Review: Not For Tourists New York iPhone app

by Mike Barish on

For those of you familiar with Not for Tourists books, you know that they are handy little guides designed to help locals (and visitors) discover new and interesting places that are oft-overlooked by the larger guidebook series out there. While their books are typically pocket-size and easy to carry, not everyone (especially actual locals) wants to always be toting a guidebook around with them. Sometimes you’re just out and about and have a specific need worth addressing. Whether it’s a place to buy a scarf because a cold spell caught you off guard or a strong need for a stiff drink after a long day, Not for Tourists books have always been useful. Now, however, they have an iPhone app for New York City that puts all the useful tips of their book right in your phone. I put the app to the test over the last few weeks. Since I live here, I’m very familiar with bars and restaurants in my neighborhood. However, I often need recommendations when I head to other parts of the city. I was curious to see if the Not for Tourist app would lead me astray or replace the friends I often call for suggestions when I head to other parts of town.When you open the app, you are presented with a list of neighborhoods. Rotate your iPhone into landscape and the list gives way to a map with neighborhoods clearly marked. Once you select a neighborhood, you are given a list of categories from which to choose. These include Top Picks, Restaurants, Nightlife, Shopping, Landmarks, Libraries and Museums. after choosing a category, a list of locations appears. From there, you can pick your poison and make your decisions.

The first thing I noticed about the Not for Tourists app is that it is probably more beneficial to a local than a tourist (even though many tourists love their actual guidebooks). Information is limited within the app. Summaries of bars and restaurants are often only one sentence. If you’ve heard of a place before or received a suggestion from a friend, the NFT app is a nice supplement, but it is not a robust primary source of information.

On a recent trip to TriBeCa, I was at a loss for where to go for a drink. Since the NFT app is broken down by neighborhood, I simply selected TriBeCa followed by Nightlife. I was then presented with a list of bars. Bars are categorized but, unlike the paper editions of the books, the app lacks a key to decipher the pictures. While I could figure out that a knife and fork meant that the bar served food, I was unsure about other icons.

You can search by name if you are looking for a specific location. I selected The Ear Inn, a bar with which I was somewhat familiar, to see what NFT had to say about it. The app included a one line synopsis and a lengthy description of the bar that was incredibly useful. Then I decided to select a bar with which I was completely unfamiliar. I tapped “Toad Hall” and was provided with a very basic description stating “Laid back vibe with SoHo locals.” Unlike the write-up for The Ear Inn, there was no additional information provided. As such, the app essentially told me that the bar existed and not much else.

This was the case for additional searches over the course of the next few weeks. Most listings had simple one sentence summaries that were not terribly descriptive.

If you are a fan of NFT guides, are familiar with their aesthetic and typically agree with their suggestions, then the app is significantly more useful than random Yelp or Google Places reviews. If you’ve never used NFT guides before, the app is certainly too vague to distinguish itself from other apps and online resources.

Overall, the Not for Tourist iPhone app is useful for New Yorkers who occasionally are flummoxed when they leave their comfort zones. For visitors, it could be a helpful supplement to a fuller guidebook, but probably wouldn’t replace the Not for Tourist paper edition, which contains much more information and is a richer resource. Considering how small the actual NFT book is, I’d be more apt to keep that in my bag than rely on the app, considering how inconsistent the information is on the phone.

Thankfully, Not for Tourists has kept the price low. The New York app costs just $2.99 (as do their apps for San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles and elsewhere) and is available in the App Store. If you don’t feel like carrying around a book, the apps could be useful.

Lonely Planet maps the future: a conversation with CEO Matt Goldberg

by Don George on

Matt Goldberg joined Lonely Planet as CEO in March 2009. Before joining Lonely Planet, he was senior vice president of digital strategy and operations for Dow Jones & Company in New York, where his responsibilities included leading business operations for The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. I spoke with him in November.

DG: Why did you move to Lonely Planet?

MG: First of all, to be selected to lead a company that was so important to me personally in my own travels and that plays such an important and meaningful role in the world by encouraging and empowering people to go out and experience the world, was nothing short of humbling. When I pinched myself and realized that I received the offer, there was no question in my mind that I would sell my house in the worst economic climate in history, pull my children out of school, and move 12,000 miles away — because to my mind, there is no company more deserving of its reputation than Lonely Planet. It’s going through an incredible period, like any content company in any category, and I’m passionate about one question: How do esteemed media brands, products and services make the successful transition through this period of extraordinary technological innovation? I have spent my career thinking about that question, and I am putting all of my energy into helping Lonely Planet make that transition successfully.

