Best Travel Guide Publisher
In Your Pocket Guides
Tell me about In Your Pocket travel guides…
Informative, informal and irreverent, the In Your Pocket guides pride themselves on being like no other travel guide … and they're right. They're updated every two months, which almost certainly makes them the most accurate guides around; they're written by native English speakers who live in the cities they write about; and they're available free online, or in print for less than a euro.
The In Your Pocket guides cover 65 cities in 23 European countries, mostly in central and eastern Europe. They're available in print in at least 200 places in all the cities covered - usually in hotels and on newsstands - but much of the content is available online. More than 4.5 million guides are printed and distributed each year.
Tell me more about In Your Pocket ...
Editor-in-chief Craig Turp says the guides have two aims: to be trustworthy and to the point. They've been praised by the Sunday Times, the BBC, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Le Monde and the Guardian, which said: "They provide solid, reliable information on everything from where to book a reasonable B&B to how best to spend 72 hours in a city." The guides often supply information other guidebooks might avoid - for example, most editions go into a lot of detail about the adult entertainment on offer - and are known for their irreverent tone. Take this quote from the St Petersburg guide: "The famed Russian mafia has bigger fish to fry than your average tourist, and, quite frankly, you're more likely to be robbed or beaten up by thugs ingeniously disguised as police officers."
Who are In Your Pocket?
In Your Pocket was the brainchild of German journalist Matthias Lufkens and Belgian brothers George, Oliver and Nicolas Ortiz, who found there was a serious lack of reliable information for tourists when they visited the Lithuanian capital Vilnius in 1991. They decided to produce a guide to the city, which at that time didn't even have a telephone directory. The company still has its headquarters there.
Who are the In Your Pocket guides aimed at?
As Craig Turp says, they're aimed at everyone from businessmen to backpackers - anyone looking for a guide to the city from someone who actually lives there. Despite the low price, they're incredibly comprehensive - the website has sections on hotels, restaurants, nightlife, sightseeing, culture, events, shopping and transport and a directory of everything from 24-hour pharmacies to locksmiths.