Talking Travel with GuideGecko.com

by Brenda Yun on

A few weeks ago, the world wide web saw the launch of a most useful travel resource called GuideGecko.com. Guide Gecko hopes to serve the dual purpose as an online bookstore and independent travel writing recruiter. The site’s mastermind, Daniel Quadt, spent the past year and countless hours speaking with travelers and writers to make Guide Gecko a useful travel resource. The end result hopes to please independent, knowledgeable travelers as well as those setting out for the first time.

Daniel sat down with me to talk about travel, GuideGecko.com, and the site’s potential.

BY: Thanks for taking time away from Guide Gecko’s exciting launch to correspond with Gadling. Where are you now, and do you have any plans to travel to either promote the site or for recreation in the near future?

DQ: I am in Singapore, the base for Guide Gecko and my ‘hometown’ in the last four years. Singapore is a perfect travel hub for South-East Asia, and I plan to visit Malaysia, Thailand, and perhaps Indonesia in the coming weeks and months. I don’t have a fixed schedule yet, so maybe faithful Gadling readers can let me know if they know of any event that could be interesting for Guide Gecko, or if they simply want to meet up and say “hello.”

BY: Can you briefly describe for our Gadling readers the kind of traveler you are? How often do you travel? Where is your dream destination? What is your preferred mode of travel?

DQ: I started traveling extensively during my studies, when I was a part time software developer for a major airline, and got to enjoy discounted tickets all around the world. Nowadays, I usually travel with my wife, and we try to go backpacking through southeast Asia every few months. I do like sightseeing in cities and temple ruins, but also enjoy lying in the water on a nice beach, sipping beers and waiting for the sunset. Given the proximity to Singapore, I would say that the ‘double beach’ on Pulau Redang, an island off of peninsular Malaysia’s east coast, comes very close to being my dream destination.
BY: Where did the Guide Gecko idea come from? Of all genres (ie: fiction, non-fiction, coffee table reads), why did you choose travel?

DQ: Naturally, the idea came while traveling – in Penang, Malaysia, to be precise. We usually prefer to have a drink in a bar with some locals around us, and try to eat in places where not all of the other diners are fellow travelers ordering what the Lonely Planet recommends. Nothing against the Lonely Planet – we have big collection ourselves – but the locals know what’s best and what not, and their information is always up-to-date. We thought there must be a way for both locals and tourists to profit from this. Our goal is to make this information available to anyone who is interested, in a concise way through travel, lifestyle and entertainment guides and not scattered over isolated travel tips or blogs.

BY: What service do you hope the site will provide for both writers and travelers in a way that is not yet offered online, through publishers, or in bookstores?

DQ: We bring authors and publishers together with customers and readers. We provide an opportunity for customers to find exactly the guides they need, and for authors to market their guides to consumers worldwide. Any budding author can publish his or her guide as a printed book or as a PDF download. The guide can have any length, from 1-1000 pages, and can cover any travel, lifestyle or entertainment topic. Publishing on Guide Gecko is free. As an author, you only need to write and upload your guide. We take care of everything else, from marketing and payment collection to printing and shipping. Authors set the retail price and earn up to 75% for each sale, from the first copy onwards.

BY: How does Guide Gecko market independently written guides by “greenhorn” travel writers? What kind of service does the site provide to ensure a degree of success for these guides opposed to the commercial (Lonely Planet, Frommer’s, etc) guidebooks?

DQ: We intend to make Guide Gecko the first in mind website for travel guides. We believe it is a great way for independent authors to market their guides. Customers may visit the site to order a Lonely Planet but end up buying your guide, especially if you offer it as a reasonably priced PDF download. When writers publish their guide on Guide Gecko, it will be listed on the front page, where it gets maximum visibility. An affiliate program where website owners, such as travel or food bloggers, can promote our guides on their site and earn a certain share of the revenue is also in the works.

BY: Do you promote the site only on the internet, or do you use offline marketing as well?

DQ: We promote the site online and offline. We have already experienced great media coverage, including feature articles in magazines and newspapers. We have focused our offline efforts on Singapore and southeast Asia as a start. We’ve already participated an interview on TravelTalkRadio, a U.S. radio show. I continue to sum up the media coverage in Guide Gecko’s company blog, so feel free to check that out for the details.

BY: If I were a consumer using the site, how could I be certain that I’ve chosen the best guidebook to fit my needs?

DQ: Our intention is to make the site as consumer friendly as possible. Users can find the right guides by searching not only by destination, but also by categories. You can combine categories too. For example, you can search for ‘budget travelers’ along with ‘barhopping’ — or ‘women’ with ‘wellness’ (and vice versa). When it comes to quality, we have a rating and review system where you can read what others think about the guide. We are currently developing a ‘preview’ functionality, which allows you to preview certain pages before making a decision. If that’s not enough, you can also ask questions to the author or to fellow users.

