This addresses is something which I’ve touched on before, the need for guidebooks when traveling. The impetus for this was spurred on by a Twitter discussion with Leif Pettersen who declared:
I declare that smugly claiming to be too cool or savvy to travel with a guidebook is officially passé and open for ridicule.
Leif is a guidebook writer. I’ve met other guidebook writers while traveling. I have nothing against guidebook writers. After a 19 months on the road, however, I can say with 100% certainty…
You don’t need a guidebook to travel, and getting information online is better, cheaper, and more convenient than what you will find in a book.
Here is why:
Timeliness
I have used one guidebook on my trip. Prior to leaving, I purchased the Moon’s Guide to the South Pacific. The author, David Stanley, is probably one of the foremost authorities on travel in the South Pacific. He’s been traveling the region for decades and knows the area very well. I subscribe to his website to get news of the region.
Nonetheless, for reasons which were totally beyond his control, much of the information in the book regarding flights was out of date. Pacific Blue had canceled their flights to Tonga. Air Nauru no longer existed. Several other transportation issues made me have to change my plans based on information I got online or on the ground. The problem wasn’t with the author, it was with the medium. He is very diligent about providing updates to airlines on his website, but that same information might take years to make it to print.
The publication cycle for guidebooks means that the moment a new guidebook hits the shelf, the information is probably a year out of date. The schedule for putting out new editions can range from 1-5 years and for little visited places, perhaps even longer.
Sites such as Hostelworld.com will have much more timely information. You can usually find reviews from people who have stayed at the hostel within the last two weeks.
Transportation schedules are the things most likely to change. You can find up to date train information at Seat61.com. You can find up to date flight information at any number of flight sites like Expedia, Orbitz or Kayak. You can get bus schedules from most places you stay. I know here in SE Asia, bus schedules are easy to find at any hotel or hostel, and they will have the latest information.
Most places you will have an entire industry built around tourism. Most guidebook authors get their information about attractions by picking up brochures, and you can do the exact same thing when you are there. If attractions have been closed for any reason, you can more readily find that out online than in a guidebook.
Quality
To address the quality of the information you get from a guidebook, I will not even address the controversy surrounding guidebook author Thomas Kohnstamm and the allegations of fraud (because there really was no fraud). It isn’t necessary.
Leif’s main contention is that you don’t know what your source is online, but you do in a guidebook. I contend the exact opposite. I have no idea who most guidebook authors are and I have no idea what went into the research of the guidebook. I’m sure most guidebook authors are honest, but I’m equally sure that some aren’t. They might have fudged some information or taken freebies from hotel/restaurant owners. I have no way of knowing.
There is huge demand to be a guidebook writer, because of the glamor associated with travel writing. Most guidebook authors are paid very little, and are required to cover a lot of places in a short period of time. I met one guy who was working on the Australia book for Let’ Go. We were both in Coober Peady, SA. He was there for a day, and I was there for four days. We both had access to the same information. He was gathering up everything he could before he had to take off and go to the next place. I probably experienced more of Coober Peady, but I wasn’t trying to catalog as much information as I could.
Guidebooks are not reviews. Guidebook authors do not visit the vast majority of restaurants, hotels, and attractions they write about. They can’t tell if you if a place is good, just that it exists and contact info. If you want reviews of place, you have to go online. Do I trust the collective wisdom of hundreds and thousands of people, or a single person? I’ll take the mob. If a hotel is consistently getting rated poorly online, that is level of information you’ll never get from a book.
The mob also does a good job with sites like Wikitravel. I have personally updated some of the entries on the Solomon Island and East Timor, which I found to be out of date. You have no way of knowing that I was the person providing the information of course. Can wikis have incorrect information? Yes. So far, however, I’ve found them to be reliable. (Prediction, Lonely Planet or someone else will eventually use these user created information banks to gather information and publish books using this content, bypassing individual authors completely. This will totally remove biggest cost associated with information gathering.)
Most importantly, it really isn’t that hard to get information once you are at a location. The more popular the place is, the easier it is to get information. In somewhere like Bali, you will have people falling all over themselves give you brochures, which is the exact same information which goes into a guidebook.
Finally, all guidebooks are second hand information. Online you can get primary information. Via the web can you get hotel, park, or airline information directly from the source.
Cost and Weight
Guidebooks are expensive and heavy. If you buy in a bookstore, you can easily spend $20-40 on a book. (much less at Amazon). Some of the thicker books can weight over a kilogram (2.2 pounds). That is not trivial when you are traveling. If you are going to many different places, that can all add up. Given the amount of money you spend on a book, you could spend hours at an internet cafe getting the same information (and of course, it will cost nothing if you get it before you leave).
