Lonely Planet Reinvents the Guidebook with iPhone

 
Media Release
For Immediate Release: 11 June 2009
 
Lonely Planet Reinvents the Guidebook with iPhone City Guides
 
Lonely Planet today announced its iPhone City Guides for iPhone and iPod Touch are now available for sale globally from the iTunes App Store, providing travellers with easy to use, interactive, personalised and fully searchable access to the world’s most popular guidebook content.
 
“As the needs of our travellers have changed over the last 35 years, we’ve adapted our printed guidebook products accordingly, with new formats, series and destinations.  The iPhone heralds a new class of handheld devices with capabilities that enable a next generation guidebook,” said Chris Boden, Head of Wireless & Innovation at Lonely Planet.  “We’ve tried to take advantage of the iPhone’s location awareness, vast data storage and simple user interface to re-imagine our city guidebook series to help travellers get to the heart of some of the world’s most exciting cities from the convenience of their hip pocket.”
 
Lonely Planet’s Audio Phrasebooks were some of the first travel products available in the App Store and have generated over 300,000 downloads since their launch.  “Following the successful experiment with our audio phrasebooks for iPhone, we felt a location-based version of our city guides was the obvious next step - the iPhone was made for great city guide applications and Lonely Planet makes great City Guides,” said Boden.
 
Twenty Lonely Planet City Guides are currently available, including London, New York, Melbourne, Dublin, Barcelona, Rome, Tokyo, Paris, Prague, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Bangkok, Madrid, Miami, Seoul, Dubai, Berlin, Cape Town, Singapore and Mexico City - with the San Francisco City Guide offered free for a limited time. “To celebrate the launch, we wanted to give everyone a chance to experience our new guides so downloads of the San Francisco guide are free for a limited time.”
 
With Lonely Planet City Guides, the GPS and scrolling touch-screen of the iPhone and iPod Touch enable travellers to access dynamic, interactive maps (offline) for plotting itineraries and current location; hundreds of personally-vetted venues can be filtered, marked as favourites and keyword located; detailed chapters on a city’s culture, history, food and art give the best introduction to the local scene; and images from Lonely Planet’s award-winning photographers bring the city to life.
 
The City Guides have also been designed for use offline, so travellers can save money by avoiding international roaming charges.
 
Lonely Planet’s City Guides are available for AU $18.99 / US$15.99 / £9.49 from the iTunes Store.
 
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