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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