Effects from Technology Changes

Photographed by me, Kit Tong

Technology today has change the way we think, create and market our products. In the travel-writing world, things are not much different. Lonely Planet publication is an example, changing their strategy towards this never ending technological changes.

Lonely Planet has had a web presence since 1995. Our modern day technology and consumer behaviour however has changed tremendously. The company therefore overhauled its Web presence and publishing process and covert the concept to real-time and mobile tourist information. In other words, with technology today, consumers prefer and real-time guide that is updates a few times a year, easy to carry and can be viewed anytime, anywhere and on any smart devices. According to Lonely Planet’s online platform manage, Darragh Kennedy, one of its main challenges is how to keep its digital contents fresh without having to take loads of different opinions form other competitors such as Frommers, which was recently owned by Google.

One of Lonely Planet’s first responses to our technology change is by investing and making their digital space their main priority, which began in 2008. The company introduced an agile mythology in to their business. An agile mythology business is a way often used in software development and helps teams in an organisation to respond to unpredictable changes by increasing and repeating the work sequence, called sprint. Using this development, Lonely Planet is then able to assess the direction of their business throughout the whole development process. They are also able to continually revisit their, design, etc, throughout their process and change its direction anytime, providing more time to steer the business towards a different direction as our technology changes. This is also called the “inspect and adapt” concept. Besides that, this concept is less like to halt the business from making any process while building the right product.

Photographed by me, Kit Tong

Today, Lonely Planet is a maker of its own apps and EBooks through partnerships such as Nokia Maps, Microsoft Bing Travel, Facebook and Twitter. Besides that, Lonely Planet’s writers now use an new system where and auther can write while on the road, sends the information to its headquarters and distribute the contents to their different digital channels. This plays an important part as it makes it more secure and faster for a reader to obtain these contents.

Lonely planet publication owners, BBC Worldwide has written down the value to cope with its high cost transition from traditional print media to digital media. When BBC Worldwide bought over the remainder stakes form Tony and Maureen Wheeler, the estimated value was approximately 130.2 million Pounds. However, due to its costly transition to digital media, the current value of Lonely Planet publication has dropped to estimation value of 85 P million pounds. BBC Worldwide blames the high currency of the Australian dollar, resulting to higher cost in managing the company. Besides that, one of the major changes is moving the business from Australia to the UK. These changes therefore eliminate a total cost of 5.1 million pounds.

In term of changes from traditional prints towards digital media, Lonely planet has shifted publishing travel guides, such as India, Australia, etc, towards their all new platform such as the Lonely Planet TV, Digital EBooks, Lonely planet website, and smart phone apps. These changes contribute to 23% of the total revenue and are increasing slowly. Their EBook title has grown 200% since its launch of digital publishing platform.

With new technological platforms of gizmo era, having a flexible way making changes according to new technological tools is important. Understanding ways to use these technologies is essential towards keeping yourself up to date with these changes. Many may say they don’t have skills to do it. I, however, beg to differ. Technology has always advanced to ease everyone and allowing normal people to expand their creative skills to express their ideas. Many online tutorials can be found on the Internet to help you get a better understanding of these programs. Therefore, there are many apps, softwares, etc, to help create your creative piece without much hassle. Lastly, patient has and will always be the key toward learning, understanding and creating something awesome!