Lonely Planet | Tony Wheeler
Conversation with Tony Wheeler
A trek along Asia’s ‘hippie trail’ in 1972 led Tony and his wife Maureen Wheeler, to create travel publisher Lonely Planet. This was an absolute game changer for the backpackers and adventure seekers across the globe.
Tony keeps himself busy these days with his work for the Planet Wheeler Foundation’s, assisting on more than fifty projects in the developing world. As well as, The Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing & Ideas in Melbourne. He’s one inspiring person who truly believes in One Wild Ride’s motto - good business with positive impact and epic adventures.
“We hadn’t set out from London thinking we were going to do a guidebook. So our first book was written from our diaries, memories, and notes we’d taken rather than real research.”
Most epic trips used to begin with one of the world’s most iconic travel guidebooks in every adventure seekers hands. Modern day technology has changed things up a bit but the Lonely Planet publisher is still the go-to for travel advice.
We chat to Tony Wheeler, the Founder of Lonely Planet, he began the company with his wife Maureen Wheeler back in 1973 with their first guidebook ‘Across Asia on The Cheap’.
Today, Lonely Planet still offer their trusty printed guidebooks but now sell each one in an alternative ebook format. There’s also a travel app which was launched In 2017 reaching over 1 million downloads and covering over 100 cities. They also have a highly engaged social following, capturing all their amazing travels and sharing shots of their fave destinations with their printed guidebooks.
Tony and Pru explore ‘off the beaten track’ travel, growing a global business and have a chat about the future of travel.
This is a story of true adventure, finding purpose from your work and how to create a very full and well-lived life. So pour yourself a cuppa, and come along for the ride!
Mentioned in conversation…
The trip in the early 70’s that brought Lonely Planet to life
How Tony & Maureen hustled their first few books together while Maureen supported them woking full time
The key events that saw Lonely Planet become one of the largest Travel Publishers in the world with over 500 titles in print
More on Tony Wheeler here:
Tony Wheeler’s The Rosie Project
Tony Wheeler’s TEDx talk
Tony Wheeler’s recent interviews: KLM iFly Magazine or Lonely Planet video
Dark Lands project interview for 2013 Melbourne Writers Festival
Full Podcast Transcript - Tony Wheeler, Lonely Planet
Pru Chapman:
Hi Tony and welcome to the show.
Tony Wheeler:
Good morning.
Pru Chapman:
Good morning sunny Byron Bay to Melbourne now, Tony your creation of Lonely Planet. I mean, it has been instrumental not only in my own life, but literally in millions of other people's lives in taking us off the beaten path stepping outside of our comfort zones. And totally immersing us in new ways of thinking and of being. So I know for me personally, I started traveling by myself at the ripe old age of 22. And even back then, so long as I had my passport and a Lonely Planet in my pocket, I just I knew that I was going to be totally okay. Because it was going to take me to the right places, give me the right experiences and it was like a safety net, literally having a safety net in my back pocket was that Lonely Planet.
Pru Chapman:
I'm really excited to talk to you today about how you actually brought Lonely Planet to life. And I thought that we could start with you and your wife, Maureen, that started Lonely Planet. But to set the scene, it was the early 70s. And you were taking an overland adventure from London heading ace. Now this was before the internet, before there was probably many guidebooks around. So on that first trip of yours, what kind of a trip did you think you were taking? What did you expect?
Tony Wheeler:
Okay, it was a journey into the unknown because there's, as you say, the internet wasn't there today. If you're doing this sort of thing, you'd be googling it and all sorts of other people who've done similar things would pop into your field of vision. But the internet didn't exist then, computers, mobile phones, none of that stuff was around in that era. And nor were there any really any guidebooks to what we were going to do. So you were going by word of mouth and what a little information was available. Later on this, the trip that we did became known as the hippie trail. But at the time we call it the Asia overland route. And the idea was that you either started or finished in Europe, because Australia is going the other way but we finished in Europe, but we were starting from London, and you traveled across Asia. The idea was it was overland. You didn't fly anywhere.
Tony Wheeler:
Eventually you would end up in Kathmandu, sort of the destination high in the Himalaya. And then you did one of two things if you were coming from Europe. Either you turned around and went back to Europe or a minority of people carried on and ended up in Australia. And Australians would do the opposite. They'd either travel up through Southeast Asia and ended up in Kathmandu, and then do the Asia overland trip to Europe or sometimes they just fly straight there weren't many flights to Kathmandu in those days. Fly straight to Kathmandu and start their trip from there. So yeah, it was called the Asia overland trip and we did it by buying an old car in London cheap enough that if it broke down with leave it by the roadside and walk away from it. We effectively did drive it across Europe across Turkey, across Iran into Afghanistan. We sold it for a small profit in Afghanistan. Carried on to Kathmandu, and then carried on down through Southeast Asia and eventually in Bali, by which time we've been traveling for six months and running out of money. We hitched a ride on a yacht with some New Zealanders and we ended up in Australia. Here we've been more or less ever since.
