Well these experts launched a new website for Lonely Planet last November, and an insider tells me that it has considerably less content and is more difficult to navigate, resulting in fewer site visitors, less page impressions and less time spent on the site.

This only served to quickly hasten the fall in ad revenue already being experienced by the downturn in travel which last week resulted in the loss of 20 online jobs at Lonely Planet.

The online expertise you mentioned came from the ‘brand machine’ bbc worldwide not bbc news. See bbcgreen.com …

Very informative .!!!

Well since it is far from clear whether the BBC is uniquely wonderful and influential, or in fact a bit shit compared to News International, or whether Lonely Planet is uniquely wonderful or in fact a bit shit compared to other travel books or [Web site of your choice], I can’t see how I can come to a conclusion about whether the BBC owning Lonely Planet is a good thing or not.

This goes back to the point I mentioned earlier – that this shouldn’t be an arbitrary subjective judgement. There are already principles in place (embodied in the BBC charter) which are meant to deal with this situation without requiring us to make a fresh judgment each time – this makes the playing field much more predictable, which is a good thing for people operating businesses like travel guides (they should know that they’re safe from competition from a state-funded institution, increasing their ability to raise investment).

LP appeals to some people, and not to others. By and large, there is a functioning market in travel guides, in which people who can produce something better than LP can expect a reasonable chance of either a) overtaking its position in the market or b) becoming so attractive that they get bought out at a profit for the people who founded the operation. This creates powerful incentives for people to do the useful job of innovating with new offerings that compete with LP. All of this works on the basis that LP is ultimately just as vulnerable as their competitors, which is not the case if LP can call on the resources of the taxpayer if it starts losing out.

I’m not making a doctrinaire pro-market argument here; there’s a totally separate and quite respectable argument which says that the license fee is justified because of the possibility of market failure in the provision of ‘public interest’ television (news, documentaries, educational programming, possibly coverage of minority interests). Travel guides are not ‘public interest’ and it severely undermines the BBC’s case for special funding if they are seen to be spending it on what ought to be a project that operates on a strictly commercial basis and has to support itself by out-competing its rivals just like they have to support themselves.

Yes, that’s be why I find h2g2 is such a goto.

Wikipedia? Never heard of it.

Anyway, I’m beyond supporting the Beeb now anyway.

Perhaps it’s just not important.

> Lonely Planet is a pretty rubbish behind-the-times brand

So rubbish, in fact, that it’s the market-leading travel guidebook publisher in the UK, and one of the few major guidebook brands with a truly global reach. And now has exclusive access to the cross-marketing power of the world’s most influential news website.

Go back and read the BBC Charter and Agreement. Explain to me how this is what we have a BBC for.

So, having learned that News International aren’t a threat despite having very, very deep pockets (deeper than the BBC’s, lets face it) and any number of publishing arms, and that Lonely Planet is a pretty rubbish behind-the-times brand, can anyone explain again what problem with the BBC taking over LP actually *is*?

@ john b – yes, the idea is to provide suffuciently differentiated content and it’s a messy process that takes time.

Agree with Neil regarding Lonely Planet btw. Many any opportunity out there

> But the *result* of the BBC’s actions is to provide us all with what – undeniably (go on, prove me wrong…) – is a far better travel information offering than we’d have got otherwise.

Yes, because LP Magazine is way better than all the several other travel magazines we have already, right? Oh, no, wait a minute… And when one of the others goes under, faced by competition from a rival that can’t go under? We end up with less media, less diversity than we started with because the BBC enjoys a special protection (and source of funds) that its rivals don’t.

> I really couldn’t care less about the fate of people like James

That isn’t the issue at all. I make no judgement either way on the quality of James’s venture. However, it’s people like James who started TripAdvisor, Kayak, and any number of other online travel ventures, some of which will be at risk if the BBC is allowed to cross-market LP aggressively.

> travel content portals that aren’t as good as the BBC one, and who therefore are losing traffic to the BBC one

Trouble is, you’ll never know whether they were as good as the Beeb/LP one because the BBC will be able to use a massive cross-platform marketing advantage to squish the others. There’s a reason why that stuff about market distortion is in the Charter and Agreement.

Don’t get me wrong, I support the BBC. But it has no place here. Not if it wants to retain its special status.

So, who would you rather be stomped (or taken over) by? The BBC, Pearson or News International?

I’d go for ‘one of the first two’. Sorry. And I reckon most of the consumers would agree, too, based on the BBC’s track record as John B noted.

(*not hard – have you tried actually using a Lonely Planet for travel advice lately? They’re shit. Wikitravel is actually more useful despite its current patchiness.)

Monopolies are bad when they reduce the quality of product available to the consumer. But that isn’t the case here – and I really couldn’t care less about the fate of people like James, who run travel content portals that aren’t as good as the BBC one, and who therefore are losing traffic to the BBC one.

Well, it’s worth noting that James at #8 and #5 set-up and runs a UK travel content portal, and it seems from what he’s saying that that the answer to your question is “yes”. Maybe you could explain how the fact that you’re being stomped by a huge state-owned monolith provides comfort, while being stomped by a huge corporate monolith doesn’t?

Really?

I’d prefer the BBC to be doing the trampling than News International.

“They might be sons of bitches, but at least they’re our sons of bitches”, to borrow a phrase (attributed to various early 20th century American politicians, most notably FDR).

I would say that it makes very little difference who does the trampling if you’re the one on the receiving end. Saying “it’s OK for the BBC to do it because they’re the BBC” is not an adequate justification, whatever your dislike of News International. The whole point of general principles of law is that they’re meant to be universal and not arbitrary. Saying that the BBC – acting as a commercial company in this context – can behave in a way that other commercial companies cannot is to effectively make the law arbitrary, based upon whether or not we “like” someone. Hopefully the reasons why this can be a bad thing are self-explanatory.

This, and your previous article, are spot on.

Remind me again, what’s News International’s mighty presence in the online travel market?

I’d prefer the BBC to be doing the trampling than News International.