maps with me, ideally Michelin!

I'm going to make a really wacky suggestion... How about asking in the respective destination subforums on a site called Flyertalk. ;) While most of the members are frequent flyers, I'm sure they would have some solid recommendations on some good hotels. :D

Because we are discussing Lonely Planet publications here and I am interested in their suggestions. You are right though, the suggestions that I have had on Flyertalk (hotels, things to do, the whole lot) have been excellent and way better than anything that could be found in any guidebook.

What travel guides give you that you do not get from the internet is an editorial selection. As somebody else said, I would not have relied on LP or RG for hotel or restaurant recommendations but they would have been useful in terms of providing an overview, a mental map if you like, of the place I am going to visit (districts or regions, places to visit, general layout of the place, available modes of transportation, etc...) in a manner that I would have regarded as broadly reliable, even if I would not necessarily have agreed with all their views and choices. Typically, when planning a visit to a place, I might have started from LP or RG and then carried out further research online on the places or things that interested more.
This is something that the internet is not very good at providing: you just get raw data, without the kind of sifting and organising of information that you get in a guide book: you have to do all of this yourself, readings tons of webpages, blogs and reviews and do the sifting and organising yourself.

I dispute that it is "easy enough to research everything without spending a dime…" - quite often, when it comes to travel, information is worth you pay for it. The Trip Advisor restaurant with 500 5* reviews that are all obviously written by the same sweatshop when you start reading them, or the hotel reviews that rave about the pool when the hotel filled in the pool 6 years ago are just a few examples of why I want reviews/info from a professional.

Guidebooks aren't perfect, but I like having curated info on what is worth my time and money. I also find instead of me needing to google a keyword + city and then read 25 websites, when I look at a good guidebook, there will be a map that I can readily refer to and hotels/restaurants/attractions grouped by proximity, which I find very helpful as we tend to do a lot of walking while traveling and info grouped by area allows us to plan more effectively.

For maps/attractions, my personal favorite is the DK series of books.

I find researching food a tad difficult, but what I often do is youtube a destination (eg, this hotel or that attraction), look at the dates and choose the more recent and go from there. Food is difficult since it's REALLY subjective, although I find it still does give me a bit of an idea. But room tours or museum reviews aren't often too far off or too badly done. If they say they were sponsored by the destination, then I also take the video with a grain of salt. In general 2-3 videos will give me enough of an idea if I'll like or not wherever I'm going. I will generally get a sim/dataplan when I get to my destination so I'll have an idea of how to get "there". Otherwise if you're staying at a hotel, the hotel staff is often very pleased to help with suggestions/directions.

Well I walked into Bider & Tanner in Basel on Friday and bought a copy of Lonely Planet France and I am glad that I did so. I got the English language version, which at CHF32 was 10 francs cheaper than the German language edition (however, this latter was published 6 months later than the English one).

I photocopied the chapter on Bordeaux and the surrounding region, which amounted to around 7 pages, so I don't have to take the heavy book with me. Some of the museum descriptions, such as the Cité du Vin, are very useful as are the various restaurants and bars that are recommended.