Work Web sites against guidebooks. Countless destinations and hotel chains have their own Web sites, but that means they are serving themselves by posting that information. Lonely Planet supplies generous excerpts. Some guidebooks, like the Fodor's and Frommer series, detail hotel rooms to the color of bedcovers and art on the wall, and three or four entrees in restaurants. Other guide series, such as Insight Guides, relegate places to sleep and eat to the back of the book.
Insight prefers that listings include only places in business a long time.
That is meant to improve the odds that these hotels and restaurants will still be there when you come by with the book in hand. Years can pass before Insight updates its lavishly photographed books. But these books are largely essays, written for background by informed locals. Know what kind of information you are looking for and then buy what best suits you, which could be one for readable background and another for informational detail. Paul Glassman, editor of Passport Press, who for years divided his residence between Central America and Montreal and has authored books about both, cautions book buyers to look for mistakes in foreign-language terms.