When you’re next heading off on a city break, don’t just reach for the same old Rough Guide or Time Out. The rapid growth of guidebook publishing has produced a new breed: niche guides. One may deal exclusively with shopping, another with art history, designer hotels or trendy bars. You get the gist: to find one tailored to your tastes, read on.

LUXE CITY GUIDES

Wafer-thin guides for well-heeled label and lounge junkies. These neat cigar-packet-sized foldouts cover 20 cities in Asia, Europe and Australia, including Hong Kong, Hanoi, Madrid, Paris, Rome and Sydney. There’s no room for photos or maps, just tightly packed prose telling you where best to splash your cash.

Nifty: highly opinionated, irreverent and fun, this series squeezes a welter of punchy tips into a small space. Aimed at high-end travellers, its recommendations are bang on the money, and updated biannually. Expect juicy tips on hotels, restaurants, high teas, bars, clubs, spas, activities, art and shopping.

Naff: watch out for lapses into achingly hip buddy-speak. Of Hong Kong Island’s skyline at night, the guide says it “yanks New York’s shorts down and whups its butt, hard”. Indeed?

www.luxecityguides.com; £4.99

PALLAS GUIDES

Weighty, well-written guides for serious lovers of art and history. The 28 current titles cover an eccentric patchwork of destinations, including Rome, Poland and the West Country, with Laos, Libya and Sri Lanka on the way. There’s also the smaller-format, more accessible For Pleasure series, which started with the acclaimed Venice for Pleasure and now includes Madrid, Lille and Brussels, with more to come.

Nifty: fascinating stuff, even if you never leave your study – if you do, it’s like exploring in the company of an eccentric don. Rome has 10 suggested walks over its 700 pages, for example, each knowledgably and amiably guided, with lots of precise maps. The style is superbly idiosyncratic.

Naff: tricky to use if you don’t want to follow the themed walks, and there is scant info on places to stay or eat.

www.pallasathene.co.uk; from £5.95 to £19.99

WHERE TO WEAR

Comprehensive shopping guides for both the brand-bragger and bargain-hunter. Nine so far, covering London, Italy, Paris, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Florida and Australia.

Nifty: whether you’re seeking out Gap or Gucci, they’re packed with the information you need. There’s an entertaining intro for each shop, plus opening times, addresses and websites. It’s all cross-referenced, so you can find a shop by name, type or area. There are restaurant listings as well, and a fun glossary of fashion-speak.

Naff: it’s a shame that the shops aren’t mapped.

www.wheretowear.com; £9.99

WALLPAPER CITY GUIDES

Pocket-sized style guides for the design-conscious traveller. These lightweight, easy-to-use booklets cover 30 cities, with all the big-hitting style centres you’d expect, from Buenos Aires to Barcelona, Shanghai to Stockholm. Latest additions include Lisbon, Athens, St Petersburg and Cape Town.

Nifty: Wallpaper fits a mouthwatering taster of a city’s most delicious designs into 100 pages. Photo shoots of interiors and architecture take up more space than the reviews, which are pared down to just a few words for the most stylish bars, restaurants, shops and hotels; they also tip you off on the best rooms to bag.

Naff: the mini maps are too stylised to be useful, and beware the moody photography, which catches every interior’s best side.

www.phaidon.com/travel; £4.95

EVERYMAN MAPGUIDES

Featherweight mapguides for the spatially challenged. There are more than 50 titles in the series: good coverage of Europe, plus a few cities in the States and Far East. Bangkok, Boston, Seville, Valencia and Vienna have recently been published.

Nifty: no more flicking through guidebooks in a street-side struggle to match a museum on page 34 with a restaurant on page 92. Each guide divides a city into six to eight maps, which fold out in the style of a pop-up book. On the map is information on the local sights, restaurants, shops, bars and clubs, all solidly researched. There’s a city-wide hotel section at the back.

Naff: the individual recommendations aren’t actually marked on the map – you are given an address and a grid reference instead. Pity.

No website; £5.99

HEDONIST’S GUIDES

Practical pictorial guides for those out to spoil themselves on any budget. There are 15 titles so far, covering European cities, Miami, Beirut and Marrakesh. Buenos Aires will be next.

Nifty: these medium-sized, 200-page guides strike a good balance between words and pictures, with every hotel, restaurant, bar and club having a detailed description and a small photo, plus a handy marking out of 10 for style, atmosphere and location. The selection of venues is reliable, and while it leans towards the top end, there’s a refreshing smattering of cheap eats, budget stays and earthy clubbing, too.

Naff: paperback-sized but in hardback, so too big for most pockets. The text on sightseeing is sketchy at best.

www.hg2.com; £13.99

COOL SHOPS, COOL SPOTS AND COOL RESTAURANTS

Picture-based shop, sight and restaurant guides for people who see looks as everything. There are 35 Cool Restaurants guides, including London, Paris, LA, Chicago and Shanghai; 11 Cool Shops titles, including New York, Tokyo and Berlin; and five of the recently launched Cool Spots series – Salzburg, Mallorca, Côte d’Azur, Las Vegas and Miami.

Nifty: the high-quality paper means the 30 featured restaurants (or shops or spots) in each city really leap off the page, with at least two or three full-page pictures for each. If you like the look, then it’s assumed you’ll like the experience, as it’s just barebones listings of address, telephone number, website, opening hours, cuisine and price per head for the restaurants.

Naff: buying three guides for a city weighs in at almost £30.

www.teneues.com; £9.95

CULTURE SMART

Pocket guides to culture and etiquette for the first-timer or the sensitive. The small, 170-page books cover more than 40 countries across Europe, the Americas and the Far East, plus South Africa, Morocco, Botswana, Israel and India. Latest additions are Austria, Chile, Guatemala and Indonesia.

Nifty: simply written and fun, they guide you through history, values and attitudes. The emphasis is on understanding what makes a society tick and avoiding gaffes. Don’t lean on someone’s car in Germany, don’t talk with your mouth full in Italy, don’t rush through the centre of a long house in Borneo – that sort of thing.

Naff: some advice is banal. In Thailand, a person’s spirit is believed to reside in the head, so try not to “sit or tread on someone’s hat”. Well I never.

www.kuperard.co.uk/culturesmart; £6.95

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