Your opinions on travel guide books. Lonely Planer, Rough Guide, Footprint etc !!
 

I think they're mostly a load of poorly researched terd. Good for a general info and highlights and having all the info in one place, but just not worth the weight in my pannier....

Enlighten me !!

Variable; some Lonely Planet very good but go out of date quickly, which is not their fault really. Less impressed with Rough Guide. LP has saved me several times with its info and tips. On balance, I would take with me, even if just for the list of cheap accommodation and info about the regions in which one is traveling.

I feel compelled to look at them but for overlanding they are not good. For our trip we spent weeks porring over loenly planet books for Arg and Chile. Within the first day on the road our trip plan was out of the window and a good part of our resarch with it.

OK. I can't say they were a dead weight in the tankbag, but it is far better to let local advice as well as places like th HUBB to provide places of interest to visit.

They are helpful for finding a place to stay relatively quickly in a new town and they give you an idea of some of the places to visit in a country.
However, countless others have done the same and you end up another sheep in a flock of tourists which is not what we wanted from our trip...

Double-edged sword: handy in some cases but shouldn't be used a blow-by-blow itinerary for one's trip: better to let the trip carry on a bit on its current.

I have found that some of the information from Lonely Planet is pretty useful. However, rather than carry dead weight around, I just download the relevant information directly from their website and store it on my laptop, or print out whatever chapters I might need. It also ends up being a lot cheaper

Lonely Planet Shop - Travel guides, guidebooks and phrasebooks

Damn. I spent ages writing on the other thread and I can't be bothered again.
So I'll do what many guide books do, especially it seems now the LP, and cut and paste what I wrote before - even though it might now be old and out of date and inaccurate in the first place -


I appreciate very well the difficulty in keeping a guide book up to date. I also appreciate the hard work and conscientious efforts made by some of the authors.

But when vast tracts are repeated (and I don't just mean the history sections) from one issue to the next, where information in the first was out of date or inaccurate and this is compounded as the years and issues pass, that an updated version has less information than before, has maps worse than before and seems to move away from it's original core market of budget and middle budget travellers - then I began to have my doubts as to the worth of having one at all.

I spent many years leading overland expeditions to, through and around Africa and Asia and invariably on every trip I'd have more than one argument with a group member over the information about something that I knew about from a personal visit not many weeks before and they believing the info in a brand new guide book they'd bought specially for the trip.
If I said a place is crap and some author said it was good, it may have been when they visited anything up to years before, it isn't now but because the info was so far out of date - and the prices often no where near what they are now - I'd end up with more hassle than a little.

Lay me out in a guide book a history of the place, give me some decent maps and a few (but not many) photos for flavour, point me in the direction of what there might be to see and places of note in the city/area (Embassies, Bus station, railway station, government buildings etc ) - but keep your opinions and editors picks to yourself thankyouverymuch.

The final nail for me was when the address for a number of Embassy's were totally incorrect....

I mean.. They're embassy's ! Pretty important, not exactly subtle and their new address's were well documented. (once I went on the internet to find out after walking aimlessly around for a whole day with a LP book)

Any "researcher" could of gone on the internet and found about the change or maybe gone to see them on their "ground work" trips.

These are the details a traveller really needs.

Like said, not what the editor likes to do on his one week business class holiday.

Numerous examples of inaccuracies can be documented, some easily accounted for, some making you wonder if the author ever went there in the first place. But, and I may be showing my age or at least conforming to a stereotype, but there doesn't seem to be the standard of care that made those like the LP as popular as they were.
Were they popular because they were at one time a new thing or were they because they actually were quite accurate?

I think that there are a combination of factors -
we may have changed in that now we are less accepting of mistakes and demand more and more accuracy.
As that has happened the scales have been tipping the other way in that there is less time and effort and more 'it'll do' type attitude in compiling them.
The companies are trying to make more and more money by appealing to different types of traveller, so that the guides are becoming jack of all trades and masters of none.
I hesitate to fork out serious money on a guide book and then have to fork out more money for an update. It makes me think I should just buy the update and not the book in the first place. If that's of any use.

They are like a spare gas can, the majority of the time a pain to carry around but on ocassion can save you a bit of grief.

I posted my opinions on guide books a couple of years back and was met with a flame wall of "i use lonely planet so how dare you think they are crap! " responses.

Nothing has changed for me. I still think they are not only crap and heavy and bulky, but they significantly detract from the adventure and discovery elements of travel. On top of that, they cut down on your interactions with locals. They are a security blanket, that provides security at the expense of adventure. That is a fair tradeoff for many people but if you ask my opinion, they are a negative influence. Yes people can have great adventures with guide books but they probably would have had bigger better adventures without them.

