“Offbeat Guides”  is a new service, that is still in beta, for creating customized guides for travelers. This new service is offered through a website that asks the visitors some initial questions about their name, where they are, where they want to go, the trip’s date and the place they’re staying at – if they have decided. Based on the answers, the website parses information available on websites like Wikitravel and Eventful and gets information for making a complete travel guide customized on the user inputs.

The resultant book could be printed and shipped to the user for $24.95 within 4 days. This price includes a downloadable pdf as well. The user might choose to have the pdf version only for $9.95. The user might include sections about history, food, events and many other sections available on the website. The info in the guide will also contain the latest weather forecasts and current exchange rates. Although all the information in the guide are already available online for free, the new service saves the time and effort made by travelers searching the web seeking information about their destinations.

The new service is still in beta for US shipments only. It is expected that the website could also hire writers to write specialized articles and correct any formatting or language mistakes. The website could also make deals with other travel sites and event planning services. The new service is still in beta for US shipments only.   

Source: webware.com