Types of Travel Guide #3: Journey Travel Guide

All about The Journey Travel Guide

In this article we’re going to look at the definition of a Journey travel guide, and examples of Journey guides already on the market.

Definition of a Journey Travel Guide

Journey Travel guides are different from destination travel guides because they focus on the way you travel to or reach the destination, rather than the just focusing on the destination itself.

The Journey Travel Guide can have its foundation firmly planted as a travel guide, or can leap over the fence to be a travel narrative.

Your journey can unwind as you explain the journey from point A to point B, and include a strong personal narrative story line, but the amount of useful information (accommodation, places to eat, things to see, history etc.) and useful facts about how others can take the same journey will push this over the edge to a travel guide.

Example of a Journey Travel Guides

“Practical Tips for Walking “The Way,” The Camino de Santiago de Compostela”

Written by Elinor LeBaron, this is a hybrid Journey and Specialist Travel Guide. It not only focuses on a journey between two locations, but it also includes the specialist activity of walking.

The title of Elinor’s guide provides readers with a clear description of the content so there’s no confusion about what it topic it covers. This is enough to bring readers to her sales page, and she details out what else her guide also includes:

Practical tips for walking the Camino de Santiago de Compostela (“The Way”), a 500-mile pilgrimage walk across northern Spain. The book includes advice on what to take, lodging, and food. Included are more than 130 color photos from the pilgrim’s trail. The photos show the types of lodging, signs and maps, packs, trekking poles, terrain along the way, cathedrals, points of interest, and more. It is the book you should read BEFORE you go. (Book Blurb from Amazon)

From the title and description, it’s evident that this book would help you plan your trip. And no matter what type of guide you write – having a descriptive title one of the most important elements.

Sunflower Book Series – Walk and Eat

Another similar walking Journey Travel guide example is the Sunflower Books: Walk and Eat series. These guides describe easy walks with restaurant suggestions along the route, and even some local recipes thrown in for good measure.

This pocket guide – the only walking guide for Rhodes – is designed to add another dimension to a walking holiday on that island. It caters for those who just want to stroll, those who may prefer a longer walk – or even those who are just looking for recommendations on where to eat! Whether you fly out for a week or a fortnight, with this book you’ll have in your hand enough walks, excursions, tavernas or restaurants and recipes to last throughout – so you can choose the most appealing. The book describes 12 walks and two excursions and recommends restaurants en route (with sample menus). (Book Blurb from Amazon)

Moon Travel Guides

On a much broader scale, Moon publishes a Route 66 Road Trip travel guide that takes the traveller on a geographic and cultural journey along one of the most well-known routes across America.

This book embodies the concept of the Journey Travel Guide completely by immersing the traveller in all aspects of the journey. Here’s a summary of the book’s content:

From pristine prairies and red rock mountains to the glittering Pacific, this fabled highway has beckoned everyone from Dust Bowl escapees to 1950s vacationers. Route 66 is lined with the history of those seeking a better life, whose stamina, perseverance, and imagination made it an American icon. Their stories are threaded throughout this book, amid the colorful characters and cultural curiosities that embody the Mother Road today.

Follow turn by turn directions to connect with the historic highway—and learn where to get off the route for worthwhile excursions. Experience roadside attractions, outsider art, and kitsch masterpieces. Wander transcendent landscapes like Acoma Pueblo, the Grand Canyon, and Joshua Tree ~ (Book Blurb from Amazon)

This example of a Journey Travel Guide also includes elements of a Side Trip Travel Guide. So as you can see, more often than not, a Journey guide is a hybrid that includes elements of other travel guide styles.

Quick Check List for your Journey Travel Guide

What is your Starting Point?
What is your Destination?
What travel elements do you want to include (accommodation, restaurants, side-trips, transportation options, etc.)
Will it be purely factual, or will you include narrative?

My First Journey Travel Guide

I’ve just started planning my first journey travel guide, for a trip I’m taking later this year. I’m taking an Amtrak train from New York’s Grand Central Station to Los Angeles via Chicago and the Grand Canyon. It’s primarily a planning guide for others who intend to take the same trip, but I’ll be including some narrative segments in the book.

I love research, and so I tend to dive in and gather lots of information at the start of a new trip. It’s such a shame to waste all of this research on a one-shot deal just for me. So I’ve consolidated to content into Scrivener, and as well as organising it for me, it’s creating the framework for my travel guide.

Want to learn about the other types of travel guides? Here’s the full list of this article series:

In addition to these articles, I also wrote the following articles about writing a Local Travel Guide (which is a sub-genre of special interest travel guides):

Want to know how to write a Journey #travelguide? Here's some tips. #amwriting Click To Tweet