Ultimately, guidebooks sell because of fear and uncertainty. When you go someplace you’ve never been, you want to have some certainty about where to go and what to do before you show up. I still feel the same thing before I go somewhere new. However, I have come to learn that I can get by just fine by asking questions on the ground and doing some research online. I’ve arrived in many places with no accommodations booked ahead of time and had no problem finding a place to stay.
Smugness has nothing to do with it. Guidebooks may have made sense back when Lonely Planet was founded in the 70’s. Today, they are a vestigial reminder of a pre-internet era.
Be the author of your own guidebook and leave the Lonely Planet at home.
Related posts:
USA Mainland
Canada
Mexico
Palestine (West Bank)
Netherlands
England
Bahamas
Cayman Islands
Honduras
Great article. Although I am still in the planning stages, and can’t really comment one way or the other as far as the practical “on the road” validity of your stance…..I have to say that I have found myself referring to online sources 95% of the time (over travel guides picked up from the local library) when researching various places.
I think the hard copy guides are particularly limited when it comes to accommodation, restaurants, and transportation….probably the three main concerns for a traveler!
I do think that the Lonely Planet mini-sized phrasebooks are great however, and well worth packing around.
To be honest I’ve never traveled anywhere outside of North America without a guidebook. I’ve used Let’s Go for Eastern Europe and Mexico, Lonely Planet for Korea, Fodor’s for Japan (big mistake, I only bought it because it was cheaper than the alternatives) and some independently published guide that I picked up at a used book store in Budapest for Tunisia (again, big mistake). I agree that you don’t actually need them but I kind of like having them for a couple of reasons. Most importantly, they tend to have handy maps that highlight the main sights and transportation infrastructure. It’s certainly true that that information is almost always available online but it’s nice to have it in your pocket in case you can’t find an internet cafe. Nevertheless, you’re absolutely right that they’re not really necessary and if you wind up with a bad guidebook, as I did in Japan and Tunisia, it can really mess up your trip.
Nice blog, by the way, I’m really enjoying it.
I agree, with you Gary, pooling of many people would show the actual quality. Don’t believe only from one source.
Nice blog! I like it.
Fair enough. You’re absolutely right – an expert can’t tell you what you like.
You have a perfect right to say what you do or don’t like – but then the expert can tell you whether what you like is good or bad compared to everything else available. That’s the key skill professionals have – wine writers & travel journalists alike.
Any professional travel journalist – and, I’d say, the huge majority of professional guidebook writers too – would be able to put together a more meaningful, informative, sharp, clear and useful review of any single hotel on their patch without having to spend a night in it than a regular punter who stayed there for a week and wrote about it on TripAdvisor.
It stands to reason. I drink maybe one glass of wine a month. Give me a bottle of wine and I could describe it, sure, in my own terms – but it’s just the opinion of Mr Joe Schmo who barely knows anything about what to look for in a wine, or what’s important, or what the background context of that bottle is, etc etc. Give the same wine to someone who samples wine professionally, and they could not only understand more about what it is and where it came from, but would be able to communicate more about it as well.
Professional travel journalists – and most decent guidebook writers – stay in dozens, perhaps hundreds of hotels a year. Joe Schmo stays in, what, three? Five?
Anyone can invest in the stock market, but not everyone can offer a meaningful opinion about the macroeconomic climate. It takes a professional to do that. Anyone can watch a football game, but it takes a professional to be able to write intelligently and meaningfully about the action, the result and the consequences. Anyone can watch Barack Obama on CNN giving a press conference at the White House and then offer an opinion about what they think it all meant – but, well, you get the point.
Anyone can stay in a hotel, but there’s a big difference between professional opinion and the rest.
You don’t need to be an expert to know if you had a good time or if a room was clean.
Bob: “did you like your hotel?”
Sam: “I don’t know. I haven’t visited enough hotels to be able to voice an opinion”.
That is absurd. Anyone can know if a room was clean, if the service was good or if the amenities were as advertised. You don’t have to sleep in hundreds of rooms to have an opinion on what you experienced.
All your examples have nothing do do with travel. Travel isn’t the macroeconomy. It is travel. You don’t need a PhD in travel to stay in a hotel room. Furthermore, there were a whole lot of “experts” in economics who had absolutely no clue what was happening to the economy over the last few years. Their expertise consisted of nothing more than regurgitating conventional wisdom.
As for wine, I’d point you to Gary Vaynerchuk. You like what you like. You pallet is your own and an “expert” can’t tell you what you like.
