Since starting my How to Write a Travel Guide series I’ve been doing qualitative research to find out what type of travel guides different people use. This latest input is from Chelsea Nielsen, an American Road Trip Planner.

Guest Post: Chelsea Nielsen

American Road Trip Planner

I use Simbi to promote my travel and itinerary skills as planning trips for others is a genuine passion of mine. Truth be told, I also enjoy it because I get to live vicariously as I imagine you bobbing across the country visiting all the sweet spots there are to enjoy here in America. As pretentious as it might sound, the three years I spent as a tour guide really made me feel like an ambassador for my country. The people who came on my trips had saved up thousands of dollars up to visit America over who knows how many years and I did my best to make the experience unforgettable and authentic. I wouldn’t trade one minute of those times no matter how exhausting they were living out of a van!

I’m mostly a roadtripper, love getting out and camping all across America in particular but I also travel internationally on a low to moderate budget as often as I can.

U.S. Travel Guides

For inside the US, roadtrippers.com has been among my favorite resources. It’s basically an extension of Google Maps that highlights attractions along the route you are taking. Users contribute reviews of each place and rate it so you can see at a glance how popular something is and get a feel for the vibe. It’s practical for inside of cities too when you want to read reviews of notorious pubs or highlights and decide if they’re worth visiting. To be fair, the app is only really useful a few days out becauses trying to create and save itineraries is a huge debacle despite the website’s insistence that it’s easy. Whoever designed the application is an IT criminal so you can’t really store road trip itineraries virtually as intended, which is a bummer.

I use this website a lot in tandem with Google Assistant and History Here. I allow Google Assistant or Google Now pretty much unlimited access to my personal data and user information and in exchange the app will suggest local food joints I might like or points of interest that occasionally intrigue me.

History here just brings up historically relevant information about what’s near you. It’s a fun app that tells you local history that there’s probably not a placard for anywhere. All useful applications when you’re mid journey.

I also want to mention an app called Just Ahead guides. It’s an application that you download onto your phone while you have wifi and it downloads an audio tour that syncs with your GPS so as your driving through a place it pops up with relevant fun facts and local lore as well as information about geology, wildlife, etc. Right now the app is only in the US and mostly in National Parks but they have a few other good guided tours outside of the parks like the I-15 Vegas to LA tour. The only downside is that, even though each audio tour costs individually, they must be partially subsidized by local attractions because the thing encourages you to go to every darn piddly attraction even if they’re only so-so and it fails to mention their cost on the audio tour.

Worldwide Travel

For traveling abroad, I am a sucker for a good Lonely Planet or Fodor’s guide. The photos are of course helpful but I’m much more interested in the literature. I never spring for the newest version, I always grab them at used book stores or even thrift stores because realistically, not too much of the information has changed in a few short years. I like them because they get into the “mood” of places, It gets me amped for the actual destination.

While traveling in Japan recently I also realized Google PlayBooks also has some free travel guides from time to time that I could keep digitally during my travels so I didn’t have to tote the guidebook everywhere and they are more up to date then the aforementioned thriftstore lonely planets.

Lastly, I’ve recently started using Instagram in conjunction with other resources to find places to go. I started looking at tags or accounts that were focused around my upcoming destinations and when I saw pictures that really intrigued me I followed the link to the location. It has been helpful when coming up with ideas about where to go but also, what to look out for specifically while I’m there. For example, if there’s a bunch of pictures of people with delicious donuts in Austin I would try and find the donut shop and go there on vacation.

Do you use a combination of travel apps and travel guides when planning your trips or vacations? Or do you use a single source of information?

Read more articles in my How to Write a Travel Guide Series

I’m putting the finishing touches on my How to Write and Self-Publish a Travel Guide Series, which details a step by step approach for writing and producing your own travel guide. It’s part of a four-part series aimed at helping travel bloggers achieve passive income based on their passions and existing content.

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