We all have our travel guides of choice. These books are filled with helpful info and recommendations, but they are limited in two ways. 1) They contain a lot of commentary and suggestions that are not of interest to me or you or whomever, and 2) Aside from listing recurring events, festivals and the like, they do not provide timely updates of what is on the calendar when you’re in a particular place.
It’s a nuisance to slog through the irrelevant pages in those books, and it’s a time drain to scour the local papers and websites to find out what’s going on.
Why not start a company that offers customized just-in-time travel guides? One would complete an online questionnaire detailing one’s general interests (e.g., art museums, hiking, cultural history) and specific goals for a given destination (e.g., exploring the Cape Town jazz scene, watching live rugby). The customer would also enter his or her travel dates. Then the knowledgeable, plugged-in staff would compile a concise guide that is tailored to the traveler’s tastes and that lists events and activities that will be on offer. It could be sent via email or mailed to one’s hotel.
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Fantastic idea. Best to have looseleaf pages so you can just take what you need on day trips. I have memories of my mom tearing apart travel guides so she didn't have to carry around a heavy book.
Great idea. Perhaps content could also be downloaded to cellphone/PDA/MP3 player? Giving credit to Deborah Chin for the idea, music could be added to listen to as you visit certain sites, perhaps by musicians or other famous people similar to the mixes that iTunes promotes. Also, with small printing presses that can print one book or large pamphlet, perhaps you could have your personal travel guide printed up and mailed to you in advance so you could look at it in hard copy on the plane or share more easily with others (there's still something nice to having something to hold in your hand).
I like the idea but if people's choices are constrained, and we're working with a website, having a staff compile a custom built travelbook for an individual traveler seems very resource intensive and wouldn't scale well. Why not build an automated platform that works with a detailed calendar and travel database that could compile a 5-10 page PDF document customized to you that you could print? You could monetize with printed advertisements in the PDF document.