DK Eyewitness Chicago (or, Why Printed Travel Guides Prevent Overtourism)

Read the full post at - DK Eyewitness Chicago (or, Why Printed Travel Guides Prevent Overtourism) A couple months before our second trip to Chicago, I picked up the DK Eyewitness Chicago guide. Yes, TripAdvisor exists. Yes, Google Maps exists. But I’ve found that printed travel books do something that no algorithm can – they help you discover places you don’t know that you don’t know. The Problem With Algorithm-Driven Travel Here’s what I’ve noticed about how most people plan trips now. You open Google Maps, TripAdvisor, or Instagram. You search for things to do in a city. And the algorithm hands you a list sorted by popularity, reviews, and – critically – what people in your same social graph have already visited. The result is overtourism in slow motion. A “hidden gem” gets featured in one Reel, goes viral, and gets loved to death within a season. People aren’t going somewhere because they decided it was worth going. They’re going because everyone else in their feed already went.…