Pru Chapman:
You hitched a ride on a yacht.
Tony Wheeler:
Yeah, a lot of people do that. You could probably knock in Byron Bay, but certainly if you headed up the coast you'll probably find some yacht from Cairnes or somewhere going out to the Pacific or maybe from Byron Bay. Yeah, people do hitch rides on yachts. Yachties often need another member or two for crew and this one didn't need some more crew and it needed a bit of money to toss in to pay for fuel. Because it was a sailboat but the supplies and things so yeah, we hitched a ride on a New Zealand yacht, which wanted to get down to Australia, get out of the cyclone season, do some work to carry on as yachties did. And we sail directly south from Bali utterly empty ocean we never saw another boat. So if we'd gone down it would be the end of us. And we ended up on Exmouth the Northwest cape.
Pru Chapman:
Excellent. So this sounds like adventure in its truest sense. You set off you on this Asia overland route without many like you say without many guidebooks in what sounds like a pretty banged up car. I mean, do you just go day by day? I mean, this is an era of travel that I guess not a lot of our listeners are familiar with because we can find out everything on the internet now. It's the first place we go to see things, to discuss things into forums, that type of thing. But for you back then, I mean, must just have this incredible sense of wonder as you took this wild adventure.
Tony Wheeler:
Yeah I did. Obviously we never had anything booked. There was no way you could book anything. If you wanted to book something you would have had to write and say, I should be there in six weeks time, book a room for me on Wednesday nights come on. So you wherever you stayed that night was wherever you ended up that day. Nothing was booked or confirmed or anything else. And yeah, it was a great trip I think one of the things about doing that sort of trip is that when you're doing trips when you're young, they obviously, and I've got a whole lot of time for young people on their gap year on this year off and exploring the world.
Tony Wheeler:
But also when you do big trips when you're young, they have an enormous impact on you. And that was a big trip. It started in London, it ended up in Sydney. And I still both of us, Maureen and I still look back on that trip with a great deal of affection.
Pru Chapman:
And what kind of impact did that have on you?
Tony Wheeler:
Well, I ended up setting up a business that I don't know but, I was nearly 50 years ago whether it will survive to 50 years because, one of the Lonely Planet is one of the businesses definitely struggling in the coronavirus era. And whether it's going to get to its 50th birthday. Right now it's 48th birthday approaching I really don't know. But we did set up the year we lived in Sydney in 1973, we did start Lonely Planet at that point and published the first Lonely Planet guide book out of a basement flat in Paddington in Sydney. And that's where it started.
Pru Chapman:
That's where it all started. And what did that first guide book, what was it like? What did you include in there? Was it the stories of your travels?
Tony Wheeler:
Yeah, pretty much it was how to do the Asia overland trip in 96 pages. And we hadn't set out from London thinking we were going to do a guidebook. So that was not part of the plan at all. So this book was sort of written from our diaries and notes we've taken memory rather than real research. I keep saying that it was a remarkably amateurish, which it was, badly research, but it was. Whatever. And yet I keep bumping into people who said, "Oh yeah, I used that first original 96 page book 40 plus years ago and it was wonderful." And there it was, there was nothing else available so it was as wonderful as it got.
Pru Chapman:
And probably perfectly fitting for the time as well.
Tony Wheeler:
Oh, yeah, yeah, it did fit the mood of the era. But we it was the right thing at the right time. And I often the case that if you do the right thing at the right time, it doesn't have to be absolutely wonderful because there's nothing else out there. But we did then because it had got some acceptance and people liked it. And we could sense that people liked it because they told us. Then we got good reviews in the one or two newspapers and things, it was the right thing at the right time. And but then we decided, Okay, this potentially could be some sort of business. Let's go and do another book. And the second book we did was planned, was researched. So today it still looks extremely amateurish. But nevertheless, it was a whole thousand order of magnitude jump, the very first one. The second book was Southeast Asia on a shoestring, which is... Sold millions of copies now and it's still in print and lots of people still use it, and it's a book I have a lot of affection for.
Pru Chapman:
And did you and Maureen also write the second book? The Southeast Asia on a Shoestring?
Tony Wheeler:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The first book we bought an old car in London and drove it to Afghanistan and sold it for $5 profit. The second book started off in Sydney and we bought an old not as old as the first car but older motorcycle. And we rode that motorcycle around Southeast Asia for the next 12 months. So the second one was propelled by a motorcycle, rather than a car. And there were lots of boats and buses and the old train and flights and things in between as well but, a lot of the trip was on that motorcycle. And that second book was Southeast Asia on a shoestring. And having finished that book, we finished up in Singapore and then we sat down in a backstreet Hotel in Singapore for three months and did produce the whole book in that hotel, on a little circular table sitting across from each other.