DG: Has your sense of Lonely Planet’s challenges evolved very dramatically since you joined the company?MG: Well, certainly you don’t really know until you become operational on a day-to-day basis what the challenges and opportunities are going to be. I have to say that I’ve been impressed with the number of opportunities. Our core publishing business remains profitable. And while the guidebook market as a whole has decreased, Lonely Planet has continued to invest in new products and really tried to drive innovation and new ways of working so that not only can we remain number one in the world in that core business, but we can extend our lead and grow share, which is what we’ve done in 33 out of the last 34 months.

DG: What would you say are the major innovations that Lonely Planet has introduced since you’ve been there?

MG: Lonely Planet has long thought is there a way of changing the way we gather, manage, access, and distribute content so that we can be more platform agnostic. We’ve finally cracked the code on that one and made the investment over the last 18 months where we can send an author into the field, give them the tools through a mobile device to upload their work immediately onto a platform that’s totally dynamic and can immediately be useful, whether we’re producing a book or programming a web site or delivering a digital app through a mobile channel or a tablet PC. I knew this was real when we introduced what we were doing to our authors, and we had Tony Wheeler sitting in a café in Melbourne actually using this technology to show how we could change the product in real time.

We now have the opportunity to organize ourselves as a business around that technology and be totally product development focused and serving travelers in a way that they’re already signaling to us they’re going to want to leverage our content in the future.

DG: How does this impact the traditional guidebook? You have a print book that was published let’s say a year ago. You have a user who bought it last month and they’re in the destination now. Are they able to access updated restaurant and hotel information, for example? How do you integrate what they have in their hand as the print product and the new information that has become available since that book was published?

MG: We continue to believe in the future of the book as a technology. It’s over 5 centuries old and has features that continue to remain valuable and useful to users today. We know that the future of the book is all about emerging form factors, the way that that book integrates with digital platforms, and the way that we as publishers sit in the middle of the content production process and offer useful curation and services. We’re spending a lot of time thinking about the integration of physical and digital products. . I think there are opportunities in the future that Lonely Planet will be best positioned to deliver. You can imagine using your Smartphone and taking a snapshot of an image in a book and that triggers the download of the freshest content onto your mobile device, which enables you to then leave the book in the hotel and use that mobile device to create a mashup with maps to navigate your experience in the destination. That future is here now and we are experimenting on those kinds of things. We will bring products and services to market that we think consumers will pull through.

DG: To my mind there are two intersections of challenges in guidebook publishing. One is the chronological challenge of when the research is done, when the book is written, when the book is printed, and when it gets onto bookstore shelves, which you’ve just addressed. The second is the emerging challenge of the whole expert vs. crowd-sourcing issue. How is Lonely Planet navigating that second challenge?

MG: We still believe in the value of expertise and we are totally committed to the partnership we have with our freelance authors. We also recognize the value of our community, because you only have to go on Thorn Tree to see how rich the dialogue there is, even on a very early web platform. And there’s no doubt that crowd-sourcing also has its place. So I think the question is to identify when each of those sources is most useful. Expertise is really helpful when you’re trying to sift through the noise – when you’re trying to offer a curated experience, when you’re trying to make trusted editorial selections and informed judgments. A community is really useful when you’re trying to get up-to-date questions answered. Crowd sourcing may be really useful for commodity content which you don’t want to spend trouble and effort to get, like a phone number, opening and closing hours, or an address. I think it’s our job as a company that brings all this together to determine which is most useful when. What I say to our authors is that I don’t think there’s ever been a more exciting time to be a content producer, as long as you embrace the 21st-century technologies and tools that are available.

DG: That leads to my next question: There’s the iconic traditional LP author who ventured out into the middle of nowhere and wrote the first books and then rewrote those books, and then there’s this emerging 21st-century person who’s agile with a video camera and an iPhone and is very technologically savvy. How much overlap is there between those two schools of authors?

MG: We’re learning that now, in the moment. And I’d just say that I’ve been impressed with the author body as a whole and their desire to embrace new ways of working. We recognize that we need to find ways to leverage the strengths of all our authors that we rate highly, and different authors will bring different skills to the table. Our job is to understand that and to do a good job mapping skill sets, capabilities and desires with products of the future that we’ll need. We will continue to need guidebooks in the future, just as we’ll need really creative mobile apps and interactive products and services. So I think there’s more room than ever for lots of different people to be engaged with content production and development at Lonely Planet.

