When I was a kid, “Quantum Leap” was one of my favorite TV shows. Its conceit was ludicrous, but in a way that allowed for maximum entertainment: A time-travel experiment gone awry forces the handsome Dr. Sam Beckett to “leap” among different bodies at various points in history. Each episode began with Beckett waking up in a new situation and piecing together the mystery of his surroundings. The show didn’t shy away from serious themes: In one, he wakes up in the body of a woman who has just been raped; in another, he wakes up in the body of a black man in Alabama in the 1950s. “Quantum Leap” has stayed with me all these years, I think, because it offered my young, impressionable mind a framework for normal travel. Arriving in a new place — even if it’s in the same dimension — can be disjointing and chaotic, because each new destination is governed by an invisible set of rules.

Traditional guidebooks have never quite done it for me. Too often they seem to be aimed at a certain type of comfortable, middle-class traveler. And I happen to know intimately that the authors weren’t always the most informed: One of my first paid writing jobs was for a travel-book company, where I penned florid prose about sea turtles in Costa Rica a full three years before I ever set foot in the country.

The rise of the social web promised a new era of personalization for globe-trotting. But like many things born online, as popularity of the new tools increased, efficiency and usefulness began to decrease. Brands and businesses quickly set to figuring out how to manipulate and game the services, and they soon succeeded. Yelp, for example, lost credibility after it was revealed that businesses solicited people to write fake reviews. Foursquare’s recommendations were initially a wealth of insider tips, but advertisers often bought their way into the recommendations, giving chains priority over local businesses. TripAdvisor has a slightly different problem: Its ambit is so broad that its recommendations have come to represent a safe median, a poll of polls. It’s great for making sure a restaurant you want to eat in won’t give you dysentery, but less so for identifying adventures or local secrets.