CASE STUDY 2 The ‘Lonely Planet’ Phenomenon In the past 30 years or so, the travel media has grown dramatically, worldwide, both mirroring and stimulating, the huge increase in international travel we have seen since the 1970s. The field of travel media now encompasses guidebooks, web sites, magazines, specialist shows on terrestrial and satellite television, radio programmes, and travel writing. In recent decades, there has been, specifically, a huge growth in the number of guidebooks. At the same time, there has been a change in the nature of guidebooks, with the development of new types of guidebooks. The ‘traditional’ type of guidebooks, such as Baedecker, Michelin Green Guides, and Hachette Guides Bleues, were aimed at the serious cultural and sightseeing tourist. They were targeted primarily at the mid- to upper-market relatively well-educated tourist, probably touring an area by car. They focused on historic sites and were largely factual with little or no subjective comment about aspects of the destination such as ambiance, nightlife, and so on. Other, often associated, guidebooks also gave hotel and restaurant recommendations, such as the Michelin Red Guides. Again, these tended to focus on mid- to upper-market travellers. Then, to add to these largely European guidebooks, came new brands designed largely for the US market, such as Fodors and Frommers. These were largely geared to the needs of middle-market travellers on a limited, but not shoestring budget. However, the 1960s saw the rise of a new phenomenon of international tourist, the independent long-haul traveller on a low budget – the ‘backpacker’. Unlike traditional tourists, this person tended to be younger and took trips with a relatively long duration but with low daily expenditure. A particularly popular trip with these tourists is the overland route from Europe to/from Australia via Asia. While these tourists revelled in their image as free spirits, travellers not tourists, on personal adventures, they needed information to help them visit places with which they were unfamiliar. From the 1960s onwards, a new generation of guidebooks began to develop to meet the needs of these new tourists. Lonely Planet was one of the first in the field, a pioneer, which has since become a ‘cornerstone’ of the modern travel media. It was certainly the first European-based guidebook series aimed at this new market. The Lonely Planet organization Lonely Planet began in the early 1970s when two adventurous travellers, Tony and Maureen Wheeler, made an epic overland journey from London through Asia to Australia. In 1973 they published a guide to their journey called ‘Across Asia on the Cheap’, and so ‘Lonely Planet’ was formed, an organization which the company, on its web site, describes as ‘the world’s leading independent travel publisher’. 47 International Cases in Tourism Management The Wheelers are still the owners of Lonely Planet and they are still travelling. They are welleducated, highly articulate people. Tony Wheeler, for instance, has an MBA and dropped out after university to take the trip with Maureen to Australia. In this, they were typical of the early backpackers of the 1970s. The company web site sets out clearly the mission and principles of Lonely Planet, as follows: Lonely Planet is passionate about bringing people together, about understanding our world, and about people sharing experiences that enrich everyone’s lives. We aim to inspire people to explore, have fun, and travel often. And we strive to provide travellers everywhere with reliable, comprehensive, and independent travel information. Our principles Travel can be a powerful force for tolerance and understanding. As part of a worldwide community of travellers, we want to enable everyone to travel with awareness, respect, and care. The integrity of our information is our strength. We accept no endorsements, advertising, or kickbacks – our authors do not accept payment or favours in return for positive reviews. Source: www.lonelyplanet.com. January 2003 Today, Lonely Planet has over 400 staff, many with backgrounds similar to that of the Wheelers, at their offices in the USA, UK, France and Australia. The range of products and services offered by Lonely Planet today is as far away from the single guidebook of the early 1970s, and includes the following: 1. Guidebooks to regions, individual countries, and cities. The company now claims to publish some 600 guidebooks in 14 languages (February 2003). 2. Thematic guidebooks such as guides to travelling with children, healthy travel, and food and drink in different countries. 3. A series of phrase books to different countries; there is even a 300-page guide to the languages of the USA. 4. A range of books of travel writing from around the world. 5. Travel atlases to several regions of the world. 6. A complex, detailed web site that provides a huge volume of advice for tourists on every aspect of travel to virtually every country in the world, including: – travel to, and around, the destination; – the best times of the year to visit; – attractions; – events; – culture; – practicalities such as currency, visas, and accommodation; – the environment; – further reading and sources of information. 7. The ‘Thorn Tree’ an online bulletin board where travellers can place their experiences. In early 2003 the company claimed that around 5000 new messages were being inserted on this board every day. 8. Special events, meant to promote the Lonely Planet brand. For example, on 11 December 2002 Lonely Planet was promoting an evening in San Francisco where a well-known author would read from his latest book. 9. An online shop selling guides, maps, and travel writers’ books via the Internet. The shops online catalogue has headings for sections which have a distinct travel theme to them including ‘departure lounge’ and ‘the lobby’. 48 The ‘Lonely Planet’ Phenomenon 10. ‘Travel Ticker’ a regularly updated news service about what is happening in destinations around the world. On 31 January 2003 this site featured stories on civil unrest in Venezuela, elections in Israel, anti-American demonstrations in Pakistan, cyclones, and floods in Malawi, winter storms in Europe, and public holidays in Eritrea and India. 