DG: In my association with Lonely Planet there have always been two cultural challenges. On the one hand, there’s an Old LP mentality and a New LP mentality. And on the other hand, there’s an Australian mentality, an English mentality, and an American mentality. How do you as an American living in Australia, new to Lonely Planet but as someone who’s been using it for many years – how are you working with those challenges and bridging those cultural divides?

MG: Let me first say by way of context that it’s clear to me that Lonely Planet as an idea, and what it stands for at its heart, is bigger than any subculture or individual. It’s bigger than its founders. Lonely Planet is the way that we all connected to this thing that empowered us to have a remarkable individual experience. I had that first experience in 1994: I was in my mid-20s and I went away to Australia on my own. I didn’t know a single soul there and the first thing I did was to get that Lonely Planet guide. It was under my arm everywhere I went for that year and a half. It introduced me to places and people that I wouldn’t have otherwise had the idea to go meet. Ultimately it transformed me in some way. Everybody that connects with Lonely Planet – and we know there are hundreds of millions of them – has an experience like that one that they will never forget.

We stand for a broad idea that we can all believe in — travel. We can all connect to it very differently. Matt Goldberg who lived in New York and was working for the Wall Street Journal connects with it as deeply and meaningfully as Errol Hunt from New Zealand who has been an LP commissioning editor for many years and who has capabilities very different from my own on the editorial side. We both connect to travel just as deeply even though we come from two totally different worlds.

So I think if we stay true to that, you can bring this company together around a singular vision to produce amazing guides across all platforms – whether they be books, online, mobile devices — and in all geographies, whether in the English-speaking world or in any one of the other geographies that we’re excited about.

DG: What are your goals for the company in 2011?

MG: Our goals for the company are ambitious. We want to continue to support our core business and propel it forward through new product innovation and technology-enabled growth. We want to continue to experiment restlessly with new technologies and new platforms and serve new audiences that we know, when they find us, on whatever device, in whatever country, will love us because we share the same mindset. We want to focus on some new geographies, expand our relationships in China, enter the India market, and continue on our relentless pace expanding our share in the US; ultimately, we want to be the leader in the US. And finally, we want to work effectively with our shareholder, BBC Worldwide, to leverage their skill and expertise in areas where they can help us get going, like the magazine, which has been very successful, like television, where we’re making a real effort, like adjacencies that might take us into new spaces. They have shown their willingness to invest and their commitment to allow Lonely Planet to thrive based on its proud tradition. We need to continue to take advantage of that.

DG: What has been the greatest lesson that you’ve learned so far?

MG: Every media company in the world is playing in a landscape that’s as dynamic as we’ve ever seen. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that the pace of change is just increasing. The start-ups with easy access to capital, with open platforms where they can innovate rapidly and eat your lunch, with very few barriers to entry, have never been more dynamic. The lesson is that it’s hard to make this transition and follow consumers and be there where the innovators are. It’s going to take time and we need as leaders in these kinds of businesses to be bold, thoughtful, and patient. I’m only a year and a half in and of course I’d like to run really, really fast, and I think we need to be thoughtful about where we make our investments, how we mitigate risk, and how we ensure that we’re innovating and experimenting restlessly. I think that’s a lesson for not just Lonely Planet but anyone who’s working in this dynamic media space.

DG: Have the metrics of success changed in the time you’ve been at Lonely Planet because it’s such a dynamic industry?

MG: When you are innovating in your business, you can’t hold your innovation activity to the same standard of success or metrics as you hold your core business. You actually have to look at it differently. You need to give innovation more room to breathe, you need to allow failure to happen and develop that and kill ideas that aren’t getting pick-up. You have to seed early success, put additional resource into successful ventures and iterate rapidly, following the consumer or traveler along the way, because the consumer ultimately will tell you if you’ve been successful because they’ll be engaged with the product, which will ultimately yield revenue growth and profitability. But it is important to differentiate. So my answer is that in our core business, our success metrics haven’t changed that much. Where things have changed is how we think about the innovation, the emerging areas of our business. We’ve had both success and failure. But I’m very proud of our successes, including more than 5 million downloads of our mobile apps in the iPhone apps store. [Update: Lonely Planet just passed 7 million uploads as of early January 2011.]

We have been at the absolute forefront of technology as it relates to travel, starting with our app for the Beijing Olympics, when we introduced a Mandarin translation guide as a launch partner with Apple, continuing to our city guides, to being the first augmented reality travel app for the Android platform, to being the leader in the travel space for e-books across all platforms, from Kindle, where we were a global launch partner, through to iPad, where we were a launch partner for a completely new type of travel ebook for our Discover series that had touchscreen, color, and 3000 hyperlinks enabled, to most recently being a launch partner for NookColor. So we continue to invest in innovation.