So to answer your question Ted, you are not missing anything. . . You are spot on.

The locals and touts are well aware of the contents of the guides and use that knowledge to subvert trip planning. eg. the duplication of hotel names that are recommended.
Some people just holiday, so these guides suffice as time constraints for many.
But guides do change the local landscape. We love popular destinations to death. I would rather be in a small quiet temple, remote and melancholy than many popular and impressive tourist attractions.
Guides are travellers training wheels scary when you fist leave them behind, but once off....
There have been times when I'd give my right arm for one, but that was when I backpacked. Since I started biking these times are rare, as any time I hit a major town I just drove around till the tourists got thicker and bobs your mothers brother. Biking also allows you to peruse many hotels at leisure so no need for a guide.
Local bikers , if you take the trouble to find them, will show you their country for the enjoyment of riding and your company.

I use guidebooks for one reason only--to figure out what towns I might like to visit; it is pretty hard to tell from a dot on map if a town is a soul-less industrial dump, an architectural gem, a cheesy tourist trap, etc. The trouble with asking locals about stuff like this is that we probably share different tastes in how to spend our time.

Once I'm in a town I usually pick the first decent hotel I find with parking, and walk around to find a place to eat.

I have to say that I've been using guidebooks a bit more now that they are published in Kindle format, as you can carry as many as you want without extra weight. That said, using them more has not really brought any extra benefit. I think guidebooks are probably more useful to backpackers, who have to schlep around town looking for hotels, etc., whereas on a motorcycle it is much easier to do this.

I use them.
Before I enter a country I check the highlights and mark some of them on my map. I also like to get some knowledge about the history and people of the countries I visit. The city-maps can be useful.

Some parts, like addresses places to sleep etc get outdated but (for me) the most important facts are usually more static.

http://www.actiontouring.com/pic/lpaf.jpg

Well, you said it yourself :-))) LP seems to get worse with every new edition. Yes, they are poorly researched, maps are often wrong, and they tend to lead you to places with mostly other travelers (which can be nice at times). Other guide books are not much better. Surprised? Don't be: Do Travel Writers Go To Hell? by Thomas Kohnstamm

With all that being said, they have a place to get some basic information and a feel for a country. Nowadays I just buy the chapters I need as PDF files. No need to buy the fluff chapters and it is easy to print a map. No weight to carry.

Maybe the internet is sounding the death knell for an annually "updated" guide?

The most useful I've used is the DK range because of the pictures! Flick open at random page, find a nice pic of something you like, off you go!

As for the rest, the important stuff should be the first thing that should be correct, so the last thing to be checked before off to the printers. Mr Teds comment on Embassies is a bit shocking really! It is only a guide fair enough, but if it lists hospitals for instance would you bother to check the info yourself? If that sort of thing can't be kept current it shouldn't be in there.

Maybe there is a market for a thick guide to the country and all its aspects, in detail, for coffee table inspiration and reading once there, but then ALL changable stuff is from the net for a subscription perhaps? So there is loads more space for all of those good hotels and must sees, with user ratings?

That doesn't get the publisher £20 a year though.

The above may exist already, but so far I mostly buy the guide, cart it round for the trip, and read a bit 6 months later, so I'm not too fussed really :)

Jason

:)

After picking up the LP guide to Vietnam at a local bookstore, it basically stated that the country is full of dodgy roads, corrupt police and brothels....and I need no more encouragement than that to go!!!

" they are poorly researched" .

Compared to what?

I've got very limited experience of using any guide books. We took Africa on a shoestring with us on our Cape Town trip - older version of the one above supposedly updated in 1990 and used by us in 1991/2 but it was woefully inadequate. We lost all faith in it by the time we got to Cairo but dug it out again when we were trying to find cheap digs in Windhoek - and it was useless there too.

As we do now in Europe, I would have thought most travellers take a robust laptop which would allow you to forward book hotels etc and download relevant parts of current LP guides if you want to stay with all the other LP travellers (handy sometimes). I appreciate that hotel booking sites for outer Mongolia are hard to come by but then that's why you are there!

The biggest surprise for me about travelling in Africa was how different it was from the impression I had from reading guide books before we went. Most guide books get their potted histories from other books so now I try to read the other books before I go somewhere for the first time.

Does it need a comparison ?

I guess I could compare it to how it describes itself. Eg. The LP Cuba Book on my desk now.

"An UNPARALLELED guide"

"Loaded with detailed maps. More than any other guide of the island"

My humble opinion

LP = shite. I believe many of the authors haven't been to the places they expose opinions about. As a rule of thumb if you assume the opposite view to the author on a hotel/hostel it is quite accurate. Ideal volume/weight to put under side stand of fat BMW when stuck in the mud on the Moyale/Isiolo road.

