Travel Inspiration

In sad news to the travel industry, the last Lonely Planet editions have been already authored as travelers prepare to say a teary goodbye to the stalwart source of smalltalk between strangers in foreign countries.

Mediaisdying reports that the travel guide company Lonely Planet will cease publishing at the end of 2009. It seems with updated information being readily available online the BBC owned operation no longer foresaw profits for their iconic series of books. Sales have steadily decreased despite the company’s best efforts to paint any possible destination as a ‘marvelous land of contrasts.’

Also, despite the instructions of the publisher to the writers to phrase their bits of history and trivia in ‘as bland and universally-appreciated as possible’, the bottom seems to have fallen out of the market.

Naturally, the economic crisis played a defining role in the collapse. With the number of international trips way down, travelers have made cutbacks on the items they have been purchasing.

Joe Arpit, an American visiting Laos, tells us that when it came down to preparation, he “just packed the yellow pages instead” of a guidebook.

Costs have been running high at Lonely Planet as they have maintained their line of guides encompassing 750 countries throughout the world. Although they cut the requirement that the travel guide authors actually go to their destinations back in the eighties, the fact that they were still obliged to pay something to researchers turned out to be unsustainable.

Co-founder Tony Wheeler, in a brief interlude from his perpetual series of poolside Thai massages, provided hints about the move during an interview early last year with Vanity Fair.

“Lonely Planet books? We’re actually still around?”

A spokesman at the BBC stated that the American division will be seeking emergency loans in a form of a stimulus package to try and keep the books in print.

“If they’ll give billions of dollars to build Hummers, surely they’re willing to give us a few million so that Detroit can be depicted in our guides as ‘a bustling metropolis with buckets of local character’,” PR representative Herb Bowmont stated.

Herb went on to state that in the future the company will focus on online operations, and that Lonely Planet Labs is currently developing a new form of nano, eco, solar guidebook that costs under $5 and dispenses microloans called the iMhere:

The new form of guidebook is expected to go on sale in the summer of 2010.

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