BBC snaps up Lonely Planet in €143m deal

BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the British Broadcasting Corporation, has bought Lonely Planet in a deal that values the travel publisher at about £100 million (€143m).

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”.