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Tips: Selecting the Right Guidebook
"...the understatement, the self ridicule, the delight in the foreignness of the foreigner, the complete denial of any attempt to enlist the sympathies of his readers in the hardships he has capriciously invited."
Evelyn Waugh, on the properties of a good travel writer
- Purchase used guidebooks to every place you would like to visit whenever you see them in either used bookstores or better yet a library book sale (where they can be bought for less than $1). Use these guidebooks to determine where you might want to visit.
- Use old guidebooks to help you to determine which guidebook series and authors you like. Once you have favorite series and authors, you?ll know what books to buy at your local bookstore and avoid spending hundreds of dollars on guidebooks that don?t meet your needs.
- Guidebook companies will often give you free guidebooks in exchange for your notes about the accuracy of their information. Some travelers even send guidebooks marked up with their comments directly to the guidebook companies in exchange for new guidebooks (it doesn?t have to be the same guidebook).
- Guidebooks are great places to get a basic thumbnail sketch of the history, culture, and natural environment of a given place. In addition, they usually contain a good bibliography to use to get more detailed resources, if desired. However, occasionally the authors have a political axe to grind about a particular place and therefore do not provide an unbiased opinion of a place. The reader reviews on amazon.com will help you identify these authors (be careful -sometimes the reviews have axes to grind as well).
- Typically, most of the information in guidebooks ? even if they are brand new ? is at least one year old. In many parts of the world, one year can make a big difference. Many of the places profiled in the guidebooks have either gone out of business or are overrun with other tourists by the time you get there. In addition, particularly in a country undergoing dramatic change such as China and Southeast Asia, you will miss quality, new businesses that have opened up since the guidebooks were published (when I was in Bali in 1991, the economy was so dynamic that most of the places I stayed where not even open when the guidebooks were researched). A year can also make the price information obsolete. When I went to Argentina in 2003, every guidebook I purchased said that Argentina was the most expensive place in all of Latin America. However, with the currency crisis in 2002, this was far from the truth in 2003. In fact, everywhere I went in Argentina, I encountered South American tourists who decided to go to Argentina to take advantage of the low cost of travel there!
- I have generally found that guidebooks have adequate enough maps to get you around for a couple days. If you are going to be in another country for more than a week, I?d buy a map at home. Oddly, it is often hard to buy a good map outside of USA and Western Europe. Great Britain is a great place to buy maps.
- The quality of guidebooks within a series can vary a lot between editions and countries. Sometimes, the guidebook series hire great researchers and occasionally the researchers leave a lot to be desired. There are some guidebook authors that I would encourage you to read no matter where they publish. For Latin American guidebooks, I trust Christopher Baker, Bruce Whipperman, and Wayne Bernhardson because they have become experts in their respective regions. There are reviews of some of the most common guidebook series in the Book Picks section of this website.
- Pay attention to guidebook?s advice about local tour companies. Usually, established tour companies stay in business for a while, therefore the information about tour companies in guidebooks does not age that fast. In addition, since a bad tour company can put your safety and health in jeopardy, guidebooks hear about nightmarish tours and report these finding in their books.
- Sometimes the best travel literature is available primarily at your destination. The best guidebooks to Cairo, for example, is written by local expatriates and published by the American University in Cairo. You can also get good travel information by reading local English language papers (many of these papers are available on-line). Sadly, many of these papers are folding and those that survive are using more and more stories from AP and UPI instead of local stories.
- Most traditional travel magazine and newspaper articles will help you get a sense whether you want to visit a place but provide little in the way of concrete travel advice. They are mostly written for well-off travelers with short vacations. They create the illusion that travel is expensive when in fact it is staying at home that is really expensive! There are, however, some notable exceptions including Arthur Frommer?s Budget Travel and Transitions Abroad.
- National tourist offices are good places to get specific questions about a place answered but most of their information is only geared toward people with unlimited funds and limited time. They are often swamped with requests for information and thus may not be terribly useful. Sometimes, the best tourist offices are from the most unlikely places. Oddly, the best tourist brochures I?ve seen are from Japan and India - both countries somewhat outside of the usual beaten tourist path.
- Check out my guidebook reviews for more information about the benefits of different guidebook series.
Notes:
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I ( Paul Heller, the founder of the Big Blue Marble) have prepared hundreds of travel tips like these to help you plan and enjoy traveling like a local experiences. These tips have been gathered during my 25 years of traveling around the world. If you'd like more tips, please buy one of my inexpensive and informative publications. -
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Do you agree or disagree with any of these tips? Do you know any great tips that should be added? If so, send your comments to me and I'll post them on my blog
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