The Demise of an Empire: How Lonely Planet stopped serving the very people it was created for

Lonely Planet used to tell you how to change money on the black market. Now it tells you the top 10 most Instagrammable cafés. That shift tells you everything about what happened to travel.

I’ve been seeing a lot of nostalgic content talking about the golden era of independent travel and lamenting the rise of influencers, while wistfully longing for a bygone era of travel. I travelled extensively from the analogue days of 1999, through the early 2000’s rise of the internet and saw how it shaped the way in which we travel.

In 2006, I was on a train bound for Niš, Serbia, flicking through the pages of the Western Balkans Lonely Planet. I realised the train was stopping in Sofia, Bulgaria, much closer to Macedonia than Niš was. Looking at the map in the guidebook and quickly checking the border crossing information, I figured if we jumped off the train here, we could hop a bus to the border and be in Skopje, Macedonia by nightfall. Armed with the bravado one can only obtain from the pages of a Lonely Planet, I convinced my travel partner, Leo, to abandon our rather expensive €53 tickets and cosy private cabin for an unknown bus ride.

Back then, the Lonely Planet was still under the Wheelers’ wing. It started in 1973 as a 94-page guide outlining how Maureen and Tony Wheeler made it across Asia cheaply in 1972. This was the first publication of what would become the Lonely Planet empire. Maureen typed up the text while Tony drew the detailed maps. They got a friend to print it for them, and they stapled the pages together, put on a distinctive blue cardboard cover - one that would become synonymous with the brand and sold Across Asia on the Cheap for $1.80 AUD. This edition went on to be known as West Asia on a Shoestring and is one of the three books that inspired my travels. By 1999, the Lonely Planet empire had sold over 30 million copies of carefully researched destinations that other guidebooks overlooked. These publications were full of helpful tips, solid background information, detailed maps, witty writing, and the odd, slightly questionable entry on black markets or circumventing regulations. It was the information Tony and Maureen set out to share, in the same style, now just with more up-to-date facts and a better cover.

When I left on my ambitious - or crazy, depending on who you talk to - trip from Kathmandu to Istanbul, I carried one of the newer publications. Only three years earlier, Lonely Planet had released the first in a series called Classic Overland Routes, Istanbul to Kathmandu, which was published in June 2001. This annotated book became my constant companion over the eight months it took me to complete the route. While there were many instances where I ventured literally and figuratively off the map, the information in this guide always helped me recentre myself. It acted like a compass leading travellers to designated meeting spots and helped me figure out how to get from A to B, even if it usually included a detour via C and G.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the juggernaut that was Lonely Planet was at its peak. Unsurprisingly, this coincided with the heyday of independent backpacking. In a time before smartphones and social media, when the internet was in its infancy or perhaps preschool years, this publication served as a primary source of information on more remote regions. It gave a good rundown on the geography, culture, things to do and what to eat. Most importantly, though, were the recommendations of places to stay. In an age where first-hand information was currency, you wanted to stay at one of the Lonely Planet recommended places, not to avoid bed-bugs or get a good price, but rather to find other backpackers who had just crossed a border you were heading for, or a place that wasn’t even in your guidebook. The social network of tips and information that flowed through the dorms and communal areas of Lonely Planet recommended accommodation was what you came for. That and the nuggets of information that could be mined like precious stones from the pages of the guestbooks. In an age before social media, the Lonely Planet was THE information source.

The book that helped launch the project of weaving together an overland route from Inverness to Singapore.

Then things changed. With the rise of the internet, travel, like the rest of society, was influenced by an almost instant stream of information. To begin with, it was great. Lonely Planet had its Thorn Tree Forum, and other sites were popping up all the time with more accurate information about border closures. More recommendations on where to find vegetarian food on the road. But the cost of this easily accessible information was the steady decline of the traveller’s social network. I caught the early signals in 2008-2009 while backpacking in South India - the pivot from checking emails to Facebook updates. Then I sat out most of the 2010s. By the time I returned to Southeast Asia in 2019, Instagram had transformed everything. No longer were people sharing pictures from their trips; now they were optimising filters and staging photos like a curated ad campaign. We went from selectively documenting experiences on expensive film, sharing them with digital cameras and Facebook, to manufacturing them just to capture them on our phones for content consumption.

