The BBC Acquires Lonely Planet: Is Independent Travel Dead?
It came as a shock this morning to read about the BBC’s acquisition of travel publisher Lonely Planet.
Part of the shock is very personal — I worked at Lonely Planet for more than a decade, and was its online publisher for many years. I respect the brand, am fond of the people who still work there, and think the world of Lonely Planet’s guidebooks.
I’m also big fan of the BBC. How could you not be? The BBC is one of the world’s most respected media organizations, a leader in news, opinion and analysis. Though this acquisition was undertaken by BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC, there’s no reason to think that Lonely Planet won’t receive a massive boost from integration with the BBC.
Or will it?
Tony and Maureen Wheeler, the legendary founders of Lonely Planet, spent their professional lives building Lonely Planet into a trusted, authoritative publisher of independent travel advice. Lonely Planet’s success for many years was a direct result of its ‘backpacker’ spirit. Unlike Fodor’s and Frommer’s and countless other guidebook publishers, Lonely Planet succeeded thanks to its outsider status. Holding a Lonely Planet guidebook in your hands was akin to having a savvy local guide you through the back alleys and off-the-beaten-path sections of any destination.
For most of 30 years, the Lonely Planet model worked well. Generations of travelers to Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, and Central and South America were raised on Lonely Planet. The company created an incredibly loyal following. It was one of the first travel publishers on the web, and its Thorn Tree bulletin boards set the standard for peer-to-peer communication and social networking — and that was in the mid-1990s, nearly a decade before the likes of Myspace and Facebook. (The fact that the Thorn Tree hasn’t changed all that much since the mid-1990s is a topic for another day…)
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| The Lonely Planet website, circa 1996 |
Even so, it was not surprising to read the quotes from Tony Wheeler discussing the rationale behind the sale. “All media are in transition, and while guidebooks are not in decline, their growth is not as strong as they have been in the past.”
In other words, now is not a good time to be in the business of making books. Travel publishers are lucky if they can make a return of 8 - 10%. (Have you seen what Google’s return is? Let’s just say it’s a wee bit higher than 10%. Ditto with Yahoo and Myspace and Facebook…)
So what about the web, what about Lonely Planet’s early lead with its website and digital content?
The stark reality is, Lonely Planet could never afford to keep up. Independent travelers who came of age in the 1970s and ’80s are now all grown up and don’t travel as much (or much like) they once did. So Lonely Planet has been forced to compete for the current generation of travelers — and these kids most certainly don’t use guidebooks, at least not like their parents. They’re an online bunch, planning trips based on feedback from friends in real-time, thanks to social networking websites and the ongoing migration of information and media to digital distribution outlets.
In this context, Lonely Planet’s 4.3 million monthly unique visitors is unimpressive. Not compared to any of a dozen websites where today’s teens and 20-somethings spend the majority of their time. For a brand with Lonely Planet’s global reach, 4.3 million monthly visitors is anemic.
Which is why the Wheelers decided to sell. They knew their company was on the verge of permanent second-class status in the online world. And without a massive influx of investment, there was no chance to catch up.
So on the whole, I think the acquisition is a fine thing. Except that it probably signals the fading days, the twilight years, of the truly independent global traveler. As soon as the BBC publishes a glossy Lonely Planet magazine and revamps the online business strategy, say bye-bye to the Lonely Planet we all know and love. I’m sure that this new Lonely Planet will be great. But let’s not kid ourselves. A Lonely Planet owned by the BBC isn’t going to be as interested in the $1 food stand, the $5 bed, the free happy hour. It will focus on the mid-range, because that’s where the margins are. That’s what sells ad space.
And it will end up outsourcing its community and global traveler-to-traveler network to the BBC’s accomplished technology team. I’m sure this will do wonders for the Lonely Planet web experience. However ownership by a large corporation that ultimately is accountable to a Parliament – rather than to a CEO — is unlikely to nurture the independent, off-center, low cost and pleasantly ironic attitude that made Lonely Planet famous.
I’m a betting person, so let me make this bet public: the new Lonely Planet will be a lot more UK-centric, a lot more slick, and a lot more focused on the same things that the rest of the struggling travel-media industry focuses on. Namely on television content and websites pushing an “extreme travel” philosophy (read my rant about that alarming trend in travel), on character-driven reality programming along the lines of Big Brother and Real World, and on a slew of cross-media efforts aimed at developing a brand-positive crop of youthful travel personalities.
There’s nothing overtly wrong with these changes in focus. Certainly not from a business perspective. But it’s a different sort of Lonely Planet, and it will not make the world more accessible or interesting for the endangered traveler independensus.
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October 1st, 2007 at 9:05 pm
So who is left? Moon? Footprint guides? Is there anything “independent” truly left in the travel world? I think it’s a shame that Lonely Planet has sold to the BBC. They’re the last true company that means anything in the travel guidebook world.
October 2nd, 2007 at 8:15 am
You know the end will be near when they start to talk about cruises….that’s a sure sign they’ve lost it.
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:31 pm
It has been a long time since I have considered the Lonely Planet as the guide for independent travellers. You only need to see the impact of a good or bad review on a business or destination. Like a herd of stampeding wildebeests, they leave or flood the newly reviewed businesses without looking back.
This is not so much about the death of their guidebooks - perhaps the ‘traveler independensus’ no longer exists?
October 25th, 2007 at 7:58 am
An addendum. And another reason why the Wheelers were forced into this move.
The BBC acquired a 75% stake in Lonely Planet for, reportedly, $100 million.
