Lonely Planet blog

A lonelyplanet.com New Year – what's in it for you?

VivekW Lonely Planet author

Hi everyone,
Vivek here (site editor).
It’s the dead period: the office is nearly empty. So it’s a great time to consider the year ahead for lonelyplanet.com.
We’re really excited about all the new stuff we’re working on. But we know that needs change over time. We think have an idea of what you might want – but we’d…

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Website technology success part 2: the process

Nigel Dalton Lonely Planet author

It is the fantasy of every business sponsor that IT projects might one-day behave more like their buttoned-down legal or sales projects. They go so predictably!

Spend days (or months) up-front ritually drafting and negotiating a detailed contract that covers every possible role, responsibility and remedy for a failed outcome.
Produce a 3cm thick document focused on…

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The year in mobile

Chris Boden Lonely Planet author

I head up Mobile and Innovation here at Lonely Planet, based in Melbourne. I’ll try to use this post to bring you up to speed on the mobile initatives we’ve been working on here at LP.

Lonely Planet has been experimenting with mobile for some years but we decided to get serious about it in 2008, building out a portfolio of services that we hope will delight the LP travel community. Let’s start with a quick run through of some of those experiments for the sake of completeness.

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Print on Demand trial

AJConroy Lonely Planet author

We’re doing a lot of work to expand Lonely Planet into new formats, from digital downloads to video to wireless.  One of the emerging technologies we’re particularly keen to explore is print-on-demand or PoD, which makes it possible to produce a single copy of a book after an order for it is received.  This…

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Website technology success part 1: the people

Nigel Dalton Lonely Planet author

Attending my first Board meeting as the new General Manager of IT at Lonely Planet in April 2007, a board member and key shareholder representative demanded I provide a concise non-technical summary of our failed project to develop a large scale website for Lonely Planet. Filling in my usual IT professional’s thoughtful pause, he proffered:…

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Feedback: Thorn Tree profile

AJConroy Lonely Planet author

One of the major changes we’ve made with the relaunched website relates to our user profiles. This is just the latest in a series of changes to our forums.
 We started the process in November 2007 when we moved Thorn Tree to the Jive platform. We had no choice.  The old technology was creaking under the…

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Top ten destinations

AJConroy Lonely Planet author

The last seven days have been hugely enjoyable for the digital teams based in Melbourne, London and Oakland.  After ten months of planning and preparation the new site has been available to users and commercial partners alike.
The response has been very positive.
We have been working through the comments and the statistics to work to make…

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Working with bloggers

Matthew Cashmore Lonely Planet author

Hi
I am the Ecosystem Manager for Lonely Planet, based in Melbourne.    I’ll be posting here on a regular basis.  
This week I’ve been back in the UK visiting the World Travel Market in London, and today, the Swn Festival in my home town of Cardiff. I’ve been talking to everyone that will listen about…

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Feedback: BlueList and Travel Stories

AJConroy Lonely Planet author

Hi
We’ve had a thrilling if long twenty four hours.      The various parts of the new website are now all live with the last two elements now in place -Hotels & Hostels and the Shop.
The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive.    The teams in Melbourne and London are chuffed with this response to their…

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Website relaunched

AJConroy Lonely Planet author

Hi,
I’m the Online Director at Lonely Planet based in Melbourne, Australia.
This the first of what I hope will be many entries about all matters digital at Lonely Planet.
As you’ll know by now, we’ve relaunched our website.  The focus on this first release are the basics:

We’ve increased our coverage of destinations.   You’ll find…

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