11. ‘Postcards’ a site where individual travellers’ experiences are made available to everyone visiting the site. 12. Subway – a site highlighting links to other sites about virtually every destination in the world. However, of all the services offered by Lonely Planet, it is still most famous for its guidebooks. Lonely Planet guidebooks Lonely Planet guidebooks have particular characteristics, as follows: 1. They are written by experienced travellers, usually in teams. They employ more than 200 such authors who write the guides based on their own travel experiences. 2. They combine ‘quirky’ titbits with factual information. 3. They accept no advertising and hotels, restaurants, and attractions cannot pay for inclusion in the editorial sections of the guides. The authors, also, do not accept ‘freebies’ when researching the books. 4. They contain negative as well as positive comments on places and individual businesses. 5. Most of the guides are updated every 2 years. The books tend to have a common structure whether they are talking about a country, a region of the world, or a city, namely: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● facts about the destination, including history, geography, climate, environment, flora and fauna, government, economy, population, arts, religion, and language; facts for the visitor, including everything from visas to tourist offices, currency to health, accommodation to food, dangers and organizations to legal matters. They also include advice to specific groups of travellers, notably gay and lesbian travellers, travellers with disabilities, women travellers, and travellers with children; travel to the destination; travelling around the destination; detailed guides to different areas of the destination; maps; a short section on the language spoken in the destination. Each guide tells the reader about the culture, warns them about how things can change after the book is published, such as prices, and asks people to help them update the guides. The guidebooks tend to be between 200 and 900 pages. Over the years, Lonely Planet guides have changed in a number of ways, as follows: ● ● ● ● the style has become rather more formalized and the humorous cartoons, which were often not very politically correct have generally disappeared; the emphasis on off-the-beaten-track destinations has been replaced by virtually global coverage of Lonely Planet guides, so that they now include mainstream destinations; production values have improved dramatically and Lonely Planet guides are now as professionally produced as any other travel guide; given the rise of the Internet, today’s guides now contain cross-references to the Lonely Planet web site and the many services which it offers. However, Lonely Planet authors still seem to often be from very similar backgrounds to those in the 1970s. They are usually people who have left good jobs, to go travelling and never went home, and 49 International Cases in Tourism Management become ‘professional’ travellers. Or they went travelling after university and never got a ‘proper’ job. Like the Wheelers, some of them are husband and wife, or at least partners. They also still tend not to be nationals of the country they are writing about. For example, the first edition Norway guide was written by an American, the first Syria guide by English, Egyptian and Australian authors, and an American wrote the first Croatia guide. This continues a Lonely Planet tradition, started by the Wheelers. However, the authors usually use local collaborators when writing the books. Many authors have contributed to a number of guides in different parts of the world. Lonely Planet and other guidebooks aimed at similar markets Since its launch, Lonely Planet has inspired the creation of competitors, or forced existing guides to rethink and upgrade including the following: 1. ‘Rough Guides’, started in 1982 by Mark Ellington, a Briton who travelled to Greece after finishing at university. His first guide was an independent travellers guide to Greece. Like Lonely Planet they now have a detailed web site and produce ancillary products such as phrase books. Now they have nearly 200 titles produced by their team of over 100 authors. The story of Rough Guides is, interestingly, placed at the beginning of each Rough Guide. No longer independent, Rough Guides is now part of Penguin Books. 2. ‘Let’s Go’, part of the MacMillan publishing empire today, began in 1960 in the USA, when Harvard University students produced a 20-page guide on budget travel to Europe from the USA. ‘Let’s Go’ has always been aimed at the true budget traveller with a bias towards the vacations of young students. Each guide is updated annually by a team of several hundred researchers. They still have a strong American flavour and an unusual style, with an almost ‘hippie’ feel to them, in places. 3. ‘Trailblazers’, UK-based guides, which tend to focus on trekking trips and adventurous rail journeys. In 2002, their catalogue listed 31 titles, one of which, their guide to the Trans-Siberia Railway, was in its fifth edition. As well as covering attractions they offer very detailed guidance on transport and tend to focus on places which are well off the beaten track. 4. Routard, a French-based guidebook series which is part of the Hachette publishing empire. These guides are frequently updated and are particularly reliable in terms of hotel and restaurant recommendations. They now publish guides to most places in the world and their guides are increasingly being translated into English. They tend to make recommendations for all levels of the market. Guides are updated annually and are supported by a regular newsletter, web site, and Minitel site. In Exhibit 2.1 we compare Lonely Planet with Rough Guides, in relation to their first edition guides to Norway. It appears from this that Lonely Planet guides devote more attention to remote areas such as Svalbard and Roros than Rough Guides but are less concerned with the capital city, Oslo, than their rival (8 per cent of the book versus 14 per cent). Ethical issues and Lonely Planet Guides like Lonely Planet have great influence today on where tourists go and what they do, but with this power have come questions about the ethical dimension of these guidebooks and their influence, as follows: 1. By encouraging tourists to travel ‘off the beaten track’, these guides bring tourism, with its positive economic impacts, but its negative social and environmental effects, to remote areas which are often unprepared for these impacts. 