Microsoft just acquired a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 million.
On the face of it, it looks like the BBC got the better deal. But check back in a year or two; I’ll bet Microsoft’s 1.6% stake will be the better bet.
It’s this sort of scary math that made the Wheelers look around and ask for help. It’s hard to compete these days in the digital space, without seriously deep pockets and talented staff.
December 16th, 2007 at 1:13 am
Scott, I think Lonely Planet have made some other mistakes that have lead to the situation they were in and BBC deal…
Firstly, I think they forgot about that hippy Lonely Planet reader from the 70s that loved them when they backpacked around Asia with Tony and Maureen’s first guides… that readership grew up but they didn’t stop travelling and yet the books didn’t adapt to cater for their needs. I’ve lived in the UAE for 10 years where 80% of the population are foreigners and a third of those are Australian/North American/UK/Europeans with high disposable incomes who love travelling and travel frequently. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had conversations with these people over the years who said they were once Lonely Planet users when they were younger and while some of them still used LP guides it was more out of loyalty than because they actually liked them.
They frequently accused LP of leaving them behind - saying the writing in the guides no longer spoke to them; that most guides still had a backpacker bent, even when they were meant to be ‘best of’s’ focussing on a more discerning market; the choices of restaurants and hotels also lean toward the budget traveller with very few mid-range/high-end choices. These people may have more money and may want a greater degree of comfort when they travel, but it doesn’t mean they’ve lost their interest in travelling independently. I gave this feedback to editors at LP over the years, but they weren’t really interested - most of the editors themselves are very young and they don’t get it either.
So while LP has lost its older readership, I don’t think they’ve completely won over a younger market, as you say. I see so many travellers roaming around the planet with scribbled notes from website and pages printed off the web, and then there are all the travellers who travel with laptops - all ages, everywhere. We were recently at a small guest house in Chiang Mai and almost every guest had a mac - they were answering emails from their balconies and writing blogs by the pool. People travel very differently now to how they did when the Wheelers travelled, or how LP staff travel.
Secondly, I think the constant redesigns and the loss of word counts and therefore the ‘meat’ of the guides has been to their detriment. To be honest, I don’t find LP guides very satisfying anymore… it depends a lot on the authors of the guides but I think generally they’ve lost their depth. Introdutions are shorter, history and culture is shorter, reviews are shorter… Rough Guides’ Contexts section in the back of their books is a far more useful introduction to a place than the stuff at the front of LP books.
Then there’s the issue of the LP website… apart from the thing not working properly in the last year or two… have you tried using Haystack? It’s useless and travellers just aren’t using it. Then there’s Thorn Tree. The LP site may get millions of hits each month but most of their readers are going to Thorn Tree. And have you read some of those threads? Thorn Tree is in a completely different universe to LP. Going by some of the questions, those people don’t even use LP guides, otherwise they wouldn’t be asking questions. And a lot of the time they are actually very critical of the guides, their authors and LP. It’s an odd space to be operated by a major mainstream publisher.
It will be interesting to see where LP goes next. There will almost certainly be an LP magazine and many more LP TV series than they’ve been able to produce in the last few years. LP guidebook content is already being used everywhere anyway, from the LP website to extracts appearing as author’s articles (with their bylines and all) in newspapers around the globe. Apart from the issue of authors not being paid for that repurposing of their work, who wants to see the same article everywhere? Do readers notice these things I wonder? Or is it just us travel writers and industry people.
Apologies for the essay - you’ve raised some really interesting points. Very interesting times ahead for LP I suspect…
December 17th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Lara, no apologies necessary for the long reply. I think I agree with most of your points — the success of the “Encounter” series does indeed suggest that LP can do well with mid-range travelers who aren’t interested in hostels and $1 food stalls. These are books that don’t include any lodging listings, after all — which to me argues that people are hungry for the “LP stamp of approval”, even if their days of backpacking and sleeping in hostels are long, long behind them.
And maybe that’s the crux of the problem — LP never really decided if it was going after the new crop of young travelers and all that implies for its content and online strategies; or going after the existing (but aging) crop of LPers who are incredibly loyal to the brand, but who no longer travel on $20 a day and eat at $1 food stalls, people who no longer care about “big trips on small budgets” but rather are looking for unique trips on a mid-range budget.
Lonely Planet was trying to do both, I think. And that’s not an easy thing to pull off. Clearly LP did not fully succeed.
February 25th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
I have cycled, backpacked, and lived in every country in Latin America over the last two decades, and in that time, I have seen the damage that Lonely Planet has wrought. Small businesses in small towns often live or die by the poorly-researched information these guides give. Other businesses live that deserve to die, because one of LPs writers had a good time there once; never mind the fact that the business-owner might be a crook (or worse!).
The quality of traveller has also worsened over the years and also thanks in part to LP. Like mobs of morons, they go from one point on the gringo trail to the next, dutifully checking off the highlight section in their LP guides, and nauseating the locals.
Regardless of their beginnings, LP is now all image and no substance. Packaging and format are all that matters. As a langauge teacher, I am most appalled by their phrasebooks–page after page of mistakes and bad advice. But people buy them. They buy them because they recognize the logo and are familiar with the format. LP knows this, which is why they constantly repackage the same information.
But take heart. I have noticed that in recent years people are becoming sick of LP and the gringo trail. Travellers, and most encouragingly, younger travellers are turning away from LP and have a negative view of the series.
It makes no difference that LP is now the property of the BBC. This series was dead a long time ago.