Rough Guides, online travel content and the Culture Trip Effect

Travel guide book publisher Rough Guides has announced a move into "travel booking" .

It’s by no means an unknown path: For example, rival Lonely Planet, which currently uses third parties including Booking.com and Skyscanner for its service, made its foray into facilitating bookings for its users many years ago.

However, it is an interesting move from a number of perspectives, including historical pushes into online, the scarcely realized brand potential and, more recently, what might be termed as the Culture Trip Effect.

The beaten track

From the mid-'90s, as consumer behavior changed and customers moved online, many guidebook publishers saw their audiences diminish and looked for ways to digitalize content and keep the eyeballs coming.

There were challenges in terms of finding ways to monetize online content, but there were also opportunities in terms of providing B2B travel content to existing companies and new entrants in the race to get online.

Some publishers also caught the attention of larger organizations, such as the BBC, which acquired a majority stake in Lonely Planet in 2007, while Google acquired Frommer's in 2012 .

Various strategies were likely at play with these acquisitions. The BBC’s commercial arm probably saw Lonely Planet’s content and community as a nice fit for its existing travel programing. For Google, the acquisition fit into its strategy of building out local content.

Both acquisitions were relatively short-lived, however, with the BBC selling Lonely Planet to NC2 Media in 2013 at a £80 million loss . Google only held onto to Frommer’s for about eight months before returning the brand to its founder, Arthur Frommer, with no explanation.

But none of these brands have really reached their potential online given their historical offline brand presence and following.

Back in 2009, Tim Hughes (now vice president at Agoda) in an excellent piece for tnooz on what the BBC should do with Lonely Planet , summed up “the potential for this still powerful travel brand in online travel discovery, recommendation and search.”

He quoted the then-CEO of Lonely Planet, Matt Goldberg, who said at the time that he wanted it to be “the first and last source of information tools and services that inspire and enable people to experience the world by getting to the heart of the place.”

Brand strength

But back to late-November 2018, and there are similar mutterings from travel writers - this time via Twitter, inevitably - expressing similar sentiment.

For example, Matthew Barker, founder of Horizon Guides , suggests the move is not particularly imaginative.

All these publishers turning themselves into OTAs. As if there aren't enough OTAs already. With all that brand, content + traffic why not do something new? Daft. https://t.co/AbVGh4TSMu

— Matthew Barker (@hitriddle) November 29, 2018

In Rough Guides' defense, it says it is not turning into a travel agency. It calls it an “extension of what we already do.”

According to a spokesperson, Rough Guides is still a publisher and will carry on producing guidebooks alongside this trip-planning service.

Rather than rely on B2B partnerships with existing OTAs and other travel providers, the company says it is using experts working for destination management companies and local agencies for booking.

The rationale for its move is the “changing travel market.”

In one recent article , it said: “For people who love adventure but are time-poor, Rough Guides is now organizing tailor-made trips.”

And, it goes on to say that this is the beginning of a “transformation of the publisher’s entire business model from guidebook seller to online travel company.”

In the same article, Rough Guides CEO René Frey went on to say:

“In five to 10 years we don’t want to be seen as a guidebook publisher: We want to be seen as a dynamic tech company that provides tailor-made trips.”

Which begs the question, why now?

Right timing or trying again

There is a view that Culture Trip’s plans to launch an online travel agency , as well as its recent £80 million funding announcement, has reignited similar thinking from other content sites.

In a recent Q&A with Phocuswire , Culture Trip chief executive officer Kris Naudts said the company had created a model “capable of cracking two great challenges relating to content online. The first is finding a way to generate quality, creative content consistently and at mass scale, and the second is driving and attributing direct commercial value as users consume that content.”

It goes back to brand, content and audience; how consumers are researching and buying now; and the need to find new ways to monetize.

Interesting to note that Insight Guides , which sits alongside Rough Guides at the London-based office, is already selling holidays, which now represent 18% of business according to the piece referenced above.

Perhaps earlier attempts to bring back guidebook content were before their time. If it’s true that trips of more a personalized, local, experiential (insert relevant adjective) nature are being sought, there could be an online renaissance for traditional guidebook publishers.

The outcomes are hard to predict, but Rough Guides will likely build some traction for its custom-made holidays, and Culture Trip’s OTA will find out its own niche.