thrillist – “Although Google Docs and Maps are simple to share, the creators who spend years perfecting their magnum opus docs are often selective about who gets access. When her friends want to know where to go in London or Milan, they go to Emilia Petrarca. The 32-year-old is a writer by day, but an avid curator by night—not of things, but of places in the cities she’s visited abroad. “In the same way that people are addicted to Zillow, I spend my free time on AirBnb,” she says. “I read every review. I cross reference with multiple sites. I go insane.” The result is an exclusive Google Doc of vetted, personal recommendations, from restaurants to shops to hotels, that, in a TikTok-ified world of SEO-motivated, AI-generated travel guides, has become a valuable resource—if you know where to look. Petrarca is just one of many people who either make travel docs, or swear by them. “This is my Roman Empire,” Emma Bates, a 31-year-old from New York, says of her New York City doc that she’s been updating and perfecting over the past eight years. At any given time, docs like Petrarca’s and Bates’ are being sourced, edited, and passed among friends of friends looking to get something more authentic out of their vacations than the traditional tourist hit lists. The types vary, from Google Maps lists that give a visual perspective into where to find the best spots to a mysterious Microsoft Word Document of Paris recs that’s been passed through so many people, no one knows who first made it. By and large, both doc-makers and doc-users came to docs for the same reason. “I got so sick of people going to London and complaining about not having a good time and telling me where they went, and it was some stiff place that got a high rating from a boomer on Time Out or a bro on The Infatuation,” Mia de Graaf, a 33-year-old from Brooklyn who grew up in the UK, says. Since 2016, she’s put together docs for NYC, London, Mexico City, Paris, and Rotterdam in hopes of steering her friends off the beaten path. The old ways of finding travel recommendations, even those from just a few years ago, are now approached with a heavy dose of skepticism. “Nothing is more embarrassing than waiting for a viral pastry because some influencer said it was yummy after not paying a dime,” Kristen Talman, who lives in DC and travels using docs from friends, says. While a restaurant may get a viral rave or make the top of a website’s must-see list, it’s highly unlikely the curator had a specific reader in mind. Instead, they’re often fighting for maximum clicks or virality, and don’t account for personal taste…”