Friday, January 15, 2010

Lonely Planet CEO Interview on paidContent: iTunes is now our number distributor of city guides

An interesting interview of Lonely Planet CEO Matt Goldberg by Rafat Ali over at paidContent. Is about 5 mins long and worth a listen. Highlights include:
  • Confirmation that Lonely Planet is profitable and growing. Digital business is growing at 40-50% year on year.
  • Digital sales now $20mm per year covering paid content, services, transaction fees, advertising and digial apps
  • One in five of LP's city guides are sold through iTunes. Easily largest single distributor
  • On Acquisitions "not the first thing we are thinking about"...but..."always open in areas of technology, audience or talent"
Here is an embedded version from paidContent.

2 comments:

timeshare relief said...

That is good, congrats about it, good job lonely planet.

Anonymous said...

It's all well and good that Lonely planet is growing the digital side of the business.
However, firstly digital revenue includes sales of books on the Lonely Planet online shop, and secondly the iPhone apps, pdf guides and core website content would not exist if the content was not first commissioned, edited and published for print publications first, fact.
Bizarre really, for a digital business, that the content on iPhone apps could be up to 3 years old because it is tied to the print publishing schedule.
This is still a last century business model.