Tony Wheeler:
And it was printed in Singapore and having got it off to the printer with barely enough money to print it as we were getting to the end of our money we'd saved up for a year's travel. We thought, what do we do now? And we were actually on our way from Sydney, back to London. But now having got from Sydney to Singapore in 12 months. Yeah, this was slowly travel, wasn't it? Having got to Singapore, we decided, Oh, do we really want to get back to London and we spend more or less toss a coin and the coin came down Australia, so we decided okay, we'll go back to Australia again. For another year, that was the intention. We've had a year in Sydney, let's try another year in Australia. And we thought we've tried Sydney let's try Melbourne for a year. And then we've been here ever since. So these things just... People often say to me, "Why did you choose Melbourne? Why was Melbourne where you decided to live in Australia?" And the answer is the coin came down Australia First of all, and then we've been in Sydney for a year, so we decided to be in Melbourne for a year there you go.
Pru Chapman:
That's good a decision making opportunity as any I'm sure. So wasn't really that second book I mean you're already getting some attention with Lonely Planet with the first book because this was the first guidebook of its type out there, was it really the Southeast Asia on a shoestring that put Lonely Planet kind of on the map so to speak.
Tony Wheeler:
Yeah, absolutely because the first book, the across Asia one was only ever sold in Australia and New Zealand. We took it out to New Zealand and we started off up Southeast Asia trip by riding the motorcycle around New Zealand for six weeks and selling the book around New Zealand. So the first book never got out of Australia and New Zealand. But the second book, we started selling it overseas instantly we found a distributor in Singapore before anywhere else. And then it went on sale in the UK in the USA and Hong Kong and New Zealand and Australia of course. But that was an international book from the very start.
Tony Wheeler:
And it was a much more as I say it was researched. And one of the things you got to remember this is... We researched it in 19... that rolled the clock back. We did the overland trip in 72, we lived in Sydney in 73, we traveled around Southeast Asia and 74. So we published that book in 75. And 75 now everybody's got them. I'd been to Bali to T shirts and Thailand has one of the biggest tourist flows in the world. Not right now of course, but hopefully it will get back to things after we sort out coronavirus. But back in 75 it wasn't like that. The Vietnam War was winding down. If you asked Americans that a holiday in Southeast Asia, they'd say, "Holiday in Southeast Asia, you've got be killed in Vietnam."
Tony Wheeler:
Singapore was still making you get a haircut before you could get in the country. Bali had been shut down for many years during the Sukarno era. And they burned the British Embassy down in Jakarta. That's how welcoming they were to tourists. So Southeast Asia wasn't the playground that it is today. It was just sort of starting to open up. And we were the first on the scene effectively. We weren't Yeah, there were lots of people going through and we went through and 72 we thought, Oh, this is fun there are other people around. But compared to the numbers there are today, it was miniscule.
Pru Chapman:
And also the cost of it back then I know my parents are very well travelled and would buy kombi vans and travelled around, they did a lot of travel around Europe, in kombi vans. And mum still delights in telling me that an international airfare at that point in time was a third of your yearly salary, which is so foreign to us right now. I mean, now it might be a fortnight's pay check or something.
Tony Wheeler:
Airfares I mean that overland trip the only flight we ever took was from Calcutta to Bangkok. Because you couldn't travel by land through Burma. And you still can't really travel through as it's an expedition still getting through Burma by land. But yeah, I mean the flights were comparatively expensive. But other things were very cheap. And I've just done an article for a British newspaper about cheap hotels back in that era. And I remember in Bali, the standard price for a losman is and there's no losman left anymore, I don't think but it was a standard word for a small Indonesian family run hotel. And the standard perday at that time, I think I forget what the exchange rate is to the Indonesian rupiah now. I think it's about 10,000 or something to the dollar, but back then the rupiah was 400 to the dollar. And the standard price for a Muslim was 400 rupees. It cost $1 a night for your accommodation. And you didn't have a flushing toilet it was in a squat toilet and the shower was cold water But nevertheless, they were very nice little places. They were well run, they were clean, they were pretty.
Tony Wheeler:
There was batiks hanging around and bamboo matting and they were very nice places for $1 a night, well, there you go. Who needs a cheap flights when you can stay somewhere for a buck?
Pru Chapman:
Absolutely. And it just as you're speaking it reminds me of my first trip to Asia actually. And I did have the Southeast Asia on a shoestring in my luggage. And going up to some places in half in the north of Thailand, places like Pai which were relatively undiscovered there. I didn't come across another Westerner while I was there. And even then, I mean, that was probably goodness 15 years ago, and 15, 20 years ago, maybe. And getting accommodation for under $10 still a night. And like you said this beautiful, beautiful family kind of compounds that you would stay in and then beautiful meals for $1 or two it was Yeah-
Tony Wheeler:
It's no wonder people fell in love with the place because I mean, I did travel around Indonesia just over a year ago, less than a year ago, briefly. And the places still very nice. I forget one of the places I stayed in cost. But it was a rather delightful place and I was the only person staying there and family were very friendly and it was all good. So it's... I still like traveling in the region, even though I'm not making a habit of it anymore. And I haven't done a sort of going from place to place trip for ages in southeast yeah I did. It's still good. It's still good.
