Tale #2: Shush! the book under the Desk

Long before TripAdvisor, Google Maps, or live reviews, we had something far more precious: the gazetteer.

Ours lived under the desk — slightly dog-eared, covered in tabs, and always about six months out of date.

Clients would ask where a hotel was, or what it was near, and I’d disappear under the desk to haul it out like it was sacred text. We’d flip through grid references, try to match hotel codes with maps, and if we were really lucky, there’d be a one-line description saying something like “short walk to shops.”

And then we’d pray.

Pray that the gazetteer had it right. Pray that “close to nightlife” didn’t mean above a nightclub. Pray that the one review listed was from someone who had at least stayed in the country.

There were no photos, no star ratings, no scrollable reviews — just a few lines of text and a lot of professional instinct. As an agent, I developed a long-term memory for hotels visited and hotels recommended — what worked, what didn’t, and what to never risk again. That intuition, built over time, often mattered more than anything printed on the page.

These days, we’re flooded with reviews — some helpful, some contradictory, some written in a fury over a missing bread roll. But instinct still counts. And knowing which hotel delivers — no matter what the internet says — is something you can’t Google.