Types of Travel Guide #2: Side Trip Travel Guide

Types of Travel Guide No 2 Side Trip Travel Guide How to Write and Self-publish a travel guide by Jay Artale

All about The Side Trip Travel Guide

In this article we’re going to look at the definition of a Side Trip travel guide, and look at some example of some published guides.

Definition of a Side Trip Travel Guide

A Side Trip Travel Guide is a variation of a destination travel guide, but rather than featuring a major destination it covers a secondary destination that can be reached by taking a side-trip from a major destination.

Side trip guides are great for leisure or business travellers who have limited time available. Side Trips can usually be done in a day or less, and because time is of the essence, details about transportation, opening times and admission fees are highly relevant.

The side trip travel guides spins off a more well-known destination, and puts a new spin on all of the possible travel opportunities within easy reach of a popular major destination.

If you’re apprehensive about writing an in-depth destination travel guide, a side-trip guide is a good option. This format allows you to dip your toe in the travel guide writing waters. It may be the catalyst for writing a fully fledged guidebook, but if side-trip guides fit your writing style and attention span, then you’ve just discovered a marketable niche.

Here’s a couple of examples of Side Trip Travel Guides from Amazon:

Fodor’s Hong Kong: with a Side Trip to Macau
Fodor’s Buenos Aires: with Side Trips to Iguazú Falls, Gaucho Country & Uruguay
Fodor’s Seattle, 5th Edition: with Side Trips to the San Juan Islands, Mt. Rainier, and Olympic National Park

Fodor’s Hong Kong	Fodor’s Buenos Aires	Fodor’s Seattle

Considerations When Planning a Side Trip Guide

If you have an in-depth knowledge of a specific destination, you could create a series of side trip travel guides that could be sold and marketed separately as individual guides in a series, or sold together as a box set or bundle deal.

Paris Day Trips: Second-hand Markets on the outskirts
Paris Day Trips: Eat Cake at the Château de Versailles
Paris Day Trips: Forget Paris and Remember Normandy D-Day Battlefields
Paris Day Trips: Wine-Tasting Trips to the Champagne Region from Paris
Paris Day Trips: Giverny, Tread lightly in Monet’s footsteps

These guides are targeted at travelers with specific areas of interest and could be used in tandem with a mainstream destination travel guide for Paris. This means you don’t have to go head-to-head with major publishers to secure your slice of the travel guide market; it’s much easier to identify and exploit a gap in the marketplace, using your local area knowledge and passion for a specific topic.

Side trip travel guides don’t have to be about just one destination, they could also be about a particular special interest.

Want to learn about the other types of travel guides? Here’s the full list of this article series:

In addition to these articles, I also wrote the following articles about writing a Local Travel Guide (which is a sub-genre of special interest travel guides):

Want to know how to write a Side Trip #travelguide? Here's some tips. #amwriting Click To Tweet

If you’re a travel blogger who wants to turn their travel blog into an ebook or paperback destination guide, leave me a comment below.