Lonely Planet published its first book in 1973 in response to the numerous `How did you do it?' questions Maureen and Tony Wheeler
were asked after driving, busing, hitching, sailing and railing their way from England to Australia.
Maureen and Tony Wheeler with Lonely Planet's first guide, Across Asia on the Cheap (13k)
Written at a kitchen table and collated, trimmed and stapled by hand, Across Asia on the Cheap became an instant local bestseller, inspiring thoughts of another book.
Eighteen months in South-East Asia resulted in a second guide, South-East Asia on a shoestring, which Maureen and Tony put together in a backstreet hotel in Singapore in 1975. The `yellow bible', as it quickly became known to travellers, soon became the guide to the region. The book has sold well over half a million copies and is now in its ninth edition, still with a lairy yellow cover.
Today there are about 200 Lonely Planet titles in print - books that have the same adventurous approach to travel as those early guides; books that `assume you know how to get your luggage off the carousel', as one reviewer put it.
Lonely Planet users are now swinging their luggage off the carousel in five continents. They're also stepping out with our walking guides, exercising the compass with our atlases, saying it in French, Quechua, Pidgin, Mandarin and more with our phrasebooks and kicking back for the ride with our Journeys series of travel literature. Future hardcopy projects include a series of diving guides. On the small screen, Lonely Planet has been working with Pilot Productions to bring the books to life. On-line, we've got an AOL service (keyword LP) as well as the website that you're juicing right now.
Tony and Maureen still travel for several months of each year and play an active part in the writing, updating and quality control of Lonely Planet's guides. They have been joined by around 200 authors, and 200 staff at offices in Melbourne, Oakland (California), Paris and London. Travellers themselves also make a valuable contribution to the guides through the feedback we receive in thousands of letters and emails each year.
The people at Lonely Planet strongly believe that travellers can make a positive contribution to the countries they visit, both through their appreciation of the countries' culture, wildlife and natural features, and through the money they spend. Lonely Planet makes a direct contribution to the countries and regions it covers by donating a percentage of the income from each book to ventures such as famine relief in Africa, aid projects in India, agricultural projects in Central America, Greenpeace's efforts to halt French nuclear testing in the Pacific, and Amnesty International.
Lonely Planet's basic travel philosophy is summed up in Tony Wheeler's comment, `Don't worry about whether your trip will work out. Just go!'.