By the time I really felt it was 2019. Instagram was full of curated Southeast Asian beaches and infinity pool pics. I had used Hostelworld to book my first night in Bangkok (which I ended up extending to five as I liked the place so much), but had gone old school in Trang. I just rocked up to one of the few places listed in the Lonely Planet and booked a bed in a 12-person shared dorm.

However, it was in Penang that this changing landscape became very apparent. I’d book one night on Hostelworld again, but decided to stay on, so I went to reception to extend my stay, only to be told I needed to use the app to book another night. I was so confused. The hostel didn’t want me to book through them; I needed to use a third-party app. Looking back, this was the signal that the heyday of travel as I knew it was over. I was already disillusioned by the colourful pictures and lack of substance in the new Lonely Planet I had for this trip - Southeast Asia. While it covered the area and provided some language, food, cultural and geographical information, it read like a glossy magazine. Where the pages had once been full of densely packed information about transiting borders and logistics on how to get around on public transport. The pages were now mostly photos and editorially displayed lists like the five best island experiences.

It seems the decline and collapse of the empire happened when I wasn’t even looking. Maybe Tony caught a whiff of things to come, and in 2007, he cashed up, selling Lonely Planet to the BBC for a tidy sum. Interestingly, this coincides with the last publication of the Pakistan guidebook, which was probably already in the works when the sale was finalised. Twenty-seven years after its first release, the seventh edition became the last Pakistan Lonely Planet published.

This heralded a philosophical shift from producing guidebooks for independent travellers heading for remote areas not covered by contemporary books like Fodor’s or Frommer’s, to focusing more on expanding their offerings in the lucrative markets of Europe, South America and Australasia. Perhaps it was not profitable, maybe there had been a steep decline in travellers to those areas, or maybe independent travellers were no longer the company’s focus; now the Wheelers weren’t at the helm. Whatever the reason, as Instagram selfies and the age of the travel vloggers bloomed, so did the demise of Lonely Planet. All I know is that when I head off for Pakistan in a few months, I will be taking the 2008 Lonely Planet with me. It may be out of date, but its legacy will live on - I’ll just annotate the hell out of it.

What’s your go-to source for travel info now? Are you still rolling with Lonely Planet, or have you moved on? Drop it in the comments.

Travel now, much like the Lonely Planet, seems focused on curated images and scenic places to queue up and be amongst the hordes there to snap the perfect selfie. We even have a name for it: ‘ Instagrammable sights’ and a whole vocabulary built around this industry. Where a quick search produces listicles of the ‘Top 10 Most Instagrammable Sights’ - where Golden Bridge in Ba Na Hills, Cappadocia balloons, and a tree at Lake Tekapo rate highly, complete with their own trending hashtags. At some point, backpacking became a curated experience. Travel has always had an element of commodification with package tours and resorts, but now even independent backpacking has fallen prey. The demise of the Lonely Planet is just a symptom. It sits alongside hostels that prioritise co-working spaces and yoga classes over cheap beds and common rooms to share information. But that is it, isn’t it? The real crux of this issue. The social network of independent budget travel, of having to save up and travel on a shoestring to make that finite amount of cash last, is gone and with it, perhaps the idea that travel is about getting out of your comfort zone and making friends with strangers and experiencing raw, unfiltered life, not consumable content.

Once considered the independent traveller’s bible, now not much better than a coffee table book highlighting the ‘Top 10’ listicles of each destination. The Lonely Planet’s rise and fall mirrors that of the ‘Golden Era’ of travel. The empire has fallen - taking independent budget travel with it. But some of us are still out here, carrying battered mid-2000s guidebooks like relics. Following the old maps, intent on finding the least Instagrammed places, I am still drawn to the space just off the edge of the map.

New here? This is all part of a 27-year overland journey from Inverness to Singapore, documented through Between the Dots. Start here to see the full map.