Access Guides Okay for Cities, Poor for Countries
Mar 29 '00
I've got two volumes in this series, both for places I know well: Washington, D.C., and Mexico. The Washington guide is fairly good, the Mexico guide is fairly poor. I'll get to the differences in a minute, first let's take a look at how the guides are structured and written.
How the Guides Work
Each guide is broken into sections, either part of a city, or a city or tourist site within a country. The sections start off with a little background and logistic information, including a nicely done map with numbers for places that are reviewed in the text. The text for each place then includes various restaurant, hotel, and tourist site reviews, all mixed together but ordered by map number. Logos of some businesses appear next to their review, and there are occasional sketches of significant places or diagrams, such as museum floor plans. Each text snippet is color coded based on the type of information, red for restaurant reviews, blue for hotel reviews, green for outdoor attractions, etc.
Pluses and Minuses
- Organization: I find the organization by arbitrary map numbers confusing and illogical. Most people visiting a city will probably want to see all the restaurant reviews together in one place, all the hotel reviews together in one place, etc. I know I don't want to read the entire Mexico City chapter to get an idea where I might want to hang my hat for a weekend.
+ Restaurant Reviews: I like the dual-component ratings with stars for quality and dollar signs for prices. It helps me tell at a glance whether a place is likely to be ritzy or casual enough for me, and whether I can afford it. The description is also good, providing recommendations for house specialties and a little about the atmosphere. On the downside, there are too many reviews of places that are just tourist traps.
- Hotel Reviews: The descriptions of hotels provide a good level of detail with info about amenities, location, etc. What they lack is the dual-component star rating that the restaurant reviews have. I'd like to know which hotels are the best by just glancing at the paragraph heading. Access does it for restaurants, why not hotels? Other travel guides manage to do it...
- Colored Text: I don't know who thought colored text was a good idea, but I find it confusing as all get out. Who wants to keep track of what blue or yellow means? Not me!
- Logos: Either printing logos of certain restaurants is a hallmark of the series, or the publisher charges the restaurant a fee to print the logo. Whatever. I find the logos distracting, placing undue emphasis on certain places, some of which are not the best in the area. In the Mexico guide, I recognize some of the places as being nondescript restaurants that cater to the ugly gringo crowd. In the Washington guide, some of the places are overpriced tourist restaurants (sometimes hotel restaurants -- who besides tourists eats there?); they're not always the best local hangouts.
+ Maps: The maps are clean, clear, and straightforward, even if not very detailed. They will provide a good idea of where different places are located, though you might want to get a more detailed city map to go along with it.
+ General Layout: The book is attractively designed, with clearly labeled headings, with lots of open space and lots of color. Downside: colored text and logos.
Washington D.C. Guide versus Mexico Guide
The Washington D.C. Access Guide is fairly good, but mostly because it sticks to one city. It's easier to provide balanced, comprehensive coverage of a small area than it is for a large area. Fairly good descriptions are provided of all the major local sites, including a map of the mall area and descriptions of several of the individual Smithsonian museums.
The Mexico Access Guide is, frankly, pretty pitiful as a general guide. It's adequate if you are going to one of the popular tourist destinations, like Cancun, but it's got some holes big enough to drive a Sherman tank through: It totally ignores Mexico's cities (other than Mexico City and Merida). No coverage at all of Guadalajara, a city of more than 4 million people. It totally ignores all of the colonial cities. It totally ignores Baja (other than Los Cabos). It totally ignores the Copper Canyon -- one of the greatest natural wonders in the Americas. It totally ignores all the archaelogical sites (other than Chichen Itza and Uxmal -- which are covered quite well). On the plus side, it does quite well as a basic beach guide, including some smaller resort areas that are less inundated by gringos: places like Huatulco or Ixtapa. It also does well covering the entire Quintana Roo coast, including Sian Kaan and Playa del Carmen.
I think Fodors and Frommers do well at the big country guides because they're so fat and because they don't get cute with fancy graphics-intensive layouts. For Mexico, I recommend the Moon guides over all others.
How Access Guides Rate
It's unfortunate that epinions doesn't allow ratings for reviews in this category -- they should, after all, a travel guide is nothing more than a book, and books get rated. On the usual epinion 5-star rating scale, Access Guides get 3 stars. The Washington D.C. guide is probably about a 4-star guide, but the Mexico guide is definitely a 2-star guide. Most Access Guides focus on cities -- a subject they seem to handle competently. They should really stick to that focus since their country guides are too sketchy for anyone other than a casual tourist going to a big resort.
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