Pru Chapman:
It's a beautiful place. And so just Tony, coming back to the story of as you were building Lonely Planet, was it when you released Southeast Asia on a shoestring around 75 and you started to pick up this international distribution, was that when you and Maureen sort of thought, okay, we're onto something key. This could be our business. Was it before that around that time?
Tony Wheeler:
Yeah. Well, I sort of, I think I was convinced very early on that this was something that would go though, I wouldn't have gone if Maureen hadn't had a full time job at first. And her work, because like any small business you don't make any money at first. And it was a very much a hand to mouth existence and the money that took the hands of the math was provided by Maureen. She worked a full time job and she worked with me on evenings and weekends as well. But really after we got back to Australia, apart from the odd job I even drove taxis for a while. Apart from the odd job I was full time Lonely Planet and pretty soon I stopped driving taxis and Lonely Planet was full time ever afterwards. But you couldn't, we redid the very first book, the Across Asia one without actually redoing the trip.
Tony Wheeler:
We did the Southeast Asia book and then we raced around trying to find more books. We did a New Zealand book. Again there wasn't really a New Zealand book out there, and a lot of Australians going there. And again, that was a sort of amateurish effort because we couldn't afford the time or the money to really do New Zealand justice. But we did put out a little New Zealand guide and there was nothing else so it was the best thing going. And we gradually put other books together and then other people started to join us. And we got it from two books to 10 books with a remarkable speed, I look back at them and think, How on earth did we do that? New Zealand was number three. And then because we've been up to Nepal and we managed to do two different books on the Nepal, one on tracking and one on the Polish south by other authors, other people joined us and before you knew it, it was rolling along very small way. I mean our first employee who was there I think she left Lonely Planet after we did so she spent more time with Lonely Planet than we ever did.
Tony Wheeler:
She was part time and her son needs to come along and sit in front of the television while she was working for us. But then gradually other people other first employees came along and that business slowly grew. It was not... I always say no, it wasn't like when the dot com era came along businesses, they start one day and they're worth 100 million or a billion The day after. And that was not Lonely Planet. I always said it was more like a snowball rolling downhill. At first you have to keep pushing that snowball, even to keep it moving, it just will not roll over. But then it does start to roll and before it, it's racing down the hill, getting bigger and bigger and you can't keep up with it. And that was really the Lonely Planet story. It wasn't one day nothing the next day huge. It was the snowball, getting faster.
Pru Chapman:
I think that's a really important piece to say and to mention here because it's easy to look at Lonely Planet today. I mean, having sold millions and millions of copies around the world for all the success that it's had, and I'm sure will have then.
Tony Wheeler:
Well I'm not sure it will. I mean that's the real [inaudible 00:21:48]. We are in a different era. We're in a different era, digital wise, and dot com wise and internet wise and we're also in a different era right now, with travel having ground to a halt. Because of corona virus.
Pru Chapman:
But even to say that it started it really did start as the two of you and pulling books together in basements and side hustling if you like, this turn at the moment that's getting bandied around and that you were still on the ground doing the research and pulling the books together. And it was this small business that grew gradually it didn't have this huge overnight success.
Tony Wheeler:
No, it didn't. And we did more and more books. And I think there's a lot of the early books, which I still look back on. I keep saying with affection, but yeah, I mean, Southeast Asia, definitely, [inaudible 00:22:39] it's still going and lots of people it has been that sort of a first big trip for lots of people. Because Southeast Asia is a great place to have a first big trip. So that one I have a lot of affection for. I assorted other books, which I think our Africa guide, because one of the first 10 we did which is still really the only thing that covers all of Africa. If you're going to really go out there and do Africa from Cape Town to Cairo or whatever, or coast to coast or north to south then Lonely Planet's Africa guide is the only thing that covers the whole continent.
Tony Wheeler:
So that I've got affection for. But really the book that took Lonely Planet off was in 19, what year it came out 81 or 82, but certainly a product to the early 80s. And that was our India guide. And by this point, Lonely Planet had about 20 books. So there were 20 countries or regions around the world that we covered in some way. And we'd really we dreamt of doing an India guide, but you couldn't do India. We had a very successful Sri Lanka guide and Sri Lanka Maureen and I went there and we traveled around Sri Lanka for a month or so. And a month's travel you could really could cover Sri Lanka. You couldn't cover India in a month, there was no way in the world you could cover the whole continent, that sub continent in a month. But then in 1980, we decided we did have enough resources to devote a year two India.
Tony Wheeler:
So we had two other writers who each effectively spent four months there. And Maureen and I also spent four months there. So we put a year's research into India, which for the company as small as Lonely Planet it was at that era was a big investment, not a bunch of investment in money, we put very little money up for it, everyone was traveling on a shoestring. But the time element was really serious. And it the book came out eventually after a huge amount of work, and it was an instant success. People fell in love with that book, instantly. And instead of selling in selling small numbers of copies, it sold huge numbers of copies.