Tragically misinformed and misleading post, I’m afraid. Guidebooks matter because they are written by professional travel journalists who know their industry, know their market and know how to write. Good writers do a heck of a lot more than just pick up brochures, as you claim! They are specialists in their area, and know far more than any amount of ordinary travellers posting and blogging…
By contrast 99% of online travel info doesn’t matter because it’s written by Joe Schmo. 100,000 Joe Schmoes don’t make TripAdvisor reliable; in fact, the opposite. As for Hostelworld, it is hopelessly misleading and unreliable.
So the Moon South Pacific guidebook you talk about lists a defunct airline. Big deal. If the author is a leading authority on the area then his information (where it matters) will be streets ahead of Wiki or anything else, regardless of whether he’s eaten in every restaurant or not. (Of COURSE he hasn’t; duh!)
The trouble, I think, is that lots of people (maybe you too) take guidebooks as gospel truth. They are not – they are GUIDE books. They are meant to give you some pointers to help get below the surface. They are written by travel professionals and people who make a living as communicators. I would ALWAYS take the opinion of a professional guidebook writer over a commercial travel site.
Buy a guidebook, take it with you, read it inside out, then leave it in your hotel room while you go out.
You make a blanket claim that ALL guidbeook authors are authorities and experts. That is not not true. Most I’ve met in the field were college students or other part time people who were sent to gather data, usually in the form of the very brochures you criticize.
There is noting wrong with the average person saying what their experience was at a hotel. It was what it was. As I noted, guidebook authors do not say at every hotel. At least in TripAdvisor people are actually staying in the hotel, where is for a guidebook they are just getting information about the hotel without staying there. Who is really the expert when they haven’t even experienced what they are writing about?
What good is being an expert if the medium in which you convey your expertise is prone to being out of date??
You seem to take the view that expert = good, everyone else = bad, and that everyone associated with a guidebook is an expert. They’re not. Reality is far from what you are describing.
Be careful, sites like Hostelworld can be gamed. Hostel operators can create accounts, book books stays at their own hostels, and give themselves glowing ratings.
Good post there..
I can say that when I’m traveling, and I’m traveling a lot, I never use only one source for information about the place.
I’m always looking on 5-10 different trusted guides and creating my own opinion..
i agree with you Gary, the only problem that i see is when you are going to undeveloped countries, the only one who gives an accurate info is Lonely Planet, Bradt or Rough Guides
Totally agree with you.
If you are travelling, you better ask other travellers or check the web for the latest news.
If you are on holidays and want it all easy, just carry your overweighted guidebook with you, follow its instructions to the end and forget about having any adventure.
That’s a good post!!
I totally agree with your point of view.
Guidebooks make us focuse on certain places only and at the end you find yourself surrounded by more tourists than locals. I’ve spent a year travelling around Asia and felt ridiculous carrying my guidebook.
Although I mostly agree with your points, I still travel with guidebooks, because I feel like for the type of travel I usually do, they still make sense for me.
I could see two types of trips where I wouldn’t need/want a guidebook:
- a carefully scheduled and planned itinerary, with a finite amount of time. This is the sort of trip I do for work, and I rarely bring guidebooks on these trips. Because I’m not making decisions on the fly (aside from maybe where to eat) I can sit down with the computer and plan it out, pulling resources from various places together as needed.
- a long, unstructured trip with few time limits. If one can manage it, this is the ideal way to travel. You basically just go wherever fate leads you, and if it turns out to be lame, you just go somewhere else the next day. One could really do this sort of trip without either guidebook or any other resource, though some degree of homework would be helpful to give you an idea what to look for.
However, I generally fall somewhere in the middle when I travel for pleasure: trips of limited length, but little up front planning besides where I’m flying into. Time is sufficiently of the essence that a wasted day is a significant loss. Internet access is not always convenient once you’re actually on the ground some place, so a guidebook gives you the ability to direct your trip on the fly, without having to seek out an internet cafe in a strange city, time I’d much rather spend doing something else. There’s something to be said for a ready-made packet of information on your chosen country, even if it is an imperfect one. It also gives you an easy way to research your situation on buses, flights, or the middle of the desert.
Guidebooks aren’t perfect, and overly slavish reliance on them probably doesn’t make for the best travel, but I think they’re still valuable.
I agree I book my vaction (hotels/rental cars etc) online. I also get mapquest directions and”guidebook” type info online as well. Great article
I personally think if you spend a little time in the internet looking at blogs and forums and other discussion board will give you ample information. II believe guidebooks is only a individual point of view about his likes and dislikes and it may not cater to a general public.
Google is your best friend :)