The Guide to Travel Guides

As a start, you should probably consider the difference between travel guides and travel guidebooks. With the internet being a massive repository of uptodate and constantly changing information, the old fashioned travel guidebooks from Lonely Planet and other such publishers are fast on their way to extinction.

Let's face it, if you're looking for information on Anaheim vacations, wouldn't you rather visit the Disneyland Resort website or Mouseplanet.com or the Anaheim Convention & Visitors Bureau, all of these provide free information. Or would you buy the print edition of a Lonely Planet guide, which is more than likely to contain at least some outdated information.

Similarly, if you're looking at Anaheim hotels, wouldn't you rather get your information directly from the hotel websites or travel search engines, most of which nowadays provide such precise information as rates and taxes and room availability and descriptions. Not to mention the fact that online bookings are cheaper, and you can get reviews about specific hotels on sites like TripAdvisor.

But the advantage that the old fashioned travel guidebook has is that it contains expert advice about your destination, neatly categorized into chapters and its handy to have around when you're stuck in a small street in Beijing or New Delhi where no one seems to know any English. :)

Point of all this blather is that travel guides which combine the best parts of both online and print gudiebooks are now available. They work in much the same way as the print versions, except for the fact that the information in the guides changes dynamically, and you can buy parts of guides which you need, instead of buying the whole friggin book.

So, if say, you're interested only in buying the chapter which deals with all the attractions and things to do in Anaheim, and not the hotels and restaurants and language tips and cultural stuff and the rest of the blather, then you pay only for that part which you want, download and store it on your laptop and/or print it out and carry it along with you. Listed below are a few such companies and services which offer aforementioned online travel guides.

A new startup, offering exactly the kind of guides I'm talking about, is Offbeat Guides (www.offbeatguides.com/). Founded by David L. Sifry, who btw was also the founder of Technorati, Offbeat Guides creates personalized, on-demand travel guides using the most up-to-date information around, covering over 30,000 travel destinations. The information in their guides is up-to-the-minute and constantly updated.

You input your details - Destination, current location, tarvel dates and some other optional information - and then you select which parts of the guide you want - Weather forecast, event listings, language tips, emergency numbers, etc - and that's it. You have the option of downloading a pdf file or having the guide shipped to you as a color printed guide. The site is still in beta, but the point is that this is the future of travel guides.

Lonely Planet, not to be left behind, has come up something called Pick & Mix Chapters. You can select specific chapters out of Lonely Planet Guidebooks, and buy and download those chapters, same as offbeat guides.

Only difference here is that the information won't be as uptodate as you'd like, but its still better than having to buy a full book just to read a few pages. And I'm sure Lonely Planet will be working towards a system which allows them to update online content without having to sacrifice the quality and authenticity of their content.

Another new travel guide website - Travelmuse - also is working towards an integration of trip planning tools and destination guides. Their guides are wonderfully detailed and informative, without losing the 'human aspect' which most of the big publishers of travel guides end up losing. What I mean is, most of these guides are more like laundry lists of attractions and hotels and stuff. Who wants to read the yellow pages of a vacation destination? There needs to be a 'personal' touch, with reviews and humor.