When does a guidebook "expire"?

It depends on what you use them for--the general overview info is not likely to be out of date. If there is a museum or such that I am particularly interested in, I always check the website anyway. Any Cadogans should be kept--they are exceedingly well written. I even keep my beat-up old Europe book, mostly as a memento, but I have had occasion to use it as a reference occasionally!

Some information is “timeless.” Information that describes the general geography, historic background, or lists main sites of interest will still be relevant. Other information such as opening hours and prices is out of date practically at the moment of publication.

I don’t know that I would go as far back as 20 years, but I often pick up an old guidebook at the Goodwill, read it for general information and then check current conditions online.

To be honest, I find some of my best, most timely ideas right here on the travel forum. Hearing about what has worked (or not worked) for my fellow travelers has enhanced my trip planning many a times.

If you want up to date information on pricing or transit or other constantly changing things like new restaurants, guidebooks expire almost as soon as they are published. If you want information about the history of the place, then guidebooks can be timeless. I don't really buy guidebooks any more unless it is to just get a sense of the history of a place that I never been to. When I bought guidebooks more often, I threw them out after about 18 months unless they have sentimental value. Any information I need to visit a place is now available and much more up to date on the Internet. Most books bought pre-Covid at this point are pretty useless for pricing, ticketing, or entry rules at sights because so many places now have timed tickets that did not offer that option before.

To be honest, I rarely look at a guidebook now unless I’m going to a new country. For a new country, I purchase one when I’m in the Seattle area or through Amazon, or with the tour link. When I have a new one, I literally read all of it!

I used to buy a new one if it was four years old, and I was returning to that country. But since I’ve used Booking.com for years for my decisions for lodging & other on-line sources for restaurant ideas or just choosing when I’m there, the need for an updated guidebook is now pretty well gone.

Another factor is that my subsequent repeats to a country are typically going to cities that aren’t covered in the RS guidebooks.

I’m shocked, Paul, that those prices changed over 20 years - LOL! Keep it for the nostalgia. : )

The info in any guidebook is already 1+ years old when they're published. So I never take them as definitive, just another reference.

If Im going someplace I will get the "freshest" one available, even if I have older copies. No rule of the thumb on old books. I keep them for awhile in case someone else I know is planning to go. Then every so often I'll get rid of the old ones.

Twenty-thirty years old? I'd definitely toss the country-specific ones. If you're seriously into the subject of travel, or travel writing, you could keep the more general ones (like ETBD) for historical reference - I still keep an old Cooks European Rail Timetable book out of nostalgia..

Toronto's fantastic Reference Library owns a selection of the original, pre-turn of the century Baedekers, volumes that cover I wanna say Italy, and France. One cannot take any pencils or pens or bags into that specific room. There are additional rules around such visits, but I forget them just now.
That collection also has numerous additional Baedekers from the 1910s or thereabouts.
Interesting stuff.
I am done. The end.

I have a fairly extensive collection of Michelin green guides from 1950-1970. I still use them sometimes to give me touring ideas in rural regions: what was scenic then probably still is! I

Timeless:

“In Denmark, “social trust”—a general feeling that you trust your fellow citizens and the pillar institutions of government, law courts, police, hospitals, and so on—is generally found to be the highest in the world. A perfect example of Danish “social trust” is the image of babies sleeping in carriages outside a restaurant while the parents eat inside. You might say, “But no one is watching!” A Dane will say, “Everyone is watching.”
― Rick Steves

Given the way things have changed since Covid, I would want guidebooks printed since then.

Great thread. I find it hard to discard ANY book, but have steeled myself to pass old books on somewhere. Guidebooks? I don't have too many, but have kept them all. If I hadn't had my 1998 Frommer's on France to review, I wouldn't have found out about the Route des Abbayes in France, and would have missed seeing the fabulous Abbaye Jumieges in 2017. Each author(s) has things they feature and they complement one another. Rick Steves can only cover so many things, so even if data is outdated in some books, I find lots of info and suggestions in older books.
A bonus is rereading them and looking at my marginalia and underlining and fondly remembering that trip. Also, some lodging and restaurants are worth checking out online, if still operating, and maybe going back there. Nostalgia is a fun thing to indulge!

