BBC snaps up Lonely Planet in €143m deal
Lonely Planet founders Maureen and Tony Wheeler will keep a 25% stake, the BBC said yesterday.
The couple, who met on a bench in London’s Regent’s Park, started the publisher in 1972 after a honeymoon trip across Asia with “a beat-up old car, a few dollars in the pocket and a sense of adventure”.
More than 30 years after the book Across Asia on the Cheap, the couple have made about £70m (€100m) on the sale, since they owned about 90% of the business.
“Joining BBC Worldwide allows us to secure the long-term future of our company within a globally recognised media group,” the Wheelers said in a statement.
Lonely Planet, headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, publishes about 500 travel guides, including language, cycling and walking titles. The company, which employs 500 staff and as many as 300 on-the-road authors, has recently targeted a mature travelling audience after focusing on campers and backpackers for decades.
The deal will help the BBC become “one of the world’s leading content businesses,” said BBC Worldwide chief executive John Smith.
The broadcaster also aims to grow online brands and to increase its operations in Australia and North
America, said Smith.
“The association will strengthen Lonely Planet’s visibility and growth potential, particularly in the digital arena, as well as providing their users access to the wide range of BBC content which connects with their interests,” said Etienne de Villiers, non-executive chairman of BBC Worldwide.
Deloitte Corporate Finance and Blake, Dawson Waldron advised the BBC on the purchase, the broadcaster said.
Maureen was born in Belfast in 1950 and went to Strand School in Sydenham. From there she went to the Scottish Provident Insurance Company in Belfast to work as a secretary. At the age of 20 she left Belfast for London and met Tony three days later on a bench in Regent’s Park. In 1972, they travelled overland across Europe and Asia to Australia. At the end of their trip they were broke but were asked so many questions about how they did it they decided to write a travel guide.
Later, with their two children, Tashi and Kieran, they wrote: Travel With Children as a result of their experiences on the road. In 1999 Maureen received the Inspiring Woman of Australia Award.
In 2001, she was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Ulster and voted Business Woman of the Year. Tony Wheeler was born in England in 1946 but spent most of his younger years overseas. Those years included a lengthy spell in Pakistan, a shorter period in the West Indies and all of his high school years in the USA.
As soon as Tony left business school in London in 1972, he and Maureen set off for an overland trip to Asia.
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