BUG launches new downloadable travel guides

March 2nd, 2010 by Tim Uden

Last week BUG launched the first of its downloadable travel guides. These are PDF files that you can download and print at home.

These travel guides are published just for backpackers – that’s young independent travellers who travel with their gear in a backpack and stay in hostels. Unlike other guides, BUG doesn’t weigh you down with listings of fancy restaurants and flash hotels that you can’t afford. Instead BUG guides have practical information on the things you want to see and do. Rather than tell you about expensive tours, BUG will tell you how to get around on public transport and about cheap iconic eateries such as a classic hot dog stand rather than overpriced stuffy restaurants and the only accommodation establishments in BUG guides are backpackers’ hostels and youth hostels.

These guides have detailed and up-to-date travel information as well as excellent maps. They are designed to ensure you have a great trip and they only cost a couple of quid.

In many ways they are better than traditional travel guidebooks (and not just because they are cheaper). For instance:

Downloadable BUG travel guides have better maps than a traditional guidebook. Because you are printing your guide on regular A4 paper, you can take advantage of larger, more detailed, maps. Downloadable BUG travel guides also have more maps than most other guidebooks. While most guidebook only have maps for the city centre, downloadable BUG travel guides also have maps for individual neighbourhoods plus separate maps showing points of interest and accommodation.

Downloadable BUG travel guides are more up-to-date than a traditional guidebook. Traditional guidebooks can take almost a year to research and up to four months to print and distribute. Research is quicker because BUG’s downloadable travel guides cover specific cities and regions rather than entire countries and we can get them to market sooner because you can print them at home. Generally we can have a guide ready to sell within a month or two of researching it.

You get free updates when you buy a downloadable BUG travel guide. With a regular guidebook you have to pay around £15 to buy the latest edition, but when we publish an update to a downloadable BUG travel guide we email our customers a link to download the latest edition for free.

BUG currently has downloadable guides to Los Angeles and New York City and will shortly be launching guides to San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Click here for more information on BUG’s new downloadable travel guides.

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