Almost all travellers have them on their bookshelf: Lonely Planet, Rough Guide and many other travel guide books. These guidebooks have been important information sources for travellers all around the world. But with smartphones, tablets and websites such as Tripadvisor.com are printed travel guidebooks still relevant?
Up-to-date information
First of all, it is very costly for publishers to keep travel guidebooks up-to-date. In addition, in this fast paced world a travel guidebook is already outdated before it even hits the bookshelves (Hodson, 2012). As a traveller in a foreign country relying on the information in these books it is important to have up-to-date information. It is such a shame when you have travelled so far for a particular restaurant or sight mentioned in the book, only to find out it is not there any more. Sales of printed guidebooks in the U.S. have been declining since 2007 (skift.com, 2016). This is an indication that the demand for travel information is shifting from offline to online. On the internet you can find up-to-date travel information on tour operators, restaurants and hotels, because information can easily be edited. There is a growing amount of apps, websites and blogs filled with travel related topics. Also, the information you find on the internet is at no extra cost, while a guidebook can easily cost you a lot of money.
Opinions of hundreds of travellers
Furthermore, a problem with printed guidebooks is that only one writer or a couple of writes decide which companies make it into the book. Their opinion can be ambiguous. While travelling though South America, I have heard stories about authors writing about places they have not even visited. Whereas on a website such as Tripadvisor.com travellers can read reviews and opinions of hundreds of travellers. There is a shift in what is important for the travel industry. Before they had to focus on getting into a popular guidebook to try increase sales but now ratings and reviews are popular as ever. It is not uncommon that a tour operator or restaurant owner will ask you to please write a review for them on Tripadvisor.
In my opinion, the answer is no. Printed travel guidebooks are no longer relevant. You can find so much more information on the internet. It is easy, cheap and the information is up-to-date. Why would you still carry guidebook kilo’s in your backpack?
Sources:
https://skift.com/2013/03/04/lonely-planet-and-the-rapid-decline-of-the-printed-guidebook/
http://www.goseewrite.com/2012/02/guidebooks-overrated-travel-resources/
Dear Orla, thank you for your blog! I myself hope that travel books will not dissapear – at least not for the moment! For one, when I travel abroad, I often do not have a working internet connection, thus I could not look up stuff when I might need it. That is where a travel book comes in handy: I can take the book, and quickly look through it to see if there is anything nice.
Secondly, when travelling, you often take a plane to a far destination. During this time in the plane, I enjoy reading my travel book, see what notes I made (I believe the advantage of travel books is that you can make notes in them and remind yourself what you would like to see), and get excited about arriving at my destination.
Thus, I believe it is nice to have both: my travel guidebook (printed) to read, make notes and use as a guide, and the internet, to look up additional stuff, recommendations and whether the thing I’d like to see still does exist.
Thanks for your comment Ananda! I agree there are still some advantages of printed guidebooks as opposed to the internet. However, you could also download a guidebook and have offline access to it. Also, there are many places where you can find WIFI to quickly look up some information, but if you are in a remote area a printed guidebook can come in quite handy. I also like the idea of making notes, it brings more life to the books. Furthermore, it is nice to have the guidebooks on your bookshelf at home as a memory of the places you have visited.
Hi Orla, nice article!
I believe the question shouldn’t be why would people still carry heavy travel guides but rather how the internet will provide the quality and consistency that was typical of guides such as Lonely Planet. Many apps are flourishing in the market and several editors of traditional guides are now testing online (paying) versions of their recommendations with little success. These apps are very much the digital version of the traditional guides and do not disrupt in themselves the previous business model; writers suggest places based on the destination with comments and rankings, everything being available from your smartphone.
What will be interesting to see in the future is how free content, provided by people like you and me on websites such as TripAdvisor can be sorted and digested into an intuitive and attractive format. It remains to be seen if we will be able to build the Wikipedia of the travel guide and how this will enact…
Thank you Maxime! I also think that editors of traditional travel guides have missed the boat for going digital. It is one thing to provide the information they have in printed books to an online platform but more important is how they will compete with websites as Tripadvisor.com where a lot of interaction between travellers takes place. Furthermore, I like your thought on the Wikipedia of the travel guide. It would be great to access all travel information in a sorted and organised way. There are so many apps and websites at the moment providing travel information, sometimes it can be quite a search to find the information you are looking for.
Hi Orla, thanks for sharing your thoughts on the development of travelguides. While I basically agree with all the downsides you mention about printed travel books, I would never want to miss a printed guide for a larger trip though. If it’s just a weekend trip, the cost of actually buying a book normally outweighs its benefits to me. But for a larger trip, I think there is one very large advantage of having one printed travel guide with me: the lower cost of searching for information. I wouldn’t normally use that book for hostel recommendations (using comparison portals on the internet normally rather quickly tells me where I want to sleep), but I like to have all the information about what to see where in one place, preferably with suggested travel routes. Using web sites like tripadvisor or just generally searching the web for blog posts about my destination is certainly possible – it’s just way too time-consuming to decide between the endless possibilites and different recommendations online while I’m abroad and just want to see and do stuff. Therefore, I like to invest some time upfront before starting my travels to find out which guide book would probably suit my tastes best – and then take this one with me and use it as one trusted source of information what to do while I’m on the road.
You said that for this I could also just download a digital version of a guidebook. I’ve tried using guide books on my Kindle and that really doesn’t work for me. It’s just way too difficult to jump back and forth between different parts of the book.
By the way: If you like researching your travel information on the web, a travel wikipedia already exists: http://wikitravel.org/en/Main_Page 😉
Thanks for your reply Julia! I never knew that this page existed, thank you for bringing it to my attention. I can imagine if you are used to a printed book that it is difficult to switch to a digital version. However, I found the table of contents in a digital book very convenient as it directly takes you to the pages when you click on a topic. I can also relate to your thoughts on why you would still use a printed book.