Anyway, this book was a much bigger book instead of being a 200 page book or we even had some books that were 300 pages. This book was closer to, I think the first edition was 700 pages, but it soon became 1000 page book. And books and know that era, the early 80s was selling for $2.95, 3.95 maybe even 4.95. I think we sold this one for 14.95. So it was a much more expensive book. And we were selling, some of our books were selling 10, 20 even 30,000 copies, but this one went through closer to 100,000 copies. So it was a bigger book and a bigger price in bigger quantities and the India guide really did make Lonely Planet a whole different thing.
Pru Chapman:
Fascinating, fascinating. And as it grew like that, so it sounds like the growth had been really gradual, and then the India, the book on India came out. I mean, were you still simultaneously because you had studied business, were you simultaneously enjoying the business side of things as much as the travel side of things or did one or the other become more important during that time?
Tony Wheeler:
They were both they were both important and I was fortunate that there I never got totally bogged down by the business that I was able to travel still. Travel was still a large part of the story. But equally, the business intrigued me as well that I really did enjoy putting the books together. And I think India was a really good example of that, that we had two other writers involved with it, and then a lot of other people contributing in other fashions. And it was a business decision as well as a travel decision. But right the way through Lonely Planet's history, I still enjoyed writing the books. I enjoyed writing the books right up to the very last day. So I never got out of the driving seat, which I think is a problem for a lot of small businesses that people they start the business because they like one element of it, but then they get bogged down in the business elements.
Tony Wheeler:
And that can go wrong if all you're thinking about is the business and what drove you to create it disappears. And we were very fortunate that that didn't happen.
Pru Chapman:
And Maureen, I've heard Maureen speak about this on various other interviews in the past as well. She gives you so much credit for holding the vision sturdy for Lonely Planet. That you were so creatively involved in the countries that you're going to explore and passionate about the books that you are going to do. And then she was obviously in the back end, making sure all the things happened.
Tony Wheeler:
I think it's quite fairly accurate in Maureen said Lonely Planet wouldn't have started if it wasn't Tony, but it wouldn't have kept going if it wasn't Maureen. So we were a good pair in that respect. And it's kind of ridiculous that I was the one with a business degree but Maureen was far more business minded about it than I was. So we were a good combination in that respect. Yeah, it did take both of us.
Pru Chapman:
And when you look back on Lonely Planet now, I mean, what were your fondest years? Were they all enjoyable? Or was there a particular sort of golden time for the business?
Tony Wheeler:
Oh, there was a golden time. And I still have a bunch of writers who I'm sort of in touch with, and I've got a place in London. And when I'm living in London, occasionally, the writers, I get a message from one of them saying, "I'm in London, I normally live in Cambodia, or Iran or somewhere Spain. And I'm in London should I get some of the other writers together, and we'll have a beer." And we do have a beer and then I say, "Let's order some pizzas and come back to my place and sit around and talk." So I'm in touch with some of the long term writers still, and other people who and I know there's one guy who I see a couple times a year perhaps, or maybe not for a couple of years, and I see him a couple times who he says, he was there in Lonely Planet. And he was higher up in Lonely Planet. At the era when it was just wonderful. Everything we did seem to work, we thought let's do this book and immediately it became a best seller.
Tony Wheeler:
He was there in the era when we were sort of breaking into Europe, that we'd really avoided doing Europe. We started off as Asia, and Lonely Planet is going to always be thought of as an Asia specialist to some extent, but then we went into Africa and South America because they were areas that were relatively uncovered as well. But Europe, we thought, well, Europe that's where the American and British publishers operate. We don't want to start competing with the really big names. By the time we decided to go into Europe we were as big as then. So it wasn't a question of just going in and not being able to... We weren't a lightweight fighting a heavyweight, we were a heavyweight as well.
Tony Wheeler:
But we went into Europe in a very planned and businesslike fashion. And almost immediately we were the big players in Europe as well. And that was very satisfying. And a lot of those Europe books they weren't amateurish at all, they were extraordinarily well researched and documented and mapped, cutter graphed and photographed everything about them was really high quality. And I'm very proud of those books as well, if I'm in Italy these days, which I should be in a few weeks time. I'd be using the Lonely Planet Italy guide or Sicily guide or whatever.
Tony Wheeler:
So Europe, that was a great era that we had the finances to do things and when we did them, they came out very well and a lot of people got a lot of enjoyment I guess one of the various things that if you asked me and I'm sure you will in a bit and so you might as well ask me right now, what did I like best about it? Well, one of the things was people going off and doing a first big trip, going back and saying, "Well, I only enjoyed that trip so much because I had your Southeast Asia guide or whatever." Or it was just, "I was exploring Italy and you really showed me things in Italy that I didn't know about." I still do that I was in Italy last year, and I went to a particular small town in Italy that I had never been to before. And I spent two or three days there and just loved it. And I can't understand why I've never been there, Raveena mosaic center north of Reminisce after Bolonia.