Footprint = quite good, at least in Ethiopia and South America. They also mention where bike parking is possible. Also the bus timings and distances were v useful. 200km and 12 hours = bad road, 500km and 5 hours on the bus = good road.

Rough Guide = really hard to follow unless you travel the same route in the same direction as the author.

cheers
C

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I'd like to know what kind of information you consider "well" researched.

My gripe is the information which is NOT well researched...

Accurate addresses of Embassies with maps to go with them..

Hostels and hotels which had closed down two years before the publish date of the book.

Prices of hostels and hotels which is very important when travelling with a strict budget and also out of date. I used to show the people working in the hostel the LP prices. And they would chuckle and say "Yeah, that was the price years ago".

Eg. In mozambique down the east coast. After riding 30 miles of terrible road to reach a "tranquil yet lively shoreline village with a modern camp site and budget hotel" I actually found the place was a derelict building site where the only hotel still standing was £65 a night affair.... The manager said it had all shut down years before.

There are some VERY obvious occasions in these books that no one had ever been there or researched it at all..

I've still got a bit of a soft spot for both Rough Guides and Lonely Planet even though I agree with Chris that these days you're often better off assuming the opposite of what they say. The reason is I remember what travel was like before they were available. I picked up a copy of the original 1982 Rough Guide to Greece in my local Oxfam bookshop recently and what I wouldn't have given for that during my 3-4 trips round Greece in the 70's. A copy of Robert Graves's "The Greek Myths" and a page torn from a school atlas (what we actually used on the first trip) wasn't much of a substitute.

During the 90's TRG and LP were just about universal but I noticed that because of that they'd started distorting their own market. Hoteliers were desperate to get into them as it obviously brought loads of custom. How many times have I heard a hotel owner say to me "you like? you tell Lonely Planet". How would you go about getting your establishment into them if you were a hotel owner - sex, drugs, rock n roll ?

I wouldn't leave home without them up until about 2005 but recently haven't bothered as it's easier to get up to date info on the internet. Times move on. I'm not even sure my son know they exist. He certainly didn't take any guide books for a 6 month trip round China in 09.

I mentioned a couple of years back and its worth mentioning again ... if you are homesick for western company or you want to meet up with some young female western company while you are out in the middle of nowhere, then by all means go to a place mentioned in Lonely Planet.

Certainly showing up on your own bike where others arrive by rancid public bus scores a lot of points with the average female backpacker, and I know of a number of bike trips that have picked up an extra passenger after staying at Lonely Planet listed accommodation for a couple of days.

So social opportunities for meeting western company is certainly one valid reason to carry a guide book.

I have to agree. Lonely Planet hot spots are definitely the place to meet the ladeeeeeez !!

Maybe that's the only reason I keep buying them !! :eek3:

A lot - but not all - of the books can be had on kindle, and you can keep a bunch on there without taking up a lot of packing space. And of course there is the internet.
Occasionally all the weight of this extra technology can keep a little weight down in books and repair manuals. And of course we can let everyoneknow where in the world we are.

When you get to my age finding out where the local Gringo trail hotspots are is great for changing your paperbacks, sad really, but it comes to all those that have not been cut off in their prime so ride safe and start reading.

Guide books.........
 

Agree with alot of what has been said before, it would seem that; the smaller company books are probably better - certainly more accurate, and actually researched in person, by the guides.

From my experience - although mostly a fair few years ago!

Footprint - the few that I have experienced have been pretty good

Bradt - good from my experience

Rough Guide - mixed opinion

LP - Would not bother with this again. Found several if not all the African based books I used/tried, inaccurate, out of date, completely rubbish and very biased towards companies/people/hostels/etc that sponsored them.
The Kenyan coverage was complete and utter nonsense, hopelessly inadequate, inaccurate and seemed to be based mostly on brothels and pick up joints.
I then had some direct experience of the LP Guides researcher in Namibia -had to be the most miserable freeloader I have ever had the misfortune to meet!
Expected everyone to run around and fawn over them. Get everything based around them, for them and bugger anyone else, and had to be the most miserable, boring, po faced shit I have met, no attempt to join in, cook or anything, apart from eat the food, drink the drink and do what they wanted when they wanted it!
In short I wouldn't wipe my ar%* with one!

Think thats it in a nutshell - just think its a shame that these books are what so many people rely upon.
So thank goodness for the internet, do your research, ask questions here in the Hubb or other appropriate forums, and if you can speak to travellers who have 'just' been there - peolpe travelling the opposite direction to yourself.

Happy travels and do the research

Thats exactly it in a nutshell! bier

Have you all used wikitravel?

I used it last year in Argentina and Uruguay and found it pretty useful.