You Can’t Get There From Here

Remember, back when you had to go to the bookstore and actually buy a book about your vacation locale to plan your itinerary, rather than surf the Web?

Sure, some of us still like to get a paperback guide to peruse and dream with before we take off on an adventure. But many folks now start their trip online.

Three of the best known guidebook publishers – Frommers, Lonely Planet and Fodors – have sites that will help get travelers to their destination, one way or another.

Fodors.com (http://www.fodors.com) has a brightly colored home page that draws in the prospective wandering eye.

A prominent link invites visitors to enter a ” Da Vinci Code” sweepstakes, co-sponsored by Expedia. Those who click through can not only enter the sweeps but find tantalizing information about the Parisian sites they’d see if they won. Entrants can of course sign up for newsletters and are cleverly offered extra chances to win if they take a survey and/or refer friends to the contest.

Other links on the home page include a special section on Greece (which offers the chance to purchase those old school print travel guides) and a feature on ” What Not to Wear in Europe,” which encourages reader input on topics like whether fanny packs are acceptable tourist attire (what do you think?).

For each of the three sites reviewed, I looked at what would pop up when London was typed into their destination search feature. Fodors provided detailed entries on everything from where to take kids to places to partake in afternoon tea. Another sweeps was offered here, sponsored by VisitBritain. The only faux pas here is that it takes visitors away from the Fodors site, rather than opening in a new window.

My next stop was the online home of Lonely Planet (http://www.lonelyplanet.com), which felt, well, a little lonely, barren perhaps. The home page was awash in muted navy, grey and brown tones.

At first glance, the site seems to reach out to folks who are Planet enthusiasts, rather than newbies. A prominent section is Bluelists. What the heck are Bluelists? Takes me a few minutes and a few clicks, but it turns out Bluelists are user-created lists of recommended travel experiences. The winners of a recent Bluelist competition got to go to Shanghai with a Lonely Planet author and blog their experiences.

Bluelists featured on the day I visited were diverse: * Top things to do in Dublin * Places to Try Wine * Must See Sights in the Black Hills of South Dakota

Topics for the Travelcast podcasts also ran the gamut. Those available for download included ” Terminal Travel,” a look at different cultures’ approaches to everyone’s final journey, and ” Destination Krakow,” on pub crawls in the city.

My London search on Lonely Planet nets some good reviews of attractions like the various museums and the London eye, complete with links to the official sites of each spot, when available.

I wind down my journey at Frommers.com (http://www.frommers.com), a busy but yet bland site that seems at first glance more deal than experience focused. busy site, more deal than experience oriented.

A ” Hotspot Holland” link features a contest to win a Rhine River cruise for two. Like the ” Da Vinci” sweeps, entrants are asked to refer a friend, but no incentive is offered.

More fun is the survey section, which offers reader responses on topics ranging from how rising gas prices will impact their summer travel to what items they’ve stolen from hotel rooms (Eighteen percent said towels, 79% said nothing. You know someone was lying.)

Visitors to Frommer’s London pages are greeted by the VisitBritain sweepstakes banner, and a promo for a new podcast, which doesn’t appear to be London specific. Destination reviews, however, are much more promising, with reviews and links to the official sites for the attractions.