In Your Pocket City Guides

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In Your Pocket (IYP) is a European city guide publisher and online tourist information provider. As of April 2008 it publishes city guides to 40 destinations and provides free online information to over 50 cities in Europe from Athens to Zagreb, Belfast to Bucharest, Tallinn to Tirana and St. Petersburg to Sofia.

Distributed locally mainly in hotels and newsstands the entire content of the entire guides can also be downloaded from their website free of charge.

The first In Your Pocket city guide, Vilnius In Your Pocket was written in late 1991 by German journalist Matthias Lüfkens and Belgian brothers George, Oliver and Nicolas Ortiz in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Since then the four founders have franchised the In Your Pocket guides in 20 countries covering key tourist capitals as well as obscure off-beat destinations such as Athens, Belfast, Berlin, Braşov, Bucharest, Budapest, Český Krumlov, Derry, Dublin, Dubrovnik, Frankfurt, Gdańsk, Gdynia, Haapsalu, Kaliningrad, Kaunas, Kiev, Klaipėda, Kraków, Leipzig, Liepaja, Łódź, Lviv, Minsk, Munich, Narva, Odessa, Palanga, Pärnu, Peć, Poiana Braşov, Poznan, Prague, Priština, Prizren, Riga, Rijeka, Shkodra, Siauliai, Sofia, Sopot, Saint Petersburg, Tallinn, Tarnów, Tartu, Tirana, Vilnius, Warsaw, Wrocław, Zadar and Zagreb.

In June 2006 In Your Pocket published print and online city guides to all the Football World Cup venues in Germany such as Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hannover, Leipzig, Munich, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Kaiserslautern and Gelsenkirchen.

In November 2006 In Your Pocket published the first English-language guide to Kosovo's capital Priština and Macedonia's capital Skopje. The guides do not have the aim to increase tourism but merely to provide honest, critical information that makes getting around the city easier for newcomers.

The guidebooks - updated every two months - have received much praise in the international media. The International Herald Tribune described them as “an Eastern European publishing phenomenon” [1] and The Times claimed there are “The best guides to Eastern Europe” [2], adding that “the website is a (literally) priceless first stop before your holiday” [3]. The New York Times notes it is “a good all-around information site” [4] and The Independent lists their website among the “ten best travel websites” because “the writers/compilers live locally and the guides are frequently updated” [5]. The Guardian observes that “InYourPocket.com was the first online travel guide to come up with the idea of offering free downloadable city guides in printable (PDF) format.” [6] noting that it “is a brilliant resource written by excellent writers whose slant is always 'off the trail'.” [7] and The Observer says it is “the most reliable source” [8]. The guides are frequently mentioned in traditional guidesbooks such as Lonely Planet, Let’s Go Travel Guides or Rough Guides [9] [10]