Build Your Own Travel Guide

 When doing some research for some recent posts on Indianapolis, I came across a resource that I think has great potential for business and other travelers. It’s called Offbeat Guides. Still in beta, the site offers you the chance to build your own travel guide for any one of 30,000 cities.

You can test the site without signing up, by inputting your name, location, desired travel dates and destination, then within seconds (which is quite impressive on my temperamental ADSL connection) you get a guide covering most things you would want to know about an area. You get an introduction to the destination, with a bit of history, as well as information about traveling to the city and getting around when you are there.

Guide Layout

The chapter headings in the table of contents on the left take a no frills approach, allowing you to find the section you want quite easily. If you want to find out about sights, click on ‘see’; to find out about restaurants, click on ‘eat’ and you will get a snapshot of restaurants in different price ranges. There’s also detailed information on the city, the exchange rate, the weather and events that take place during your visit. I thought this was really useful.

Once your guide loads, you can delete any chapters you don’t need and customize chapters. If you are happy to read your guide on the web, then you don’t need to do any more. However, if you want to print it and take it with you, then you will have to pay either $9.95 for the PDF or $24.95 for a book.

How Did It Stack Up?

I was pleased to see that this guide listed some of the same attractions I listed in my Indianapolis layover post. I also checked out the information for my favorite Caribbean getaway, Barbados, and the information was solid and up to date.

I thought this was a great way to get a detailed guide for some of the world’s most popular destinations. Whether you are planning a business trip or a family holiday, you can find some great information on Offbeat Guides. Since the site owners have used top travel experts to source their information about the 1,000 top getaways, it’s hardly surprising.

Be Sociable, Share!

Tags: , ,

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 at 4:07 am and is filed under Travel Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments

  1. David Sifry Says:
    December 2nd, 2008 at 8:14 am

    Thanks for the kind words abut Offbeat Guides! We’re working hard to keep improving the site, the information in our guides, and add more customizability to the guides as well!

    Keep up the great blogging!

    Dave

  2. Mark Evans Says:
    December 2nd, 2008 at 10:36 am

    Another way to build a personalize travel guide is by using PlanetEye, an online travel planning service. It features a tool called the Travel Pack that lets you collect interesting places (hotels, restaurants, attractions and activities) that you discover on PlanetEye. It also features personalized recommendations so make it easier to discover new places.

    Mark

  3. Lifecruiser Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 9:45 am

    I have to check it up further, though I always seem to miss some features in every similar site… (oh, I’m so greedy ;-)