And I have to say that I recognize that is the Lonely Planet DNA, going back to Tony Wheeler putting together a rudimentary desktop publishing system before it was recognized that that was the future, to that early web site and Thorn Tree and the way we engaged travelers to get user-generated information before anyone ever said UGC, to putting mobile apps out on the Palm Pilot in the 1990s. So I recognize that we are carrying on a proud tradition that really started with the people whose shoulders we stand on.

Photo of the Day (12.7.10)

by Stephen Greenwood on

I love travel gear shots. I’m always curious to know what people consider essential items & what tech gadgets people can’t live without on the road. This photo was taken in 2005 and at first glance, seemed pretty outdated.

These days, it’s rare to see a camera that shoots on DV tapes, a Powerbook, or an iPod without a touchscreen (gasp)! It just makes me wonder what we’ll consider outdated in 5 years from now – laptops? Full-sized SLR’s? Guide books / printed materials altogether?

This photo was taken in Canada by Flickr user Jon Rawlinson. Thanks for sharing what was in your bag Jon! If you’d like to share your travel essentials leave a comment below or take a quick photo and post it in our Flickr Group – we may just include it as our next Photo of the Day.

Ask Gadling: What do you do when your guidebook is wrong?

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Ever bought a guidebook and discovered when you arrived it was useless? Full of outdated maps and ho-hum restaurant picks, your guidebook is better suited for Grandma’s group tour than a grand night on the town.

Rest easy, mindful traveler. Rather than being something to worry about, discovering your guidebook is awful should actually be cause to celebrate. In fact, you might as well chuck that lousy thing out your hotel window.

Here’s the truth: for anyone looking to add a dose of spontaneity, authentic local culture and plain old randomness to their travels, going guidebook-free is a blessing in disguise. Still not convinced? In an era of ever-present Internet and cheap mobile phones, you’re never more than a step away from all the information you’ll ever need. Keep reading below for four ways to get rid of those guidebook woes, once-and-for-all.Enjoy the Randomness
Wait a second. An expert travel site is telling me to spend my hard-earned vacation wandering around aimlessly, with no plan whatsoever? Yes. Travel isn’t just about checking sights off a list. It’s about immersing yourself in an experience totally different than what you’re used to at home. The best way to do that is to lose the guidebook and get lost. Walk down a street you don’t recognize. Get on a city bus that you don’t know the destination. Talk to a random stranger. Do anything really. The point is that without a plan, you’re all the more likely to have rewarding, unexpected experiences. They might not end how you “planned” – but all the better.

Pull out your mobile phone
In an era of super-smart Internet-ready mobile phones, guidebooks aren’t just out of date: they’re downright obsolete. Whether you need the public transit schedule in San Francisco, are looking to track down some good Cuban food in Miami or want instant translations of a foreign language menu, a mobile phone with a data connection can likely find you the answer. From Augmented Reality to Location Services, mobile phones have become the new guidebook. Best of all, they’re a guidebook that fits comfortably in your pocket.

Ask a local
You won’t find the best tips for a destination in a guidebook. Instead, savvy travelers know to ask the locals. Even if you think you know your destination’s most important sites, locals will often suggest off-the-beaten activities and unexpected highlights that even the most detailed up-to-date guidebook would never find. What if you don’t know any locals in your destination? Not a problem. Either strike up a conversation when you arrive (don’t worry, they won’t bite) or use web tools like Twitter, Facebook or Couchsurfing to ask around for help. Thanks to the wonder of the Internet, you’ll have a local showing you around in no time.

Not loving your guidebook? Perhaps it’s time you gave it up. These days, with help from technology, local expertise and a little willingness to be surprised, traveling without it is easier and more enjoyable than you think.

[Photo by Flickr user Matt Murf]

How to decide if a tour is right for you

by Mike Barish on
For some travelers, the mere sight of a tour bus is enough to make them cringe. Heck, I don’t enjoy seeing large masses of humanity spilling out of a humongous vehicle and mucking up my “unique” travel experience. But that’s not to say that all tours are wastes of your time and money.

There are some phenomenal tour operators all over the world offering myriad types of guided excursions. Many are even geared towards seasoned travelers who don’t need their hands held the entire time. So, rather than discount all tours as wretched experiences best left to novices, spend more time finding a tour that meets your needs and you may be surprised to find that you, too, can enjoy a guided experience.

Finding a tour that matches your travel aesthetic is easier than you think. You simply need to ask a few important questions.

