Most of your travel research will more than likely be done on the internet as there is a wealth of information.  As you research your locations and activities, enter the information into your Trip Profile to be accessed during your trip using the Mobile Trip Profile on your Smartphone.

When you have entered all your trip information, it's important to create a non-Technical Backup of all your trip details.  Let's face it, technology can fail.  For whatever reason, you may not have phone service, your battery may die or something else unexpected my happen; so it's important to have a backup.  You can control the information that will be shown on your Trip Summary by selecting the different display option on the My Trips and Trip Summary pages.

Prior to your departure, from your My Trips or Trip Summary pages, select Print Preview and print the details of your trip.

Guide Books

You may want to considering bringing a good guide book with you on your trip.  Books take up room and can be heavy, so consider making copies of the information you want to bring or simply tear out the actual pages from the book and bring them along.  There are many guide book to consider, but we highly recommend our favorite, the DK Eyewitness Travel Guides due to their high quality content including detailed maps and photos.  As you build your library of travel guides over the years, you will find the books fun to browse even when you are not planning a trip.

You will find DK Books for individual countries and specific cities as well as some overall books like the one shown here for all of Europe. The all inclusive books such as Europe provides a lot of information, but not as detailed as specific countries or city books.  These all inclusive books will give you a glimpse of the possibilities you may want to research further. If you will be traveling to multiple locations within a country, purchasing a book for the country may be your best option. If you will be spending considerable time in specific cities such as Paris or Rome, we recommend purchasing the individual city books.  There may not be a book specifically for a city you will be visiting, so purchasing a country book may be your only option. There are also smaller DK Top 10 Books for various destinations listing the Top 10 must see and do attractions.

DK Travel Guide Books Website: https://www.dk.com/us/travel/

Accessing your trip with our Mobile Trip Profile

If you do your research ahead of time and plan your trip on our website adding details to all your locations and activities including notes, map links, photos and booking information, you will be able to access all your trip details using our Mobile Trip Profile.

Bringing a guidebook on your trip

If you are visiting locations like Paris or Rome, individual city books provide an excellent guide to all there is to see and do.  For these locations, you may want to consider bringing the entire book with your on your trip.  If you are visiting multiple locations in the same country or different countries, hauling around different books is not really an option due to their size and weight.  Our advice is to photo copy the pages you will require and leave the book at home.  Depending on the book, you may want to rip out the pages you will need and only bring those with you.  Books can be expensive, so making copies may be a better option and you can always discard them along the way as you complete the different stages of your trip.

To avoid taking up space in your pack and adding excess weight, photo copy or rip out the important pages of your book that you will require during your travels.

Other Guide Books

Of course there are many different travel books available such as Lonely Planet and Rick Steves Europe Through the Back Door all offering different views and perspectives on travel.