With the advent of the internet and websites, I, personally, find guidebooks much less useful than 20+ years ago.

I know many will disagree - fine, everyone is entitled to their own style of research and planning. When an area or city is new to me, I do hit the library and check out relevant guides. For me, flipping through pages for basic info on the must-sees is easier than flipping through webpages. Once I've done guide research for basic parameters, I'm off to the websites.

I have never trusted the guidebooks as definitive for hotel info. Too many favorite bookings are never mentioned. The handful of times I've tried a guide recommended hotel, I've inevitably been disappointed. Unlike many, I've never been interested in restaurant reviews. I've received fine help from hotel staff when I've wanted suggestions.

My shelves are long clear of the guides I used to purchase in the last century.

ORD traveler,
I agree about not using guidebooks for lodging. Most of the time I use Booking.com or suggestion from sites like this forum, but in 1974 when we were poor college students, we used suggestions from Frommer's "Europe on $5.00 and $10.00 a Day", and had some great results, some bad ones, and some hilarious ones. (Of course, that was a time when we occasionally slept in our VW Bug, or in some farmer's field in our $5.00 sleeping bags picked up in Marseille.)

I consider guide books to be outdated the moment they are published, and except for Appalachian Trail guide books, I just do not bother with them. Guide books are just aggregated filtered secondary information with a few of the writer's opinions thrown in, I would rather have the primary source straight away.

I used to love the Michelin green guide books. They focused more on the historical sites and are timeless. I have one of Italy that is 40 years old and still good.

Of course, if you are looking for hotels or restaurants, those items in a guidebook can become stale after a few years.

My trip planning tools are TripAdvisor and Kayak.com as well as a few others. I usually book directly with the hotel or B&B.

Paul, to answer your "how long" question. A guide book is as good as your memories last. I have my guide book for Ireland 1992. I made notes in it pre-trip for what we wanted to see and post-trip what we saw. It's full of good memories and lives on the book shelf with a copy of Stoddard's 1925 Irish lectures. Next to those is my tourist guide to Moscow (USSR), a relic from my 1969 trip.

I keep copies of the Rick Steves guide books for places I visited. They're all relative new, starting in 2019. I never have used guide books for hotels and restaurants. Historic locations don't change, museums seldom close, there are always new-to-me sights to explore. So the guide books have somewhat current information, plus memories. Of course prices change; that's why we research and book almost everything on the internet.

When I go back to Italy next year, I'll give the 2019 RS Italy book to Goodwill. Unless policy changes, RS will send an updated guide book which I will read pertinent locations and then it will sit on the bookshelf with the other guidebooks. I quit taking guide books on trips to save weight plus I didn't refer to them (quick look on the internet to find what I want or ask locals).

I used to do a little semi-pro travel writing on the side during the '80s and '90s. Local newspapers, a Brit mag and like that. A number of my articles compared the various available guidebooks (cue Reference Library above) and detailed their demographic, plus what each brand seemed to specialize in. Every guidebook line has or at least once had, something to offer.

We once gleaned a fantastic tip for India from of all places, Lets Go! A sarod player in Udaipur was giving free private audiences at his sunrise rehearsals---we would never have known.

Another memory from my rookie trip a million years ago: quibbling with a St. Ives hotelier about his rates. "That's not what it says in your Lets Go listing!" I'd naively argued. My then-self would faint and fall into Old Father Thames if they learned about the current cost of a Brit visit.

In 1989, I was working on a front-page article about the fall of the Berlin Wall. Once when I was at a rail station cafe, the manager saw me scribbling away at my notes. He approached.
"Jah, unt I jis know you are writer for Lonely Planets. I am the knowing of thees!"
Nothing that I replied could dissuade him and he insisted on comping me.
I left my payment on the table anyway.

