The next chapter in guidebooks: the Web

TRAVEL websites are evolving with the times.

The sites, usually static overviews of destinations, are getting a new twist. Distinguished travel guidebook writers are presenting information about their geographical specialties directly on the Internet. And they’re passing along comments on issues of the day.

The initial results are so promising that more travel writers might be tempted to do the same.

Today, I’ll focus on one of these new sites.

Written and updated by Tom Brosnahan, www.turkeytravelplanner.com is the major initial effort. Brosnahan is a former resident of Turkey who, for the last 30 years, has written one lengthy guidebook after another about that inexpensive, exotic but friendly-to-the-West nation. Some of his books have totaled 800 pages or more.

Turkey Travel Planner differs from those books in several important ways:

First, it is updated daily, even hourly, and thus continually adds new developments, insights and listings, or else modifies items that have changed.

It is heavily illustrated in a way that printed travel guides usually aren’t. It has message boards and forums, in which users of the site add their comments and inquiries about Turkey, all under the guidance and tutelage of Brosnahan, who appends his comments to the bottom of a user’s comment.

It is full of cultural and historical information, not just the practical details of securing lodgings, meals and transportation.

But most important, it is organized not in the linear fashion of most travel guidebooks (many of which are structured geographically, dealing successively with different towns and itineraries), but in terms of the basic questions that most prospective travelers will ask in advance of a trip to Turkey: where to go, when to go, where to stay, what it costs and how to get around.

In using the 1,400-page site, readers proceed intuitively from one topical breakdown to another, going directly to the information they seek.

It has all the advantages of a well-organized website, and although travelers might still elect to carry a guidebook on their trips, they can use the new, electronic travel guide to make preparations.

Brosnahan has followed his Turkey Travel Planner with the website www.newenglandtravelplanner.com.

And one of his associates, Caribbean guidebook writer M. Timothy O’Keefe, is operating a similar site at guidetocaribbeanvacations.com. O’Keefe’s blog includes thumbnail sketches of each island with history and an overview of major activities.

For instructions on how to create a travel site about a destination with which you are intimately familiar, you can access Brosnahan’s www.infoexchange.com, which offers assistance.

How does Brosnahan earn income from the operation of his site? In a thin vertical column alongside the main text, he displays discreet, Google-style ads, and also accepts sponsored pages from Turkish travel interests, but only on the condition that they be clearly identified as sponsored pages and not his work.

And he offers telephone consultations with users seeking additional advice ($25 for about 20 minutes, a fee scheduled to increase in the weeks ahead).

“They sometimes want confirmation that an itinerary they’ve planned makes sense,” he said, in response to my puzzlement as to why a personal consultation would be needed in view of the massive detail of the website.

Take a look at Turkey Travel Planner, and you might see the forerunner of a great many new travel sites.