My partner and I have been on the road for 1 year now – we’re travelling and working in a motorhome in Europe. For the first half of our trip we didn’t use a guidebook – just online research. For the second half of our trip we’ve used a mixture of the two. So, there are a couple of points I’d like to put out there:

First of all I don’t think this is an either/or debate – we’ve found using a bit of both is the way to go as they’re good for different things. Guidebooks are great for getting a general overview but when I want detailed and up-to-date information about a specific place or activity I’ll go online.

Naturally, we’ve also found both have drawbacks. We use Lonely Planet and have often found their descriptions of a place descend into gushing hyperbole! They do seem to be a very excitable bunch! The problem I’ve found with using online sources? All tourists seem to go to the same place, do the same thing, and take the same photos. if you’re going to use your every-day tourist as your only source of travel information you’re going to have a lot of information on very few places. Be prepared to wade through a bazillion journal entries on the Colosseum, the Sistine Chapel and The Forum if you’re looking for something to do in Rome! Of course, Lonely Planet doesn’t cover all possible places or activities – how could it!? – but as someone who’s spent months in the one country whilst travelling and had more things on the to do list than I could get around to I think it’s safe to say it’s fairly comprehensive!

One last point and then I’m done :) To talk about all guide books as if they’re made equal is oversimplifying it a bit, I think. If you don’t like Lonely Planet maybe you’ll like Rick Steves! They each have a different focus and are good for different situations and different people. For example Rick Steves is brilliant for short trips but absolutely rubbish for those of us staying in one country for months at a time.

Ok I lied – one last point! We have about a dozen guide books because our trip is so extended and they don’t weigh a thing – it’s a little thing called the iPhone :)

Guidebooks are about facts, average people don’t care how well it’s written. It could be the best written guidebook in the world, but if the information is a year old, it’s worthless to me. Cheap, timely facts from the internet are better than expensive fluff from someone with an English degree (in my opinion).

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.

Nice blog, by the way, I’m really enjoying it.

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.

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.

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.