A final poignant memory. Before my teaching career, I drummed for a local rock band. In my role as our band's secondary songwriter, my final original composition was a tune called 'Lonely Planet'. There's a cassette of us rehearsing that, collecting dust somewhere.
I am done. The end.

So, how long is a guidebook good for?

I have a copy of Pausanius' Guide to Greece from the 2nd century AD. You interested?

Goethe's "Italian Journey" came to my mind. :-)

The contrast is a guidebook for Berlin which is somehow expired at the day of publishing.

Just saw a 1949 Paris Michelin guide when we were in Vannes this past month. Will show it in a foto as part of our eventual related TR.
I am done. the green books

I pick up RS books at book sales whenever I see one for a place I know I might want to go...recently pulled out a Scotland one from 2012 that mentioned the trams were coming, yet still gleaned enough useful info from it to plan my trip to Edinburgh, with ideas for a day trip to Glasgow. Even if I have a brand new current book I still verify hours etc on the websites for the museums and cultural sites. I wouldn't want a book much more than 8-10 years old.

This one expired and needs a little update: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/british-museum-world-first-travel-guide/index.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CPeregrinatio%20in%20Terram%20Sanctam%E2%80%9D%20(,it%20was%20published%20in%201486.

I like to get Rick’s newest edition on places we often travel. He does add places and improve info on others. OTOH, his self guided walks and most self-tours of museums and churches are probably the same from edition to edition.

Logistics sometimes change, from train connections to passes and procedures for booking a site. I think this is an area where Mr.Steves excels versus many other books and it is worth keeping up to date even if you are sure you “know Paris” from past visits.

I never use guidebooks for dining nor lodging recommendations but a reasonable up-to-date guidebook will help you discover what you don’t know enough to Google about.

This is timely. Two days ago we booked a trip to Norway for this summer. I went through the bookcase and found two Norway guides that I used for our 2015 trip. So much was outdated, so I looked at the print dates. The R Stevens book was 2014, but the Fodors was 1993. I ordered a new book as well as a road map yesterday and they will arrive today. I will probably keep these oldies, but just flipping through them the layouts were not the best for planning, IMO.

I have never relied on a guidebook for lodging or restaurants. One time for Paris, we booked a hotel based on travel forums and such, but then was reading the R Steve's guide and saw it was recommended in there and that they offered a discount.

I wish I had kept my old "Access" guides to a number of major cities in the US and overseas. The block-by-block format included background information on sites that never made it to other guidebooks.

Responses so far tend to reflect general guides, like Rick Steves and Fodors. Any guides that are strictly for dining are out-of-date in a year or less as chefs, owners, and menus change. I don't even trust reviews online that are more than 6 months old.

OTOH, hiking guidebooks can be valid for years. Trails seldom change wildly.

I wish I could pitch my old travel guides, but I am super sentimental, and regard almost all my guide books as a "souvenir" of the trips I have done. It's like if I get rid of that guide book, I'm erasing the trip (though I usually have my own photo book of it). I buy a guide book whenever I am going someplace new--sometimes RS, sometimes Lonely Planet, sometimes Rough or Moon. But have ended up keeping almost all of them, mostly dating from the 90s to today. If we haven't been someplace for a long time, I will buy an updated one, but still can't part with the old one. I make a habit of periodically "cleansing" my shelves that hold the novels or non fiction I have read, and can usually get rid of quite a few, but I can't do the same with travel guides. Luckily we are not constantly doing big guide-buying-required new trips!

Yo EP,
I too really liked those Access Guides. Would have to check our old trip journals, but pretty sure that I photocopied some of their urban maps.
Good stuff indeed.
I am done. The end.

For me, guidebooks are for practical information such as how to buy tickets for the train, or suggested neighbourhoods to stay. For that reason I don't find them useful if they're more than a few years old because technology has changed the way we buy tickets and use transit.

I’m looking for a current Frommer’s “Europe on $500.00 a Day.”

Anybody got change for a fiver?