Does anyone still research the place they're heading to before they travel?

'Is it hot in Dubai?', 'Do you know when Ramadan is?' and 'Am I right in thinking that as an Arab country there are some booze restrictions?' were just some of the questions asked of me by readers of the NineMSN Travel site during a live chat, that went hand-in-hand with our Dubai Insider’s Guide. It was fun to interact with people and give advice, because we rarely get to communicate with readers of our books and articles. The 'live' element was challenging. Several minutes before the designated start, a few messages popped up before I was bombarded with multiple Messenger boxes on my screen. Because I didn’t want to lose anyone, I jumped between boxes: 'Hi! How are you? Hang on please, I’ll get to you in a moment…” and then jumped back to the first person in queue. I fielded questions from 30 people in 60 minutes, and only lost four, which I thought was pretty good. There were specific questions like: 'I'm flying to London from Sydney later in the month and was planning to have a night or two in Dubai... what would be your top five things to do including two great places to eat? and 'If you were planning a holiday to Dubai, for 2 weeks say, how much spending money would be required and how much would 4* hotel be?' Readers asked about everything from the language spoken to safety issues for women - and Australians. One person wrote '... just wondering what image of Dubai to believe – that it's a nice holiday venue with good weather and facilities, or a building site packed with c-list celebs on free holidays given to them to boost exposure and tourism?' Good question. The exercise raised a lot of questions for me as a travel writer: Do people still do research before they travel? Or is pre-trip research a thing of the past? Will any of these people buy my guidebooks to Dubai before they go? And why haven’t they bought one by now? Or do travellers these days mainly rely on the Internet for their information, whether its TripAdvisor, Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree or MSNTravel’s live chats? If so, will they have a less enjoyable or less meaningful time than if they did some real research and took a guidebook? Why am I even spending 18 hours a day writing guidebooks? Maybe I should become a ‘live chat host’ instead?