Do you know anyone who recommends this tour?
You can read reviews on sites like Trip Advisor and Yelp, but there’s no way to know for sure that you’ll share the same opinions as the commenters on those sites. But you know your friends. You trust them. Reach out to family, friends and colleagues to see if they can recommend tours before you book anything. Twitter and Facebook are great ways to crowdsource opinions from people you know and who know what you like.

Will the tour help with a language barrier?
Sure, you can point at menu items and gesticulate your way to the bathroom, but, at some point, your inability to speak the local language may inhibit your ability to see something that you truly want to visit. That’s why finding a reputable tour operator can become the difference between having the trip of your dreams and going home disappointed. Gadling’s Darren Murph has mentioned in the past how a tour in Central America was his favorite guided travel experience. One key reason was his guide’s ability to expedite his border crossing – something Darren would not have been able to do on his own. Darren told me that the tour “literally made the impossible, possible.”

Does the tour solve transportation problems?
In the developed world, even novice travelers feel comfortable renting a car and heading off on their own adventures. Sure, driving on the left may feel awkward at first, but awkward is better than dangerous. In the developing world, transportation can often be the single biggest challenge that you will face. Whether it’s because the roads are dangerous, difficult or non-existent, it’s perfectly respectable to prefer that someone else do the driving. Other times, a car is not even an option. Paying for the boats, camels and helicopters needed to reach a remote location can be prohibitively expensive. Booking yourself on a tour can mitigate that problem and cut your transportation costs immensely.

Does the tour operator share your ideals?
While traveling should expand our minds and challenge our beliefs, there may be nothing worse than being on a tour led by someone who operates their business in a way that truly offends your sensibilities. When Janelle Nanos, Special Projects Editor at National Geographic Traveler and Intelligent Travel, was planning a trip to Morocco, she sought out tour operators who shared her “same ideals about sustainable and authentic travel.” This is particularly important if you are seeking out cultural tourism. Forced cultural experiences can leave you feeling uncomfortable, which is a topic we have covered before on Gadling. Finding a tour that meshes with your ideals will prevent you from wanting to jump out of a moving bus at any point on the trip.

Does the tour offer more than your guidebook?
Sometimes wandering on your own and supplementing your own knowledge with a guidebook is all you need to immerse yourself in a place. However, guided tours can often provide a deeper understanding and local expertise that no amount of self-directed research could unveil. Gadling’s Tom Johansmeyer took a free walking tour in Reykjavik with a guide who predicted Iceland’s economic problems well in advance of the news hitting the front pages of newspapers around the world. Whether it’s an Art Deco tour in Miami, a private tour of the Vatican or a prophetic walk around Reykjavik, a guide will be able to tell you much more than a book or pamphlet.

Who is the guide?
Darren Murph’s Central American tour was led by the owners of the tour company. Small operations like that have more of a vested interest in creating a positive experience because they can’t afford to develop a bad reputation. Massive tour operators with transient, part-time staff may be cheaper, but they probably don’t care about their product as much as a small business owner does.

How big is the tour group?
When it comes to tours, size matters. Small groups allow for personalized and intimate experiences. Large groups keep costs down and allow you to meet more people. Janelle Nanos wanted to avoid being part of a herd. She chose an operator in Morocco who kept the groups small. “That meant no big buses, no crowded tourist restaurants, no walking through a city like a group of four-year-old soccer wannabees following a ball.” Know your preference before you put down that non-refundable deposit.

How much free time will you have?
Even travelers who always prefer tours to independent travel want some time to themselves. Before booking yourself on a tour, find out how much free time you’ll have to explore neighborhoods, wander through ruins or just have a meal by yourself. Local knowledge and expertise are wonderful things, but so are customizing your trip and hearing your own thoughts.

Where will you be staying?
If your tour will involve overnight stays, investigate the level of accommodations. If you want to rough it, be sure that you won’t be at hotel chains every night. If hostels aren’t your thing, avoid finding yourself on a budget tour.

Many of you will continue to eschew tours and that’s certainly your prerogative. But, that may not always be an option. Some parks and historical sites only allow people to visit if they are part of a licensed tour group. Gadling’s Kraig Becker noted that hiking the Inca Trail is limited to those who are members of a guided tour. There are plenty of places with similar policies and even the most stubborn independent travelers will have to suck it up and ask themselves the above questions.

What questions do you ask yourself before booking a tour? What has made your tour experiences positive (or, unfortunately, negative)? Do you agree that it’s OK to take tours? Share your tour tips and tales in the comments to help us all get the most out of our travel experiences.

Special thanks to Janelle Nanos and all of the Gadling writers who shared their advice.