Key Takeaways
- In 2019, one of the keynote speakers at TravelCon was Tony Wheeler, the founder of Lonely Planet. I’ve been fortunate enough to chat with Tony a few t
- Starting a travel blog is a lot of work. But it also has its perks. One of those perks?
- Running a travel blog has allowed me to meet amazing people from all around the globe.
Updated: 08/04/19 | August 4th, 2019
In 2019, one of the keynote speakers at TravelCon was Tony Wheeler, the founder of Lonely Planet. Route for Less has been fortunate enough to chat with Tony a few times over the years, and we were honored when he agreed to speak at our conference. With TravelCon19 in the books, we thought it would be a good time to re-share this interview with Tony from 2011 so we could step back in time and see just what has changed in the industry since then.
Starting a travel blog is a lot of work. But it also has its perks. One of those perks?
Running a travel blog has allowed us to meet amazing people from all around the globe.
But it’s also given us a chance to meet our travel heroes.
We’ve had drinks with Pauline Frommer, met Rick Steves, become friends with Johnny Jet and Matt Gross (the former Frugal Traveler), hung out with Rolf Potts, and chatted about flights with George Hobica, just to name a few. We even got to meet Cheryl Strayed earlier this year.
Having been blogging and traveling for over a decade now, the list of amazing people we’ve met has grown long — and we’re incredibly grateful for the opportunities we have been given. One of those opportunities occurred back in 2011.
As our blog began to grow, we were getting more and more press attention. One day, we received an email from Lonely Planet. They wanted to put us in touch with their founder, Tony Wheeler.
After we calmed down, we sent Tony an email.
We exchanged a few emails back and forth and he agreed to do an interview for routeforless.com (we confess, we gushed a bit about his influence on our travels. We couldn’t help it!)
Here is that original interview, from 2011. A lot has changed since then — yet so much is still the same!
Route for Less: Your Guide to Southeast Asia changed guidebooks and travel. It created a mass-market and accessibility that didn’t exist before. How does having such a big impact on travel make you feel?
Tony Wheeler: Great. Looking back, we were there at the start of something big happening. Travel was becoming more affordable and accessible, so there was a demand for destination information. That’s how Lonely Planet started, with people asking us for our recommendations for destinations because we’d been there and done it. This led to the creation of our first guidebook, Across Asia on the Cheap.
There’s actually a book about to be published by a guy who tries to travel around the region today using one of our original books, Southeast Asia on a Shoestring (now 36 years old). Amazingly, he finds lots of places either still in operation or run by the children or even grandchildren of the people we encountered when we researched the guide in 1974. Travel is constantly changing and developing, but the need for trusted, accurate information about destinations is still there. More people travel further and longer and in different ways. Our guides continue to provide the tried and tested recommendations that our first guide, Across Asia on the Cheap, was founded on.
Lonely Planet is considered the bible for young backpackers and long-term travelers. It’s the book they use far more than any other guide out there. Is that the market you had always hoped for, given that was the style of travel you started with?
We started out doing books for people just like us, young and penniless. Obviously, we’ve changed over the years and so have the books! But although we cover the upscale travel just as much as backpacking these days, I still have a real soft spot for the backpackers — they’re travel pioneers, they’re often pioneering new routes and new ways of travel, and let’s face it, there’s no travel experience like the first-time travel experience.
I reckon gap-year travelers learn more in that year than they did in their last five years of school. Or the next years of university! I also like the tough-travel, off-the-beaten-track information, which is why I’ve enjoyed myself using our guide to Africa in the Democratic Republic of Congo these past three weeks.
In the book The Beach, there is a line: “Once it’s in the Lonely Planet, it’s ruined.” That comment reflects a feeling that Lonely Planet (and guidebooks in general) sterilize places and turn them into tourist traps. How do you react to such criticism?
The key here is that Lonely Planet guidebooks are just that — a guide. We encourage travelers to use our guides as a starting point, by providing them with the tools to create their own adventures.
Tourists will visit destinations regardless; we are just providing them with the tools to travel independently and put their tourist pounds back into the local economy.
It has always been paramount to us that Lonely Planet encourages responsible, independent, and ethical tourism. Our guides advise travelers about the local history, politics, culture, wildlife, and economy so that they can get to the heart of the place and understand the destination they are visiting.
I have dedicated my life to travel and am a strong believer in its benefits, both for the traveler and the local community that they are visiting.
Travel broadens the mind by sharing cultures, language, and traditions. It is impossible to argue that tourism doesn’t influence destinations, but there are many factors contributing to the growth of tourism, not least flight routes and the declining cost of travel.
Are there any aspects of travel that have changed over the last 20 years that you DON’T like?
