This is a new series for the blog. I’d love to be a futurologist, you can just chat some stuff about the future that you think up in the shower. Be sure that all your predictions can’t start until after you die, then you can never be proved wrong. Perfect.
So in these segments I can share some of the ideas cluttering up my grey matter. Usually it’s my friends that have to listen to me rambling about some great (but actually terrible) business idea that I’ve had. Or me bitching about an existing business which of course is run by shaved monkeys, who aren’t even qualified enough to exhale, never mind run a business. I could run it a million times better. Of course I never will, cos I’m a chicken.
Basically this series can act as soundboard for me to stop boring my friends with “wouldn’t it be great if - cinemas had dynamic pricing? google made cheese?” type ramblings.
Today I’m going to talk about the Lonely Planet travel books series. As a pretty regular traveller, and having just completed 4 months in Asia, I’m very familiar and frustrated with the Lonely Planet series. To be honest they feel like dinosaurs, the next Encyclopedia Britannica, at least they will be if they don’t adapt their business model soon. But I’m totally bought in to the concept of travel advice books, if done right. This makes me doubly frustrated with Lonely Planet who seem to mostly do it wrong in my opinion.
So what is the problem with Lonely Planet?