Living There
Guidelet.com ( www.guidelet.com) recently launched, allowing any one to create a “mini-guide” to any city in the World, for free.
Simply name your guide and define who it is for, for instance, “sports fans” or “singles”. Then the guide creator list the points of interest they recommend stating why someone should visit each of them and Guidelet will do the rest: it will pull image suggestions and pull in location info such as address, phone and maps.
Guidelet: Empowering Lodging Owners to Showcase Local Attractions and Boost Bookings
Cristiano Nogueira, the founder of the travel guide creation site, states: “We initially developed Guidelet for hotel and bed & breakfast owners. We want them to list all the attractions around them and to embed their guide on their site. If the places are appealing, they will attract more guests, as their lodging will appear more central.”
Guidelet launched a week ago and already has over 200 guides to cities around the world, from London to lesser know spots like Portiragnes, a village in the south of France with three thousand residents, apparently with over 12 must-do attractions.
The site’s idea started in May 2010, but only now did it finally launch. “We weren’t happy with the guide creation process… we wanted it as simple and fluid as possible, so we kept on trying different methods, until the current one, which tested better with users.” Adds Cristiano.
Guidelet: Unveiling 50 Thousand World Destinations and Beyond
The goal of the site, according to the Brazilian founder, is to cover all the 50 thousand destinations in the World, “and then some”.
According to him, TripAdvisor covers 25 thousand cities, “but they take longer to manually curate each new destination, while Guidelet just needs a local resident to list their favorite things about their neighborhood”.
Cristiano, the author of the critically acclaimed travel guide book “Rio For Partiers,” has won 3 international awards for it.
When asked why he developed the site, he explains “Tolstoy has a famous quote that goes “Sing about your village, and you’ll conquer the World”. I wanted to let others sing about their village, to share their love for their neighborhood with visitors, so they can visit a nook full of charm, savour an understated bakery that might have the best apple-cinnamon croissant in the region, or a hike to a vista over a hill. All the places worth visiting, but a traditional travel guide might overlook them.
