This is an interesting case study to be of two travel guide providers going head-to-head. On the one side you have Lonely Planet (I greatly admire their guides) which sells their books through traditional and online retail channels. My guess is they're also pretty sophisticated online marketers with great retail distribution and great customer referrals.
On the other side, you have a new sort of competitor. Offbeat Guides was launched by Technorati founder Dave Sifry. Unlike Lonely Planet, each of their travel guides is custom-made based on your travel destination and preferences and much of the information comes from various free Internet sources such as Wikipedia, Flickr and Google Maps. Guides can be previewed in the browser for free, downloaded as a PDF for $10, or printed into a full-color guide and shipped within a few days for $25.
Offbeat Guides are marketed through various online tactics (probably a lot of search and partnerships) as well as Affiliate marketing. Affiliates make an 8% commission on every purchase driven from their sites. Meaning if I were an affiliate and you were to click through to Offbeat Guides and purchase one of their guides, I'd get 8% of whatever dollar volume you purchased.
Who is going to win?
I think Lonely Planet will be around for a long-time but I am certain that Offbeat Guides is going to be the guide company with significant growth over the coming years. Here's why.
Low Overhead
Offbeat Guides doesn't have any staff writers, upfront printing costs or high marketing expenses. Most of their business processes are automated and scale beautifully. Printing and marketing are managed on demand, meaning costs only occur when revenues are booked.
Scalable Marketing
The travel industry has gone through quite a change over the last five years. We have moved away from paid travel writers who're being lured to destinations by PR firms to travelers like you and I who document our experiences on blogs, in forums and social networks. Lonely Planet's business depends on those travel writers. Offbeat guides is building their marketing strategy on the back of citizen travelers who will have a chance to monetize their audience to help pay for their next trip.
Online vs. Offline
Bookstores will always be around. But it's getting harder and harder for them to survive. Just the other day I was walking past a Borders that was liquidating all of its inventory. Lonely Planet depends on those bookstores as much as they depend on those paid travel writers. Offbeat Guides' business depends on people going on trips and documenting their experiences.
In summary, Lonely Planet will probably be the big player in the world of travel books for quite some time. Being a frequent traveler myself, I can vouch for their product and am confident that they'll evolve their business model over time.
Regardless, Offbeat Guides has the better business model right now. I look forward to see how this plays out. In what other categories could the Offbeat model work? Home improvement guides? Self help books? Business books? Other how-to-guides? Ideas???
Btw, click here to download a free Los Angeles pdf travel guide.
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So you're trying to tell me my dream of being a travel writer just got washed down the drain because of all the stuff I posted for free on Wikipedia about Costa Rica?
Its amazing how many lonely planet guides you see down there, I am excited to watch the transfer to these new Offbeat Guides...
Great insight! Once again, the outlet of perfect information, we call the wed, is opening doors for new businesses, just as fast as it closes them for old ones.
Pat, I assume you meant the web? Stop leaving comments while riding your bike and sipping wine. But you're right. It's pretty crazy the level of great free content available these days.
However, the fact that it's based on free content (internet and tourism bureau) means it can miss the more under the radar places.
Neala, that is an excellent point. It seems like a good way to solve that problem is for Offbeat Guides to integrate user-generated content from different social media channels. In return, those bloggers who syndicate their content could get higher affiliate payouts and link references. Just an idea. Thanks for participating.
Neala,
I think that is one of the things Lonely Planet does as well. They claim to leave a certain amount of information out so that you can still explore. Maybe this just a comparison between meaning to leave out info and not having the info, I think the end product is probably pretty close to the same.
I own maybe a half dozen lonely planet, frommers and other travel books which are very good and have been helpful to my travels. I recently purchased a offbeat guide from amazon online. What an awful guide, it's completely worthless.
Either way, i' not sure any of the commentators actually PAID money for an off beat guide because as i read the guide on the plane i have never felt more angry at the lack luster material. Effectively i paid money for someone to cut and paste wikpedia and wikitravel pages in to a single document? Are you kidding me?
Simply awful guides, i hope this is not a growing business trend, would not buy again.