National Tourist Offices

The old-style tourist office (one that was full of glossy brochures and friendly people who were happy to help prospective travelers) is about as rare today as a flying hippo. Rather than spend money up front in order to help tourists, most European countries are shutting down their overseas offices and relying instead on the Web. That might make short-term economic sense, but it doesn’t do you a whole lot of good.

There are a few tourist offices currendy operating in the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. In North America, many of these offices move around and change phone numbers quite often, so even the most current List may include a bad number or two (though you can always go to ©www.visiteurope.com for an up-to-date directory of the latest information); most of the US offices are in New York, so if you get an invalid number, a call to ©212/ 555-1212 should get you that offices new number, oorne countries also maintain offices in Los Angeles or Chicago.

Many European countries simply don’t want to spend the money to have tourist offices Down Under. There are a few offices in Australia, but almost none in New Zealand. In many cases, the offices are either linked to each country’s major national airline or operate as part of an embassy. Even where no tourist office is listed, a call to the national airline (Air France, KLM, etc) or embassy may net you some information. These numbers may be found in any local phone book - look hard for a toll-free number.
When calling these places, if you have a special interest such as biking or walking, mention it when asking for information. Ask for maps, too, especially for countries in Central and Eastern Europe, where up-to-date maps are often scarcer in the country than in their tourist offices abroad.

In a depressing trend, many tourist offices now use computerized answering machines to get information. If you do get hold of a person who does a good job handling your needs, thank him or her for the personal touch.