In sailors’ parlance, it is called local knowledge — the invaluable and detailed insights into a location’s prevailing winds, hidden shoals and tricky tides and currents, accumulated through firsthand experience. Without it, visiting mariners can find themselves in peril.
Business travelers, whether they are government workers, small-business owners, entrepreneurs or professionals, need to tap into specific and timely intelligence as well. They are increasingly doing so through social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Yelp, using the expertise and wisdom of the residents of places they visit to help them find their way around.
Whether they are heading to Bangor or Bangkok in search of an obscure boutique hotel, a vegan restaurant or professional contacts, business travelers say social networking offers benefits that no travel agent, tourist Web site or guidebook can match.
“I find social media invaluable,” said Ruth Clark, who designs and sews custom clothing for wheelchair users and runs her business from Kamloops, British Columbia. “It enables me to meet people from around the world who have an interest in my work.”
Thanks to social networking, on a trip to California she found out about an evening lecture at Stanford University and through online contacts was invited to the program and the dinner beforehand.
While attending a conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, for six days, Ms. Clark stayed with three hosts she had met through the Web site CouchSurfing.org and said she planned to do business with two of them.
For Daniel Winslow, a law partner with Duane Morris in Boston, entertaining current and potential clients demands detailed knowledge of cities from Hanoi to Miami. He travels one week a month and has been using Yelp for a year, typically twice a week to set up appointments and to research the best places to meet.
“I got hooked on Yelp as a way to…