A thread to recommend "traditional" information sources and services for tourists

[HauntedBungalow]

Having used the internet for trip planning for years I am increasingly frustrated at AI slop, influencers pushing shady third parties etc so have gone back to basics for my last few holidays and it's so much better. I can recommend DK eyewitness guides and city guides - information is organised into manageable sections, there are pullout waterproof maps and all the key logistical/safety content is presented within a couple of pages. I can also recommend specifically for Paris an organisation called Paris Greeters which is a free personal guide service - it matches you to people who volunteer to show tourists around the city and each volunteer has several areas of expertise/types of walking tour. greeters.paris/

I'd be really interested in hearing similar recommendations.

I did a lot of travelling in the 70s and 80s when you relied on maps and guidebooks. Arriving in a strange town and going to a hotel / guest house reception and asking for a room. I don't think I'd want to go back to all that!
If you can recognise AI slop, influencers pushing shady third parties etc then you can filter it out.

Yes lol good point, I wouldn't like to go back to the days of getting to a hostel and finding out it closed two years previously! I remember the Let's Go series was particularly bad for this - we ended up calling it Let's Stay At Home.

But with a lot of these listing sites, booking and airb (trying to avoid putting the full names as I don't want to enable links) there's twice as much useless shit on there as there ever was in rough guide; they're not vetted at all so any pervert with a futon can list himself as a holiday let.

For hotels if I'm staying in one place I just book a package. Jet2 for example are always decent places and you get the full protection if anything goes tits up. If moving around I Google hotels in the area, specifically set the filter to hotels but still find that the futon merchants creep in, plus there's no filter for 24 hour reception desk so you do get listings for hotels that aren't really hotels, same as on booking. Has anyone found a way around this?

Check for star ratings maybe?

I like the Rough Guides, but don't use them for hotel or restaurant recommendations. I use Trip Advisor with caution, and hope to weed out the rave reviews from the owner's Mum & the bad ones from a business rival.

We used to book the various holiday elements separately, but lost a lot of money during Covid because of pre-paid non-refundable costs. And the money we did get back took many months of persistence.
Now, we use package tour companies that specialise in e.g. Jordan, South America etc . They can build a customised itinerary as well as provide a package, and so long as they are ABTA & ATOL our money is fully protected.

I pick up travel brochures to work out routes and get hotel suggestions, look at the Rough Guide and Lonely Planet, go to official tourist info websites, and look up bloggers that have done similar trips.

I generally book through hotels.com or direct with the hotel, using reviews as a guide. I avoid using booking.com, too many ‘private hosts’.

The Man In Seat 61 is good for train travel tips, and if you’re into caminos then Stingy Nomads is good.

When I go to a new place I always make a point of visiting the Tourist Information office at the beginning of the trip to pick up a paper map and browse the leaflets.

I sometimes also just follow the tourist signs around cities and rarely look up recommended restaurants.

I don't see the point of trekking across a city to find a particular restaurant when you'll probably pass dozens of lovely ones on the way. I generally just look around and go on instinct, which almost always serves me well.

@HauntedBungalow how about just using Google maps? Find a location roughly where you want to stay and search for hotels. You'd have to look at each one individually but there would be no agency leaping in.
I used a tour operator like Jet2 for most things, my specifications are quite narrow and booking separately has only been cheaper once in about 30 years. For a city break or tour I just use Google maps

Sorry yes when I say I use Google I mean I do use the map function but although I can filter by hotel type and star rating and some facilities, the one facility it doesn't filter for is reception desk so you can end up with places that aren't really hotels - it's important to me to stay in places that are fully staffed, not just partly serviced. Yes it becomes a little more obvious on reading reviews whether a place actually has staff and a working desk, but that's more time consuming. Star rating isn't relevant to that ime, I've seen self catered holiday lets with star ratings and google doesn't distinguish.

I don't think I've ever seen 'not hotels' pretending to be proper hotels, can you give an example of what you mean?

I do know what she means....

Down at the cheaper end of the booking dot com listings you can find quite a few accommodation options that are a little evasive about what they actually are. More places advertising themselves as "guest houses", when what they actually are are shared properties with various rooms rented out, a key code to get in and no staff on the premises.

But you can avoid these places with a bit of common sense and by reading the reviews thoroughly.

I have used booking dot com a lot, and have had one dodgy experience, which I think was an Italian accommodation provider trying to pull a fast one. Guess what, I'd skimmed over the fact that the place only had one review- and that a suspiciously gushing one!

If you want a proper reception (which is a fair request), only book with a hotel that has a physical photo of the reception, cross referenced with reviews that say something like "Great service at reception!"

Otherwise, I recommend the Rough Guides and the now- defunct Cadogan Guides for giving you the flavour of a place and for fresh ideas on where to go. I think their hotel recommendation pages are rapidly becoming obsolete though- the information will never be as current as what you can find online.

Although I'm a Luddite, I have found Google Maps great for a) finding cheap campsites, and b) showing attractions I may not have thought of. You can be browsing an area and have the most unexpected things pop up! It's how I found the Voodoo Museum in Strasbourg for example, which was excellent.

Searching the Guardian's old travel articles can be good.

Seconding The Man in Seat 61 if you're travelling by train.

@crackofdoom yes that's exactly the kind of thing I mean. Like you, the only way I've found to solve it is to read individual reviews and search for words like "key safe" but that takes time! It's not available as a filter option.

Rough Guides used to have quite long lists of accommodation - do they still? I realise they can't keep completely up to date.

I've always had wins when I've asked at the guesthouse I've stayed in for a recommendation in the next city I'm visiting. They all have a network, and if the place you're staying is quite nice, I've found the place they recommend also usually quite nice too. I've never had a dud or a place I've felt unsafe in this way.

They do, but obviously they're less adaptable to your individual needs, rather than more so.

For example, I bought an up to date Rough Guide to Romania and Bulgaria, and did look up some of their hostel recommendations for a town we visited. But they were either unable to accommodate the DC, or were a lot more expensive than the choices Booking.com offered me. It was also a lot more time consuming looking up each website and searching for prices individually.

We ended up staying in a lovely guest studio with good reviews- including the magic phrase "X and Y were lovely hosts and so helpful" or iterations thereof. That indicated that the owners were there to welcome us with a proper key and orientation etc.

On the same trip, we also stayed in a couple of those kind of budget apartments where you get texted a key code an hour before check in, and although nothing went actually wrong, I have vowed to avoid them in future because it easily could, and also because they're often the kinds of small flats or studios that local people should be living in.

I am staying in a lovely eco village in Italy in April though- and that just popped up when I was idly looking at the Google map for the area! I then visited their website and emailed them.

I booked a Lonely Planet hotel recommendation and it was the most amazing place in the perfect location, so I’d say they’re definitely worth checking out.