Tony Wheeler:
Beautiful little place and I just don't understand why I'd never explored it before. And I went there with a lonely kind of guy telling me where to eat and where to stay and it all worked perfectly. So there was that element that I'm really pleased of. But also I bump into people who work for Lonely Planet and they say, "Hey, you don't remember me but I worked for you for five years and our path crossed the cafe occasionally. And it was the best five working years of my life. I look back on that and I'd never had as good a job afterwards or whatever, where I had five great years there or sometimes 10 or 15 great years, sometimes people's entire working career. And that's nice as well and people they look back on working, I don't say working for you, working with you, and really enjoyed it got a kick out of it. That's terrific.
Pru Chapman:
And I love that because you've mentioned both the travel side and the business side there. And one thing that I think Lonely Planet has just done so well across the years is to kind of stay in its lane for that adventurous, intrepid traveler. It's not the guidebook for many travelers, yet for the people it's written for, it's the only guidebook that you should have. And that's what I always found in my years and years of and I still use lonely planets as I travel because I do want to see things that there's not as many people and there're things that I wouldn't find by myself and they just they're incredible for that.
Tony Wheeler:
Although, who knows, I mean, so many things are changing and Lonely Planet with it. It's Lonely Planet if it survives, which I keep saying in this little talk. And I just don't know it's a mystery. There are lots of other sources of information out there today. And of course, there were other guidebooks we were not the only guidebook. Even at the very start, I remember Bill Dalton who started Moon the American publisher, Moon Publications. But actually it started in Sydney, even though he was an American he did his first book in Sydney, and then moved back to America and Moon never got as big as Lonely Planet.
Tony Wheeler:
But he was a competitor in certain areas, Indonesia, in particular at one stage. Rough Guides, the British publishers. They came along a bit later than us but, I'm still friends with the people who started Rough Guides, Mark Ellingham, in particular. And they sort of, they didn't stay the course as much as we did, but they were an element.
Pru Chapman:
Tony, business is rarely smooth sailing. Were there any particularly tough times in building Lonely Planet?
Tony Wheeler:
Yeah, of course, any small business. And I think the thing, particularly with small business is that don't get all that sort of bank investments and angel investors and series one, series two, all that sort of stuff that they have today. Business is the bootstrap as we did. Well that term wasn't used in those days either. You're very much hand to mouth at first. And hand to mouth isn't a problem when there's just one or two of you. And in our case, it was sort of one and more in working full time and two of us and then just a handful of you and that's not such a big problem. So we always said, well, if this doesn't work, we can always go back to real life. We always described going back to a nine to five existence working for somebody else as real life. Lonely Planet wasn't real life.
Tony Wheeler:
That there was always that option, just if it doesn't work, you can pack it in and pay off your debts you hope and carry on working for somebody else. But then when you have other people working for you, suddenly it's a whole different ballgame. Because come Friday, you have to pay them. And we always did pay them on Friday. But God on some Thursdays I was looking at our bank account and thinking, Oh, my God, are we going to be able to... Will there be enough money that they would give them their paycheck or whatever on Friday, and it isn't going to bounce when the bank has processed it on Monday. And I remember one of the things about that, and then this was another nice thing about Lonely Planet. It was a business as well as a mission and a lot of people did really like the business, a lot of book shops really liked the business.
Tony Wheeler:
And they often said we enjoyed selling your books and we got good service from you, when you said you're going to deliver something you did deliver it and you kept us informed and the new editions coming out or whatever, because people were queuing up to get it. And as a result, you could sort of you could call them up on Thursday and say, "Look, that's last order of yours you should have paid us two weeks ago, could you just give us the check right now." And drive around and collect it. They do this for you, which is good. So it was a hand to mouth existence. And that is a worry you do get sleepless nights when you've got to pay somebody else. If you only got to pay yourself well, maybe you don't eat so well that weekend. But when you got to pay somebody else, it's a different ballgame.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah, absolutely. Now I guess, Lonely Planet went on to become absolutely global phenomenon and a huge success. At what point did you start to think about leaving Lonely Planet?
Tony Wheeler:
Well, it's been more than 10 years now that we departed Lonely Planet, so I'm a long way away from Lonely Planet now. But at one stage, what was going to happen to it? I mean, we weren't going to carry on running it until we were carted off in a coffin from the office. Our kids weren't... Both of our children got dragged around the world when they were small children on the various Lonely Planet trips, and in retrospect, they really enjoyed [inaudible 00:41:43] when they were at school. So complaining to their friends we never get to go on holiday because we're always being taken somewhere by our terrible parents. And there were great trips, but yeah with the kids, both of them did work in the business for a while, but neither of them were going to take it over. They were not going to be the... We didn't sort of groom them for the dynastic success, which I don't think works very often with lots of places.
