Our currently featured Jauntsetter of the Week is Meg Nesterov (at least until this afternoon, when our new issue goes up on the site), one of our favorite travel publicists and writers.
Because of her line of work and her passion for jetsetting around the world, Meg has taken some of the most ambitious and interesting trips of anyone we know (the last place she went was Cartagena). Luckily for us, she's sharing all her best travel planning tips with our readers in her super helpful guest blog post, below.
By the way, we view Meg as an early adopter of all things travel and digital - in her list, you'll find an impressive mix of the internet's latest applications, including ideas on how to use Twitter and Lonely Planet's very cool "Pick and Mix" feature.
All in all, we heavily encourage you to take the time to read Meg's generous advice on how to design the perfect holiday away. And as always, we encourage you to share your own thoughts the best way to travel plan in our comment section below.
Lastly, a big thanks goes out to Meg for taking the time to write up her recommendations for jauntsetter! We'll be using lots of them in the very near future.
xo,
your jauntsetter team
_____________________________________
Part of what I love most about traveling is the anticipation, the research, and the planning. Nothing can really go wrong before departure and your destination can be exactly as fantastic as you imagine it will be, before the reality of jet lag, delays, and awful hotel rooms sets in. With an abundance of new travel tools, there are even more ways to gather information and recommendations. In my work, I spend a lot of time checking out new travel resources and media; here are a few of my favorites.
- Newspaper articles: While I love Condé Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, and National Geographic Traveler, newspaper articles are often more current and accessible than the big travel glossies, who are usually writing for a more affluent (read: spendy) audience. Most major newspapers have archived their travel sections online, I check The New York Times, The Washington Post, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, and USA Today before any trip for features and destination lists. Many newspaper websites also have interactive slideshows, videos and maps online.
- Email writers: Once you find a helpful article, email the writer for more tips. Most newspapers make it pretty easy to email staff writers or comment on blogs. I've yet to hear of a writer who didn't like to be contacted about their work, especially if you found it helpful or enjoyable! I went to Nicaragua a few years ago after being inspired by an LA Times article and got even more great information from the writer that didn’t make the original piece.
- Search photos: Take TripAdvisor reviews with a massive grain of salt; one woman’s “convenient located” might mean “taxis are a necessity to get anywhere.” The Traveler Photos on each hotel's TripAdvisor page can be a more objective source and can tell a lot more than the hotel's website or anyone's review. You can actually see what the rooms look like, how far the beach is from the hotel, how the scaffolding might obstruct views, etc. Flickr and Webshots are also great sources for hotel and destination photos.
- Beyond Google basic: Everyone uses Google to search for information and Maps for directions, but be sure to use all of the features. For trip planning, I find searching News and then Blogs is really helpful in finding individual people's trip recaps and photos that don't show up on a broader web search, Picasa for more photos and You Tube for videos, and Docs to keep track of expenses and notes.
- Twitter: There's been some recent debate in the travel media on the usefulness of Twitter and whether you should tweet on the road. I personally find it a valuable resource and a way to keep in touch, like a notepad that anyone in the world can read. Love it or hate it, Twitter can be a great, real-time resource for travel information. You can use it to ask for restaurant recommendations, follow tourist boards, travel writers, and local residents. In an ideal world, you would ask your cab driver or fellow bus passenger for the best arepas, but language and cultural barriers can make this difficult, Twitter can give you access to other travelers' advice quickly. Find good travel Twitter guidance from Condé Nast Traveler's Wendy Perrin, Johnny Jet, and the Travel Channel's World Hum blog (though I'm slightly biased, quoted in the last article as @thenotoriousmeg).
- New guidebook options: Don't forget the traditional, tried-and-true guidebooks as a source, particularly for maps, background, and basic tourist information. Frommer's is the only company to include all their content online and the writers have a distinct voice. LUXE City Guides have a cute and convenient format, online updates, and use only resident editors (disclaimer: they have been a client of mine, but I still vouch for their sass and authority!). Lonely Planet has just put out a cool new feature: Pick & Mix, so you can buy just a chapter of a guidebook rather than the whole thing, very useful if you are only visiting a small piece of a large country. You can order guidebooks on SwapSimple.com and PaperBackSwap.com for almost free, and list your used books after your trip and trade for other books, rather than try to sell them for pennies on half.com or a local bookstore. Try to choose the most recently published books for the most current information.
- Non-guidebook books: A good travelogue/memoir or even a novel can be better than a guidebook, giving a sense of place and context. For an Ireland trip, I loved McCarthy's Bar and Marian Keyes' novels. Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories of The City is amazingly evocative of Turkey and you can't go to Colombia without Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Idlewild Books makes it easy to find more fodder and inspiration for a trip.
0 comments