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[friedelfb]

When travelling people often end up talking about guide books (also about bowel movements but I dunno wanna know about that) and things that annoy them about them

1.What annoys you in a guide book?
2.What would you change in the current ones available?
3.What would you have in your ideal guidebook?
4.Which aspects of each guidebook do you think is best? I.e what feature from each one would you like to see grouped into one book.
5. Are guidebooks too big with too much info?
6. anything new you would like to see in a guidebook (new features or a new kind of guidebook covering a certain topic)?

What I think ........
People writing information on places they have clearly never been, & instructions which could not get you there.
Editors changing information, correctly researched by the writer.
Guide books that have information 2 years out of date when they are published.
Guide books that only come out every 5 years.
Guide books that only change the front cover.
Guide books that fall apart.
Lack of hotels in relevant price range. A 3 country book for Ecuador, Peru & Bolivia supposes 6+ weeks travel & not US$20+ hotels.
Only showing one of address, www, email or tel when these are always likely to change or get misprinted.
Brothels etc being included in the budget accommodation without any warning.
Symbols that require you to look at the key every time, instead of using H for hotel, B for bus R for restaurant etc.
Computer maps where the symbols are not on the correct corner, block etc, or stuck to the margin.
Miniscule writing, especially on maps, when you need them as you arrive on a rainy night.
Maps should be linked to Google Earth etc, permitting us to email updates of locations accurately.
wiki & others permit script updates too.
A combination of CD for research, booklet for going out, & update on the net would be helpful & practical.
Loose leaf would be useful for those who remove used pages.

[rbisset]

The LP SEA is the bible! I used it every single day when I was travelling to find out about places to visit. Hell I even looked at it last night in England! Main thing I used it for though was information on buses. How long they took and where to find them. Accomodation and food were basically useless.

[whereshegoes]

I got to the point where I realized I was only using them for the maps.

Much better just to use the maps from the visitor info...and they are usually free.

[sfinder]

The answer to the guidebook flaws are the I-Pod tours. There are some that are clearly read from a guide, but I've tried a few that were absolutely fantastic, and they included maps as well, leaving nothing to envy from LP or others...for example, if in Buenos Aires, try out mptours.com. Worth every penny. Other tours of Buenos Aires are usually in places packed with tourists, and these mptours help you do all of that but at your own speed without someone tryig to sell you something every other step. I've tried tours of Palermo and Recoleta and loved it.

[semi-backpacker]

The thing that pisses me off about guide books is that they lack picture. I am a visual person Damn It!!! Cater to me!!! But all kidding aside, The Time Out guide books are the most up to date. I saw a picture of a hallway in the book and realized... S*$# I just walked down that the other day.

Cheers,

Barry

Hi Barry!
There are plenty of guidebooks with pictures. I'm also visual and tend to prefer them. My favorites are the Eyewitness Travel Guides!! They are glossy and full of pictures!! The only downside is that they don't have a very comprehensive Latin America collection. I bought one for Costa Rica which was worth every penny, but was frustrated that they didn't have any for Chile, Argentina, or Bolivia. I've also seen National Geographic and other guidebooks full of pictures! Good Luck!

Judith's Travel Blog

[rbisset]

The LP Oman, UAE and Arabian Peninsula was frustratingly useless and I only used it for Dubai. The map was completely wrong and I got lost for over an hour. The one for Sri Lanka was also confusing a lot of the time and in one instance got the length of a bus journey wrong by nearly 2 hours! Was a pleasant surprise to get there 2 hours earlier though!!

[lar4290]

I never use guide books for food and only occaisionally for acommodation if I'm having trouble finding a place on my own (and often times the places they list are so popular that it's useless last minute). I'd agree that maps are most useful. A lot of times I use guidebooks to get ideas about smaller towns within a country that I wouldn't have otherwise heard of/thought to go to.

What I hate about guidebooks is the ones (like the Eyewitness Travel guides, which is why I never use them although they are pretty and have good maps of big cities, but often not of the smaller towns) that don't give any information about how to get from place to place (especially the smaller towns) or that assume that all travellers rent cars, so they only include the data on how to drive there. The whole reason I buy a guidebook is so I know how to get around. Ones with clear bus and train options, companies (when application), and other info (i.e. how many trains/buses a day and approx. price) as well as which routes to get to out of the way places and tiny towns. Let's Go and Lonely Planet and sometimes Fodor's are pretty good about this.

While I'm ranting, one other thing that drives me crazy is when guidebooks (esp. Lonely Planet) have maps that are too small to read and pages that are so thin that they're practically translucent so there's no way to read a map!

Anyone else?