BY: I know you spent a considerable amount of time talking with travelers and writers to make this a great travel resource. What have you learned about the travel industry in the process, and in what ways had your initial vision for the site changed after gathering information, advice, and suggestions from travel enthusiasts like myself?

DQ: I have learnt that there are many budding travel writers with lots of interesting topics and good writing skills. However, many complain that there is a lack of opportunities to market their writings. They pitch their stories to magazines or guidebook publishers, only to collect rejection letters, if it all. I sincerely hope that Guide Gecko will provide them with the right tool to reach out to consumers. The market may be small for some niche topics, but with Guide Gecko, it is possible to serve such customers.

To give you an example, I am in contact with some authors who write guidebooks for travelers with disabilities, which are very comprehensive guides with lots of information you won’t find in any off-the-shelf guide. (Who knew there is a wheelchair friendly access to the Sacré Coeur in Paris though an elevated walkway from a neighboring guesthouse!). I hope that Guide Gecko will provide such guides with the attention they deserve, and let the authors focus on writing more guides of this caliber while we take care of the marketing, logistics and payment.

I have also talked to potential customers. Many of them told me something like, “If you could provide us with good guides on where and how to travel with
children, we’d be your first customers.” That showed me that there is a demand for many niche topics, which is how we came up with our 68 guide categories.

BY: If all goes well with the Guide Gecko launch, in what ways could you see the site grow or expand?

DQ: I would like to venture more in the area of electronic guide formats. I believe this is the future for guidebooks. Who wants to carry a heavy book when you already have a large-screen camera or a PDA with you all the time? It would be good to offer downloads for commercially available titles as well, be it as PDFs or in more interactive formats. So, if you are a publisher interested in this field, do let me know and we can see how we can work together!

Travel enthusisiasts: STAY TUNED to Gadling and Guide Gecko next month for an opportunity to submit your travel guide requests and/or proposals for great prizes! Or, If you’re a traveler in need of a special guide or a writer in need of platform and you’re ready to get started, head over to GuideGecko.com right now and create an account. Membership is free.

Talking Travel with Road Trip USA writer Jamie Jensen

by Brenda Yun on

Avalon travel writer Jamie Jensen, whose travel guidebook, Road Trip USA, hit book stands earlier this month, took time from his busy book tour to answer a few questions about travel, writing, and road tripping across the country.

Don’t forget to enter the Gadling Giveaway of the latest edition HERE, or read my glowing Travel Read review of the book HERE.

Enjoy the interview!

BY: What is the most scenic/interesting/enjoyable stretch of road you’ve encountered?

JJ: One lifelong favorite (well, 30 years and counting…) is the famous stretch of Hwy-1 along the central California coast, through Big Sur. This is an amazing engineering and construction feat – carved out of the cliffs beginning in the 1920s; it offers incredible views and takes drivers to places we couldn’t otherwise reach. The combination of the natural world and the manmade improvements (not just the roadway, but the many rustic lodges and historic sites) is simply amazing – just take it slow!

The Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina is another amazing road to drive, winding through the forests along the Appalachian crest, and for something very different I like to head down to Florida to drive the “Overseas Highway”, which is basically one long bridge over the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea, from near Miami and the Everglades all the way to the tip of Key West.

New England has tons of great two-lane country roads-and perhaps the country’s most beautiful stretch of Interstate Highway, I-93 thru Franconia Notch. And even higher up in the mountains, the Rockies have at least two unforgettable roads, the wonderfully named “Million Dollar Highway” in Colorado, and the sinuous “Going-to-the-Sun Road” through the heart of Glacier National Park.

I could go on – but these are a good starter.


BY: What compelled you to travel nearly half a million miles of asphalt?

JJ: I don’t think I ever intended to spend so much time driving around – and certainly not to accumulate so many miles – but over the years I’ve kept looking at maps and wondering what these places really looked like, and then with Road Trip USA I’ve been going back again and again and keeping track of what’s new. So it has all added up. Then again, there is something like 6 million miles of paved roads across the country, so I’ve really barely scratched the surface.

BY: How did you gather all of the information about the places you traveled?

JJ: Because I’m interested in older roads, the ones that were main roads before the Interstate Highway system came thru in the 1960s, my first best source of ideas for places to travel was a series of 1930s and 1940s travel guides covering all the old US Highways-these were put together as a “New Deal” project for out-of-work writers, and were written by the likes of Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, and Jim Thompson.

The WPA guides are great stuff – and full of insights that still resonate today.

More practically, since I cover places to eat and sleep and have fun, as well as the history and culture of these different places, I used to write or call the sundry Chambers of Commerce and tourist promotion organizations for each state, region, city and town, and ask for their brochures and maps.

