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We have an off-topic close reason for price shopping:

Questions on price-shopping for specific goods or services are off-topic as prices and availability change frequently in many locations. See: What is a shopping question?

Yet we seem to allow price-shopping questions (while avoiding other shopping questions). A recent example is this question about finding lodging in Okinawa, which as of this writing has 7 up votes, 0 down votes, and 44 views, which seems to indicate there's a relatively strong consensus that it's a good question.

Is it time to adjust the text for our shopping off-topic text to reflect our enforced policy?

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    Here's the useful part of my comment from the question: The idea of good vs bad shopping questions originates in the Stack Exchange blog post from a couple of years ago titled Q&A is Hard, Let's go Shopping! Reading this will clear up which kinds of shopping questions should not be on the site. Basically subjective recommendation questions, which this is not.
    – hippietrail
    Mar 31, 2014 at 6:13
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    @hippietrail: I agree with that distinction. I just think the off-topic text should probably say that. Anyone would be justified in thinking that your question should be off-topic if they only read that text.
    – Flimzy
    Mar 31, 2014 at 6:22
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    Yes exactly. I just wanted the link and reasoning to be here for other people to be able to check too.
    – hippietrail
    Mar 31, 2014 at 6:23

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Yes, at the very least adding a link to Q&A is Hard, Let's Go Shopping! would be helpful.

Possibly instead of the link to What is a shopping question? because the Accepted answer there (+10/-1), I believe from a Community Mod at the time, does not to me seem fully to reflect current practice and convention. In particular:

If your question is more about acquiring x than it is about what you're going to do with x as part of your travels, then it's generally not going to be a good fit for the site.

whereas subsequent to the above we have Rule 2: Don't judge people's motivations for traveling and many Open questions (eg Cost-effective solution to get to work by train in the UK?) despite:

If a local might have the same question, then it's not a travel-related question.

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