50 The ‘Lonely Planet’ Phenomenon Exhibit 2.1 Lonely Planet and Rough Guide – first edition guides to Norway Date of publication of first edition Length of Guide, in pages, excluding index Number of authors Number of colour photographs Number of maps Number of pages devoted to the following subjects (approximate percentage of book): History of Norway Politics and government Environment Arts including Norwegian literature Flora and Fauna Norwegian language Health Oslo Svalbard Travelling within Norway Number of accommodation recommendations in: Oslo Trondheim Number of restaurants and cafe recommendations in: Bergen Roros Number of attraction recommendations in: Oslo Trondheim Lonely Planet guide to Norway Rough Guide to Norway 1999 438 1 American female 36 55 1997 303 2 British males 0 33 9 (2) ⁄2 (1) 6 (1.5) 6 1⁄2 (1.5) 6 (1.5) 6 1⁄2 (1.5) 3 1⁄2 (1) 33 (8) 18 1⁄2 (4) 10 (2) 14 1⁄2 (5) ⁄2 (1) 1 (1) 1 (1) 2 (1) 2 (1) 1 (1) 45 (14) 2 1⁄2 (1) 6 (2) 24 10 24 9 29 8 10 3 38 16 37 11 1 1 2. Given they are followed closely by tourists they can create ‘honey-pot’ destinations or attractions, which become overcrowded or dominated by foreign tourists. 3. While they can bring great benefits to business as they mention, they can deny business to any enterprise they do not mention or comment on negatively. 4. They are open to accusations of ‘imperialism’ because they tend to be written by writers who are from developed countries often writing about developing countries where they were not born. Clearly these authors know the markets from which the tourists come well, which is an advantage, but they can never have the local knowledge and understanding of an indigenous person. 5. Companies like Lonely Planet are often criticized for providing guides that encourage people to visit countries with totalitarian governments. Lonely Planet takes such criticism seriously so that its web site, for example, makes tourists aware of the arguments against visiting Myanmar – for which it publishes a guide – as well as those in favour. 6. Lonely Planet is often accused of having too many male authors and too few female authors. It defends itself against such charges by saying it is recruiting more female writers and by saying that each of its guides devotes a page to the specific needs of women travellers. 7. Some claim companies like Lonely Planet have just become part of the mainstream publishing world, producing guides to all destinations, not just those favoured by independent long-haul travellers or backpackers. They are sometimes accused of forgetting their original principles 51 International Cases in Tourism Management and just exploiting their reputation for commercial gain. This shows the tension which can exist when a small informal operation with a strong sense of mission grows and matures and has to adapt to the business world in order to survive.ey Issues Key issues ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● The appearance of a new generation of guidebooks, including Lonely Planet, between the 1960s and 1980s, was a result of the rise of independent travel in general, and backpacking, specifically. Most guidebooks such as Lonely Planet were started by individuals, who were often themselves, independent travellers, searching for an alternative to normal employment and the everyday lifestyle of their own countries. Almost all the guidebooks – and there are other examples in Europe, and Japan – originate from the so-called developed countries. Most companies like Lonely Planet have grown and expanded their business to include web sites. Most companies now produce a wide variety of guides to mainstream, as well as ‘off-the-beatentrack’ destinations. The guidebooks, like Lonely Planet, have very loyal readers who follow them, almost religiously, when on their travels. The different brands of guidebooks have things in common but also have distinctive characteristics. The guidebooks raise a number of ethical issues and are often thought to be making it more difficult to achieve sustainable tourism by encouraging tourists to visit remote places where they will cause drastic socio-cultural change, and by promoting particular places so that overcrowding occurs. On the other hand, they do try to educate tourists about the culture and environmental issues in the destination. Guides like Lonely Planet, through their web sites, have created opportunities for travellers to interact with them and with each other. Conclusion Lonely Planet is, perhaps, the most successful of the modern generation of travel publications. It has expanded its operations over the years to the point at which it is a complex, multi-faceted organization, with a plethora of products and services. Their activities can attract criticism, but in general, they appear to be well thought of by travellers and have been major factor in the growth of independent travel. Discussion points and exercises 1. Critically evaluate the reasons behind the success of Lonely Planet. 2. Compare and contrast Lonely Planet guides with traditional guidebooks such as Blue Guides, Michelin and Frommer. 3. Discuss the ways in which guides such as Lonely Planet aid or hamper the development of more sustainable forms of tourism. 4. Select a destination with which you are familiar, or which you can visit. You should then research the destination and/or draw on your personal experiences of it as a tourist, to produce a short guide to it, for the benefit of one of the following markets: – backpackers, – families, – adventure tourists. 