Travel book goes mobile with scannable QR code

Once we were able to scan the codes, we were rewarded with a Google map of the spot where the photo was taken. You can look at a satellite image, which was pretty for some of the outdoor spots like Parque Nacional Volcan Irazu in Costa Rica or Shipwreck Bay in Greece.

You can also bookmark the locations so that if you ever get to the region, your phone will give you directions to visit the spot. For now, though, it seems to be of fairly limited utility.

But offering technology that marries books and smart phones is a big step. Guidebooks could start including QR codes for all kinds of useful information. Want to see how to get to the Louvre from your hotel in Paris and store hours and admission information? Scan a code. Want to add a phone number for that quaint little restaurant in Florence to your contacts so you can leave the guidebook home? Instead of tapping out the number on your tiny keyboard, scan a code.

Scanning the codes in a guidebook for your favorite listings is a bit like folding the pages down for quick reference, or even printing out pages from a tourism Web site. But your smart phone stores the data so you don’t have to carry all that paper around, and it can also add information that’s not in the book, like directions.

“We’re really testing the waters,” said Rough Guides Design Manager Scott Stickland, speaking by phone from London. “QR is still very much an underground thing here.”

But he hopes the technology catches on. That’s why he really pushed to use the codes in the book. He foresees a future where a reader can scan a few codes and leave a book at home or in the hotel room, while accessing user-generated content, maps, contact information, podcasts or other features on the go with a mobile device.

The technology is moving fast. Stickland says he now recommends the QuickMark code-scanning app, but it wasn’t mentioned in the book because the app wasn’t available when the book went to press. Now you can buy it in the iTunes app store for 99 cents.

QR may be the vehicle to bridge that split between print and mobile. Stickland says at Rough Guides it’s “universally agreed our guides need to do more to integrate online and printed content.” Though for now, Stickland says there are no “concrete plans” to incorporate QR in new guidebooks until the standard is more accepted.

Even if QR fizzles, the book makes a nice read for the armchair traveler. As Stickland says, it culls the finest images of food, people, adventure, nature and other themes from Rough Guides’ rich library of more than 120,000 photos.