Travel Guides
With so much to see and do in the world today, what is the best way to figure out where you want to go and what you want to experience? The answer of course is travel guides. These books provide everything a traveler could want to get the most out of their trip, from details such as phone numbers, addresses, reviews, prices, restaurants, hotels, and activities. Oftentimes, they include maps and historical and cultural information.
Travel guides have been around for centuries, dating back to the medieval Arab world when treasure hunting was a popular pastime, and the demand for guides to help assist the hunters to the artifacts and monuments was high. The first factual guides came about in the 1800s, and post-World War II, names such as Fodor and Frommer became synonymous with travel experience. Today, travelers and tourists have a multitude of travel guides to choose from, with some guides dedicated to a specific aspect of travel (adventure, relaxation, spas, gay and lesbian, couples, etc.) and some based on certain countries or continents. There certainly is no shortage of information for almost any corner of the earth you may choose to travel to.
With the advent of the internet, many traditional print media have brought their advice and expertise online. Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, and Frommers now offer online travel guides in the form of a website, where users can access a wealth of information. With featured stories such as “Pacific Northwest: An Oddball Guide” and “How to travel on a shoestring”, users can browse destinations and look at gorgeous photographs and discover new places to explore. Or, click on a map that asks “Where do you want to go?” and select the country of an upcoming visit—say, Costa Rica. The online travel guide allows you the interactivity to click and learn about Central America, or just Costa Rica alone. They may list top pics, when to go, practical information, getting around, maps, history, wild life, and much more information. The organization and wealth of knowledge is staggering, so it’s great for those planning a trip. For those who want the information on the go, many online travel guides offer information to be downloaded (most for a small fee, of course).
For those want free travel guides, there are many online communities where travelers can share tips, stories, hotel and activity ratings, and much more. One such website, Trip Advisor, has hundreds of thousands of member reviews of hotels and activities. With that many users and rating, it is in itself a free travel guide, since it isn’t just one or two opinions. Additionally, many tourist websites offer free travel guides in an effort to make planning a vacation to their country that much easier. It’s very easy to search for the destination you are interested in, and click on the link to an official tourism board website. Once there, most websites are more than happy to send free travel and tourism information to potential visitors.
