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I was just catching up on my blog reading which has been neglected this past week when I just found out about a great new service called Offbeat Guides. I was surprised by a lot of the negative comments in the TechCrunch post, but I agree with the one commenter who questionned how much travelling those people do.

I don’t consider myself a jet setter world traveler by any stretch, but 2007 saw me on 4 different continents so I’m no homebody either. And I have to say that the traveler in me see this as an exciting product, and more than an exciting product I see a vision of what travel guides should be.

One big problem with travel guides is that they are basically out of date when you buy them, and to really plan a trip you have to spend the time reading the out of date travel guide and then spend the time scouring the internet for some updated current information. And that is basically what I ended up doing a lot during my trip to SE Asia. For a longer trip especially, where you are making up your trip as you go along, having the ability to instantly print off a guide like that would save so much time. I’d rather pay $9 and print out a PDF at a net cafe on an island in Thailand than have to spend a few hours searching wikitravel and other sites to figure out what there is to see and do in the next place I’ve decided to visit. That way I can spend less time on a computer and more time on the beach. And let’s face it, if I just wanted to spend time on a computer I could just stay home.

Another example was when reading another out of date travel guide I found out about some cool art museum in Geneva, Switzerland. Decided to hit it up the next day, only to get there and find it closed for renovations. Wasted the morning and then had to scramble to figure out what else was nearby that I’d like to check out. After that experience I’ve learned to try and google stuff the night before and try and find a website with updated operating hours for a place I want to check out. But internet isn’t always readily available and sometimes it’s really expensive and slow, and most of all sometimes in the evenings I Just want to relax and not be furiously trying to make sure my travel guide information is up to date.

Or there was the time I went to Bali. I had picked out a guesthouse recommended by my Lonely Planet guide in the town of Ubud. The guide said this guesthouse was very busy and full of travellers, which I thought was perfect because I was traveling alone and staying in a busy guesthouse is the best way to meet people. I got off the bus (at the wrong spot no less) and spent a grueling hour walking around the town with my heavy pack and trying to ignore local touts yelling ‘room here! room here!’ and trying to figure out the lay of the city and match it to my map and find the guesthouse. Eventually I walked for the second time by the place where it ought to be and asked someone only to be told the guesthouse had closed. At that point I walked down the street to some random guesthouse to inquire about a room, they showed me a lovely lovely one that was unfortunately out of my budget (awkward and embarrassing). Left and walked in to another random place where I ended up staying but being the only person there for the first night. A crappy experience that could have hopefully been avoided with an updated travel guide.

Another customization option that sounds great to me that was mentioned is special needs, for example if you’re a vegetarian. This is huge for me when I travel, travel guides pretty much never have much in the way of vegetarian restaurant suggestions and every time I travel I spend a good chunk of time on the internet researching restaurants to check out and looking on google maps to figure out how to get there. In fact this is something I’ve often thought there is a total lack of on the web, solid information on restaurants with vegetarian options. I don’t need to eat in strictly vegetarian restaurants when I travel, but I’ll definitely choose one with vegetarian options over one where I’ll be stuck eating a lame salad.

Anyway, it made my day to read about Offbeat Guides and watch the video interview with the founder (which I’d link to but in 5 second attention span couldn’t figure out how to link to on blip.tv). I love that people are coming up with awesome ideas and implementing them despite all the possibilities for failure. And I can’t wait to get my beta invite so I can check out the service myself.