Now of course, all of that information is on the Internet – but nothing is as valuable as actually visiting these places and seeing (and tasting!) them for myself.

BY: What is the biggest advantage and disadvantage to traveling by car?

JJ: The advantages of traveling by car – especially in a country as huge and car-dependent as the USA – are numerous and probably obvious. Cars offer freedom to go where you want when you want, in comfort and at your own pace. And because it costs about the same to travel with four or more people as it does to go alone, the economics of driving over buying airplane or train tickets is pretty compelling.

That said, the downside of traveling by car is closely tied with the advantages – namely, what with sound systems and air conditioning, etc., cars are so comfortable that is sometimes means it can be hard to stop and actually experience the places you pass through.

So, despite the inertia of buzzing along at 70 mph, for a memorable road trip it’s important to make every effort to stop and get out of the car, even for a few minutes, so the sights and sounds can sink in, and really leave an impression.

BY: How did you score the gig to travel across the country and write this book – and what advice do you have for aspiring travel writers?

JJ: Before I wrote Road Trip USA, I had already established myself as a travel guidebook author, writing and overseeing guidebooks to California and all of the USA for a number of “traditional” publishers (Rough Guides, Michelin Guides, Fodor’s, and those nicely illustrated “Eyewitness Guides” from Dorling Kindersley) so I had a pretty good track record. When I started working on what became Road Trip USA, I never thought I would find enough sights to make a 900-page book, but nowadays the challenge is to keep it from getting too big!

My advice to aspiring travel writers is simply to write. Unfortunately, it is very hard to get paid very much for travel writing, but if you can combine it with other things, it may work out. Once you’ve written something, you’ll have it forever, but if you don’t write things down and tell your stories (even it’s just for yourself right now), the stories start to fade away. And who knows! Maybe tomorrow you’ll find a publisher who wants a whole book of your adventures. If you’ve written your stories along the way, you’ll be much better placed to take advantage of opportunities.

On a more positive note, with the wonderful world of the Internet, it is a lot easier for people to be “published” and reach interested readers directly (through websites and blogs etc), though I don’t know of anyone who is making anything like real money doing this.

BY: What will be your next project? More road tripping or are you growing roots in California?

JJ: That’s a good question. Since I finished the last edition of Road Trip USA, I switched gears a little, and have taken a 6-month trip to Berlin, where the relationship between history and tourism are so much more complicated than they are compared to say, getting your kicks on Route 66. For me, growing up in southern California during the Space Age 1960s with all the fear of Commie infiltrations and imminent nuclear war, it’s been fascinating to spend a length of time where so much horrible stuff happened. Though I don’t think I’m going to do a “Guilt Trip” alternative of my “Road Trip” work, I’m more interested than ever at looking into the mechanics of how we (as individuals, communities and as countries) “remember” history, through monuments and parks and preservation of “historic” places.

Gadling is currently accepting entries to a giveaway of Jamie’s Road Trip USA guidebooks. Entries are due by Friday, April 24 @ 5 p.m. EST!!!

Check out my review of Road Trip USA while you’re at it.

Gadling reads the Sunday travel sections

by Jeffrey White on

Haven’t had as much time this morning as usual to pore over the Sunday newspaper travel sections, but a few stories did catch my eye.

A few papers got the idea this weekend to run articles on train travel in the United States. In the New York Times, writer Andy Isaacson, a veteran of long distance international train travel, decides to cross the US on Amtrak and discovers, among other things, the unexpected sight of Amish travelers doing nearly the very same thing. The Dallas Morning News writes about a slightly less ambitious trip, taking Amtrak’s Heartland Flyer from Forth Worth to Oklahoma City.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch puts together a long feature on whale watching off the coast of Baja California. Now, this isn’t an original topic, to be sure, but writer Tom Uhlenbrock turns out what is a pretty exhaustive report, and provides plenty of nice detail that at times puts us right on these boats, feeling the spray of a gray whale.

With the economic crisis deepening, it seems that Wall Street has become something of a travel destination, an oddity, rather like how one might go and visit a former war zone. The Orange Country Register runs an Associated Press feature about a walk through the now shamed halls of American capitalism.

(And on a somewhat related note, the LA Times gives us this tour through Depression era art in San Francisco.)

On to a more convivial subject: the Boston Globe anticipates St. Patrick’s Day with this slide show of New England’s 10 best Irish Pubs (and I was psyched to see an old stomping ground of mine — the Snug in Hingham — make the list).

In terms of international travel, a piece of note is this one from Catherine Watson in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Watson heads to Bahrain and winds through oil fields and dodges security guards in search of the Tree of Life.

