The business of selling travel destination guides to people who may or may not ever actually go to the place they’re obsessing over is a big business. And those thick tomes splashed with oh-so-tempting pictures are not cheap. Enter Lonely Planet with an alternative. How do you like the idea of buying one chapter at a time and downloading it electronically?

This is obviously only for the active traveler who simply needs information and not the couch-borne adventurer who lovingly lingers over each description but never actually gets around to booking the flights. Hey, if you like reading travel guides for their own sake, be our guest. You’ll get no quarrel from us.

But let’s take a hypothetical scenario. Say you want to take a trip to the Space Coast area of Florida but could care less if the rest of the state gets blown, every single sand particle, across the Gulf of Mexico and scattered over Texas by the next hurricane. You’re in luck! At the Lonely Planet website you can search for Florida Guides, which are listed by chapter. At last check, you could pick the one relating to Space Coast travel and buy it for a pittance – $1.68! That’s a heck of a deal if you just need the facts.

Love it so much and want to buy another chapter or the whole book? No problem. It’s easy to pick and choose more chapters. At the Jetsetter Show, we like to keep an eye peeled for ways the world traveler can save money and this seemed like a good one.

The Jetsetter Team

Flickr / iystewart