Tony Wheeler:
So it wasn't going to be a family dynasty, we weren't going to run it till the day we died. So what else is going to happen? And the other thing is it started, the playing field was changing, it was, the digital side was more important. And I'm as much a digital user as anybody else. I spent a lot of my life with a screen in front of me. But it wasn't my first love. It wasn't the thing that I really, really, really, really liked. I liked his old fashion books in print. So we weren't keeping up with the times and now it was time for a change, it was time to leave.
Pru Chapman:
And are there any regrets? Or are you happy you left when you did?
Tony Wheeler:
Well in retrospect, we left at the perfect moment we didn't realize that we were sort of selling at the top of the market that the digital side was suddenly going to accelerate and print was still, keep saying, with this virus is definitely changing things but a few weeks ago Lonely Planet was still a big name in print books, in print guidebooks bigger than anybody else. Everything else had retreated and Lonely Planet had surged on. But it was time to go and I know I've had... It was painful at the time but only briefly because we'd realized this really had to happen. And I still get to travel not this week. But in general I still get to travel a lot. And I still really enjoy the travel I do and I still do have until, keep on saying this because our world is so turned upside down as we're talking. But a few weeks ago, I was still doing the odd thing, for Lonely Planet. I was still writing a foreword for something or helping to judge some writing competition or contributing little bits for various books.
Tony Wheeler:
Working with Lonely Planet's, foreign language partners, Italians in particular, the Chinese to some extent. So yeah, I was still involved in that respect, even though I had absolutely no ownership and no role and nothing else with Lonely Planet for quite a few years now.
Pru Chapman:
And as you've mentioned a few times and it's a good thing for us to talk about here is that we are in this time of COVID-19 where travel has essentially ground to a halt and just before we came on air you were saying that you were supposed to be in South America and I was supposed to be in the US and Maureen was also supposed to be in the US and now we're all at home, which is the best place for us right now. But how do you think I mean in just in your opinion, how do you think COVID-19 will change travel? I guess in the kind of medium short term but also potentially in the long term?
Tony Wheeler:
I really don't know and if I could predict exactly what was going to happen, I could be on my way to being a wealthy man. But we don't know what's going to happen at all, we have no idea what's going to happen out of this. Will, it sort of come back slowly, will it as soon as the doors are opened, everybody's dying to go somewhere, and they all rush out and jump on a plane and... The two quotes that I've been sort of passing around, one was from Stelios, the guy who started EasyJet, the second biggest low cost carrier in Europe after Ryanair. And he said that he thinks when risk when travel restarts and EasyJet can start flying that planes again, it's going to be like starting all over. It's going to be thinking well, where can we use a plane that we can get some passengers into it? It'll be a little sort of a baby steps one at a time, getting things going again.
Tony Wheeler:
But he didn't see it sort of launching off at high speed the way some people do. Some people see it, this will be finished and boom, it'll be back, no it's not going to be. I mean, the cruise ship story is, we don't even know these gigantic companies with their gigantic ships are going to survive. That's a fascinating... That'll be a chapter in the book. And the other quote that I've seen with someone saying that, it'll start gradually, and that the businesses that really do well at first will be the ones who are very local, they look at things that you can do from close to your own home. Which obviously we are looking at that in Australia that local businesses, people, they can't go to Bali Or Fiji or Europe maybe we'll go to Bombay.
Tony Wheeler:
I'm looking, one of the things when I'm released from the house to do my small amount of exercise that we're supposed to be allowed to do along with shopping medical reasons, walking the dog I'm told is okay but I haven't got a dog, borrow one perhaps. But I can do some exercise, and what I'm doing is I'm walking along the Yarra River. And maybe there'll be some sort of Yarra River trails will take off and Parks Victoria could get themselves into action which they haven't done yet. And promote the Yarra Rivers is interesting thing for Melbourneans and Victorians and Australians to explore. Who knows?
Pru Chapman:
I love that concept and being I guess a little bit more mindful of where we are and that adventures to far, far places. They're amazing and they enliven every one of our senses, but there's also so much beauty. I mean, particularly for us here in Australia. I mean it is an incredible place.
Tony Wheeler:
I mean, I've done a lot of travel around Australia. I've done the complete circuit of the continent. I wrote a book year and a bit ago now for the National Library about Australian islands. And as a result, I've been to a lot of... They asked me to do it, because I already had been to a lot of the islands through Lonely Planet. But I ended up going to more of them. And we've got some wonderful islands around the, some of them, which are tourist resorts, or get lots of tourists for assorted reasons. But others that get very, very few visitors and you really feel like you're sort of out there on the edge going to them, which is terrific. You can still do that today. And a lots of other things. I've got lots of bits of Australia that I have not explored yet. And if I was locked down to Australia, well, I could buy another four wheel drive and start doing one or two of the outback tracks that I've not done.
