How to write a travel guide

If you want to write a travel guide, consider the tasks that are involved in it. This work includes the investigative trip. Its objective is to explore a specific area to find the best deals, new addresses and must-sees. This means testing hotels, restaurants, museums, parks and other natural places. It looks like a dream job on paper, but it’s not as simple as it seems and certainly not an easy life. Here are some tips on how to write a travel guide.

1) When you write a travel guide: do some desk work

Before packing your bags, you have to do a lot of research to make sure you already have the most important information about current events, trends and opinions. When you finally leave, take a notebook and a laptop with you. Check every detail of the place you’re staying at/ dining, in order to gather new information. This is by no means a vacation as you are constantly on the move.

2) Be local

Another very important factor in the sustainability movement is that you learn the best way to be sustainable by choosing where and what to buy. This is why your guide should have a focus on this exact issue. In your travel guide avoid large fast-food chains, large supermarket chains and non-local businesses.

3) When you write a travel guide: be a journalist

Take notes along the way, writing down impressions, details, and tips on how best to get there, in order to make it easier for the reader when they read the guidebook. When it’s time to write, in front of your desk and your computer, be concise, direct and informative. Have a list of banned words that sound too much like travel guides, and you don’t even know what they mean anymore: picturesque is the best example.

4) Be visual

Images are generally processed more quickly than words. Despite this premise, the usual approach is to choose images that complement the text. Why not reverse this practice? What if we start with a photo and then create a story around it? By visually titillating the reader, you pique their curiosity and make them want to read the sections associated with the photo.

Writing a travel guide is not only a dream come true, where work is synonymous with an eternal vacation. It’s more like another job for which you have to make sacrifices and work very hard.