52 Read Case Study 2, The "Lonely Planet", in the International Cases in Tourism Management, and answer the final review question. Select a destination that you are familiar with. Research the destination and draw from your experiences as a tourist, whether business, pleasure, or both, to produce a 1200 word (minimum) guide highlighting specific attractions, amenities, or services for tourists specifically directed to the listed markets. Consider the following statement and answer the listed questions. "The preservation of cultural heritage and rural communities' well-being is as important as the conservation of environmental resources" (Novelli, 2004, p. 344). 1. How is this sentiment demonstrated in the case study? 2. What is another example of an event preserving the heritage well-being as well as conservation of resources? (Note the format of the reference entry for the book and whose name is used as the author) Novelli, M. (2004). Wine tourism events: Apulia, Italy. In Yeoman, I. (Ed.) Festival and events management: An international arts and culture perspective (pp 329-345). Retrieved from http://lib.myilibrary.com?ID=105246 For this discussion thread, you will provide an outline draft of your term project (reference term project details under "Course Guidance" in Lessons). In this outline, or a summary is acceptable, you will establish a possible thesis statement, an area of focus, and a forecast of the findings/results of the analysis. The area of focus could be technology, economy, political affairs, any other justifiable influence on the industry, or any combination thereof. Keep in mind that a broader focus will necessitate a longer paper in order to properly define, analyze, and discuss each element. The outline will show your reasoning for why you selected that area of focus. Briefly explain the significance of the focus, provide a determination of influence on or from globalization or destination management, and define the relationship to planning and management of events. Limit your explanation to two paragraphs or a bullet point outline. Consider some of the topics of discussion that have come up during the first few weeks. Completion of this exercise will be 5% of the overall grade of the term project. In week five, you will be required to discuss three individual references and how they relate to your project. The discussion in week five will also factor into your overall grade for the project. Example outline Thesis Statement: Significance: Focus points: Focus A: (segment for each point identified above) Significance: (determination of influence) Relevance: (relation to planning events) Possible reference source: Forecast: Read Case Study 2, The "Lonely Planet", in the International Cases in Tourism Management, and answer the final review question. Select a destination that you are familiar with. Research the destination and draw from your experiences as a tourist, whether business, pleasure, or both, to produce a 1200 word (minimum) guide highlighting specific attractions, amenities, or services for tourists specifically directed to the listed markets. Consider the following statement and answer the listed questions. "The preservation of cultural heritage and rural communities' well-being is as important as the conservation of environmental resources" (Novelli, 2004, p. 344). 1. How is this sentiment demonstrated in the case study? 2. What is another example of an event preserving the heritage well-being as well as conservation of resources? (Note the format of the reference entry for the book and whose name is used as the author) Novelli, M. (2004). Wine tourism events: Apulia, Italy. In Yeoman, I. (Ed.) Festival and events management: An international arts and culture perspective (pp 329-345). Retrieved from http://lib.myilibrary.com?ID=105246 For this discussion thread, you will provide an outline draft of your term project (reference term project details under "Course Guidance" in Lessons). In this outline, or a summary is acceptable, you will establish a possible thesis statement, an area of focus, and a forecast of the findings/results of the analysis. The area of focus could be technology, economy, political affairs, any other justifiable influence on the industry, or any combination thereof. Keep in mind that a broader focus will necessitate a longer paper in order to properly define, analyze, and discuss each element. The outline will show your reasoning for why you selected that area of focus. Briefly explain the significance of the focus, provide a determination of influence on or from globalization or destination management, and define the relationship to planning and management of events. Limit your explanation to two paragraphs or a bullet point outline. Consider some of the topics of discussion that have come up during the first few weeks. Completion of this exercise will be 5% of the overall grade of the term project. In week five, you will be required to discuss three individual references and how they relate to your project. The discussion in week five will also factor into your overall grade for the project. Example outline Thesis Statement: Significance: Focus points: Focus A: (segment for each point identified above) Significance: (determination of influence) Relevance: (relation to planning events) Possible reference source: Forecast: In attracting visitors to your chosen community, describe what sort of special event opportunities would you consider for your community. Include a description of your community and what facilities or natural attractions are nearby. The writing should identify and explain two different events that could be hosted within your community. Describe how you would encourage attendance as an event planner and determine if and from whom you would seek sponsorship. If you decide sponsorship is not applicable, explain why. The writing should also identify planning tools that will be used. 
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