3 Tips for Crafting a Helpful Travel Guide
I’ve enjoyed organizing and putting together travel guides for years because I’ve found the process to be such a fun, simple and helpful method to share my experiences from new places, in a way that could enhance someone else’s travels in the future! To better other’s experiences by sharing our own is the most magical part of it all for me.
The biggest thing to remeber when it comes to making travel guides: you don’t have to be a blogger to log and create your own!!
I’ve used shared google docs in the past, organized pdfs to send via text, I’ve even just transferred a notes page directly from my phone - to pass on useful travel info/recommendations to friends and family. The process in which I use to record and organize my info before, during and after a trip is what I wanted to shed more light on today. If you’re wanting to put together a guide to share regarding your next trip, I hope you’ll find this helpful!
Here they are, my friend:
3 Tips for Crafting a Helpful Travel Guide
Me, chillin’ in an Airbnb in Lisbon, Portugal.
1. I highly recommend making a list of general advice as you go (in addition to your list of locations). Just jot down brief notes in the moment something interesting or unexpected occurs to you on your trip - so that you can learn from experiences and be able to give practical advice to others in the future. What I mean is this: if you perhaps miss a train because the metro was more confusing than you thought… make a note of that for a future tip. Miss out on an attraction because the tickets were sold out well before you got there? Great thing to record and give people a heads up about before they embark on that experience themselves. Does a city allow for Lyft services, is tip built into a check, was the restaurant hard to find, etc. - all these things are valuable to take note of as you go if you want to craft the most helpful guide when you get home.
Recommending a restaurant that you loved, and then mentioning that it needs a reservation 2 days in advance makes your tip that much more useful to the person you’ve sent it to!
(Of course, this shouldn’t be a lengthy or time consuming thing to do, but the act of jotting quick mental notes down while you’re on the go, will keep the advice fresh and relevant, to avoid getting home and potentially forgetting.)
2. When you’re planning ahead, are on the go, or when you return home - it helps to organize and present your list of tips and recommendations by category! I like to keep my list of general advice surrounding the city in its own category, and then break down all my other recommendations by categories like: food (specifically: breakfast, lunch, dinner, sweets, etc.), drinks (coffee, alcohol), places to stay/locations in the city (specific neighborhood, borough, town, etc)., sights to see, what to pack, and so on. I personally categorize these spots as I travel in a notes folder, checking off the places that we actually visited (and any helpful details about them) as we go along. See my Barcelona Guide to check out how I laid all these categories and lists out in a post!
3. Consider making use of Google maps and your ability to pin locations! You could map out spots that you’d like to visit before you go on your trip, the places that you actually check out as you go, or all the locations that you saw once you get home! Google maps is such a helpful tool that makes it super easy to reference locations in a city and associate proximity of one spot to another as you plan or experience your trip. See an example of one that I made for my Asheville Travel Guide HERE!
Like I mentioned, once you get home, and your guide/map is ready to put together, you can use a shareable google doc, blog post, note, or pdf. guide to pass all your organized travel info along to your friends, family or social following from there!!
Happy traveling!! 💛