The Financial Times has an interesting, first-hand report about taking a volunteer vacation in Kenya, where writer Michelle Jana Chan gives her time over to helping count elephants for the Earthwatch conservation project.

Easily the oddest travel story of the week belongs to the Wall Street Journal Europe’s weekend edition, with a dispatch from Patti McCracken on finger wrestling in the Alpine corners of Austria.

Lastly, for those who might have missed it, Slate ran a good series about a week ago on modern day St. Petersburg by writer Matthew Polly (and for one of the best pieces I’ve ever read on Russia’s second city, check out this dispatch by the Boston Globe‘s Tom Haines on the city’s 300th birthday back in 2002).

Lastly, wanted to give a quick shout out to a Prague friend, Evan Rail, a noted writer on food and beer, who has a piece in today’s New York Times on an East German shoe brand that is making something of a comeback these days.

A look at the Sunday travel sections

by Jeffrey White on

There’s quite a lot out there today if you’re trolling around the Sunday newspaper travel sections.

Anytime there is a new story from Tom Haines in the Boston Globe, you know it’s a good Sunday. Haines is simply the best travel writer working today in newspapers. In a typical dispatch, Haines writes from North Dakota — not an obvious travel destination, especially this time of year — weaving the theme of wind into a meditation not only on place and person but on environmental change as well.

The Globe also has a Q&A with Paul Theroux culled from a series of interviews the paper has done with the famed travel writer and novelist through the years.

The Washington Post might have this week’s must-read travel section. Ben Brazil has an interesting take on today’s El Salvador, once Central America’s no-go zone but now a good option for adventurous travelers. But the piece that really caught my eye was the section’s lead story: Staff travel writer Scott Vogel, often wasted on fluff pieces, files a report from Alabama’s Civil Rights trail, no doubt in honor of Black History Month. Such a piece could be formulaic, but Vogel’s isn’t. It’s got an almost Kuraltian pacing and is filled with the voices of locals, who pop up reliably throughout the narrative (it’s always nice when travel writers in newspapers actually decide to quote real people rather than their spouses).

Over at the LA Times, Susan Spano manages to write nearly 2,000 words about vacationing in the French Riviera without seeming to have spoken to a living soul, or at least one she deems worth introducing us to. Thus, a travel piece studded with the dreaded I, I, I….

The Miami Herald has mustered up its cruise gurus — IOW six people who have taken a lot of floating vacations — to answer your questions. This is probably a site you’d want to bookmark if there are some cruise issues you’re curious about.

A few travel sections this week decided to devote space to spring training baseball. The Chicago Tribune has a dispatch from a couple of stringers about the White Sox’s new spring training home in Arizona. The San Francisco Chronicle also dishes from Arizona, specifically Scottsdale, where the Giants and the A’s play in the offseason.

You’d expect the New Orleans Times-Picayune to be pretty much about one thing right now — Mardi Gras — and you’d be right. The paper’s consistently over-performing travel section has everything you might care to read about the city’s carnival craziness.

Lastly, the Philadelphia Inquirer has some good reads this weekend. William Ecenbarger gives us an essay about the various faux pas we commit as travelers without ever knowing it. And I liked this short dispatch from Emily Ward about Croatia’s unheralded wine country. It’s getting to be pretty close to the perfect time of year to head to the Croatian coast, and I have a soft spot for Croatian wine.

Gadling Take FIVE: Week of Dec. 16-Dec. 26

by Jamie Rhein on

Minutes after I wrote last week’s Gadling Take FIVE, giving a plug to Gadling’s newest blogger, Tom Johansmeyer, Kraig joined our mix of people who are wild about travel. Kraig Becker has been getting his feet wet this past week and is now not the newest blogger on the Gadling block.

Alison Brick joins us today. For any of you wondering if family travel influences children to travel, it did Alison. She has memories of searching out AAA hotel vacancies with her folks. If that doesn’t scare a person off from hitting the open road, nothing will.

Here are posts that caught my attention. They range from the serious to the whimsical.

  • Scott posted on a new rule that requires permanent U.S. residents who are green card holders to get fingerprinted upon entering the U.S. through an immigration check-point brought up an interesting question. Why?
  • If you’re heading to New York City, be prepared to pay more for a subway ride. The fare may go up. Jeffrey’s post tells just how much.
  • Aaron, who sniffs out controversy, and he’s such a nice guy, wrote a post on Burger King’s new ad campaign which has been called by some to be culturally insensitive. I’m with Aaron on this one.
  • Jeremy gives a thumbs up to the 2008 edition of The Best American Travel Writing.
  • If you’ve ever wondered where fruitcake comes from, check out Brenda’s post. She knows the scoop. Personally, I like fruitcake–all kinds.

If you’re traveling and bored, here are 4 pen and pencil games you can play. I’ve played them all.