How to use popular social apps to connect with real people and locals for travel tips
6:24 AM
How to use popular social apps to quickly connect with real people and locals for travel tips
Remember the last time you were caught in a tourist trap?
Remember the last time you were caught in a tourist trap?
The last time I was caught in a
tourist trap, was in Venice Italy with my wife. She was hungry and we were
looking for a local authentic and affordable place to grab something to eat. It
was back in the days were smart phones weren't so common and data plans with
roaming would have left you stone broke... so eventually we found ourselves
eating a lousy pasta in Venice! Just a few hours later while I was looking for
toilets, I entered a stylish local bar with really cool atmosphere but that was
too late for us...
Thanks god, today we have
technology that can help us find all of these great places while we are
planning our trip and while we are on the move.
If you want to avoid tourist
traps while you are travelling, here are some tips that can surely upgrade your
next vacation.
Trip planning
When it comes to planning a trip
there are two types of people:
The ones who love to plan in advance,
who wants to feel the trip atmosphere while they are still at home and make the
entire experience last longer.
And there are the “lazy” ones,
who don't like to invest too much time in researching in advance. The good news
for them is that today, there are ways to use the social platforms to get quick
answers from real (some are even local) people.
Let me try recommend the best 6
apps for the later type, the “lazy” ones, like myself :) and how you can use
these apps to connect with real/ local people.
Before we start: make sure to be
mobile enabled when you arriving at your travel destination:
·
Bring your smartphone or
tablet with you.
·
Stay in places that can
give you internet access.
·
Ask your wireless-carrier
for a data plan in advance, or get yourself a local sim with data plan once you
arrive at your destination. Usually the second option is the cheapest one.
Now hook up with the applications
that will help you travel like a local and avoid tourist traps without having
to invest too much time in advanced research.
1. WhatsApp
If you are using WhatsApp, you
are probably a member of a few groups, so you have a legitimate reason to spam
everyone with questions about great places in the destination
you are heading to :) Just bear
in mind that WhatsApp is about peer 2 peer real-time communication, so you
might find yourself having to answer lots of responses, what can be time
consuming and exhausting especially if you are already @ your destination and
don't have a lot of time nor desire to sink yourself with small talks.
2. Facebook
Facebook is a truly interactive
platform and what's really cool about it when it comes to planning a trip is
that you can get real time answers from your closest friends and family who are
people you know and trust. When you come to think about it the day to day usage
in the platform is to post thoughts, ideas, statuses, get feedbacks from
friends and vice versa but posting a question on your facebook wall will also
help you to get real time answers. You simply thank one with a like and you're
done :) Wanna get more info from a particular person? just contact him in a
private message and spare the spam from the rest of your friends.
3. Twitter
Search for hashtags (#) of the things you would like to find and get amazing information. For example: type “#Coffee #Portland” and you will get a list of tweets posted by others with matching keywords. Now you can connect with these guys that posted the tweets by asking them questions and request for recommendations. What I really like about this option is that you can check their profile and timeline to see if you like them and the way they think. Some may say this option is a bit spooky, but based on my own experience, not only that it works, but it also enables you to connect with locals that were complete strangers just a few minutes earlier!
4. TripAdvisor
I always considered TripAdvisor
as a directory of hotels with ratings based on crowdsourcing, but lately I
found TripAdvisor’s forums as a great source of information, where you can ask
questions and get immediate answers from loyal locals. It is truly amazing to
see how quick you can get an answer and how much passion the participants of
the forum have for their local domain.
5. Yelp
Instead of searching and
filtering for the best restaurants, you can use the Yelp “Talk” feature to ask
questions from local Yelpers. For example: “Where can I find a bar with local
atmosphere on Monday evening?” This is very similar to the help you can find on
TripAdvisor’s forums.
The only question I keep asking myself regarding these forums is: “who are these guys that are following these forums and keep jumping ahead with responses?” Anyway it is good to know that they are there for us. Hopefully Yelp & TripAdvisor will soon have decent profile pages for their forum participants that will enable us to know who are these guys, what are they into and whether we share similar interests with them.
The only question I keep asking myself regarding these forums is: “who are these guys that are following these forums and keep jumping ahead with responses?” Anyway it is good to know that they are there for us. Hopefully Yelp & TripAdvisor will soon have decent profile pages for their forum participants that will enable us to know who are these guys, what are they into and whether we share similar interests with them.
7. Foursquare
Foursquare is a great directory
application for any place around. I just wish I had the option to communicate
with locals who posted tips through the application … urgh!!!
But if you
are really lazy and can’t even use the above simple advice, but still don’t
won’t to fall into tourists traps, at least try to follow this one rule I
learned from Nomadic
Matt, one of my favorites travel bloggers:
“Don't go to places where there
are lots of tourists.”
Good Luck!
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