Pru Chapman:
And between Australia and New Zealand I think it looks as though if we open our borders firstly it'd be two New Zealand. I mean there's so much incredible beauty in New Zealand as well I mean I'd happily hire myself a camp a van over there and spend weeks if not, driving around well both the North and the South Island.
Tony Wheeler:
Absolutely mean I've done a fair bit of walking in New Zealand as well. But there's a couple of walks in New Zealand that I really, really like to do for assorted reasons. Maybe that will happen, maybe when the doors start to reopen and we are allowed to go somewhere not everywhere, first place obviously would be Australia maybe the second place would be New Zealand. Maybe we'll do a deal with New Zealand that we make it a sort of a safe zone Australia and New Zealand and we can go to New Zealand and they can come to Australia. Maybe that will be the first step back towards life as it used to be.
Pru Chapman:
And I think for us that a keen on walking and hiking, my goodness New Zealand does it well, don't they?
Tony Wheeler:
Absolutely. And we have great walks in Australia as well. So yeah they... New Zealand haven't got Outback tracks but then they've got the campervan around both islands business and, Yeah, there's lots of possibilities in our two countries. And maybe the Pacific will be something we'll pay more attention to because we obviously, people go to Fiji, there's lots of other islands in the Pacific that don't get the sort of tourist flows that perhaps they deserve. I've been to the Solomon Islands a couple of times in recent years, and there really are not many tourists in Solomon Islands and maybe that'll be another place that sort of opens up a bit. Maybe there'll be some good come out of this as well.
Pru Chapman:
I think so. I think so. All right, now Tony Wheeler I have to ask you, what's been your most memorable trip today? Could you pick one?
Tony Wheeler:
I can't pick one because they're all different. And I think of the, as I say that Asia overland trip in nearly 70s, that was a memorable trip in all sorts of ways and I'm never going to forget the memories of that. And similarly, the Southeast Asia trip, which was a long trip. There's been lots of ones since that have been excellent trips as you say. We did, this is totally different budget, but with a bunch of friends from all basically not so Europe there were two Americans no, only one American. An American in the group and other nationalities and we charted a plane out of Melbourne and we took it up to Northern Territory and then we flew across the north of Australia for two and a half weeks. Stopping in assorted remote places in northern territory, in Arnhem Lands, in Kimberley in Western Australia down the Western Australian coast.
Tony Wheeler:
It was a magic trip, the people who came on that trip with us keep on saying that was something we're never going to forget in our life because it was a magic trip. And of course it wasn't chartering a plane. It's not having your own plane sitting there. No and it wasn't, we weren't in it. It was sitting at the dirty airstrip at some remote corner of the Kimberley, one of Australia's most wonderful areas. So that was a magic trip. And then equally I was saying earlier on that I went to this little town in Italy that for a few days last year, that was magic. That was only just three days and it cost nothing, I was just staying in a little local hotel and eating pasta in the local restaurants and having a cold beer at sunset time. But that was magic as well. Everything can be magic.
Pru Chapman:
And a good reminder of the top end of Australia so much beauty up there.
Tony Wheeler:
Absolutely.
Pru Chapman:
Now, Tony Wheeler, you also founded the Planet Wheeler Foundation in 2008. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Tony Wheeler:
Well, that started in, it started in Lonely Planet. Back when there was a famine in Ethiopia, and there was Live Aid, there was various movements to do something about what was going wrong in Ethiopia, which of course really came down to the awful government. And once they got rid of the awful government things suddenly looked better. But there definitely was a famine there a terrible famine. And it was on the worldwide news and we always on Friday evening after work we, whoever was left at work when the office finally shut down, we'd go across the road to the pub and have a beer and talk about the last week and so on, and I remember, we went over there and we said, "Oh my God, look what's happening in Ethiopia, this is terrible." And then we said, "Well, look, we're making money out of this region." We have got that Africa guide and other guides to parts of Africa at that time. We should be putting some of that money we make back into Africa and we, over the over the beers in the pub in Richmond, invented what became the Lonely Planet foundation.
Tony Wheeler:
And some of the projects we got into early on was because LP writers were out there and they said, I'm in one of them was a thing called surfAid where surfers in Indonesia who had gone to the island of near soft Sumatra, which has always been a sort of surfing center, and some of those surfers were also doctors and when the waves weren't going, they found themselves ministering to the local population and this idea of putting surfing money back into the local community developed and Lonely Planet supported that earlier on. So there were ideas that our authors came back with that we support it but but it was Ethiopia that kicked it off in the first place. And that became a part of Lonely Planet and it even had its own little sort of, if not an office, a couple of desks in Lonely Planet, someone did what was their job? Their job was run the Lonely Planet foundation. And it grew to be a reasonable size, but obviously, when we sold Lonely Planet we couldn't say, No, you bought a business, money making business but you've also bought a charitable foundation.
Tony Wheeler:
People don't buy charitable foundations. So we pulled it out of Lonely Planet, we renamed it as the planet Wheeler foundation. Quite a lot of the money we got from selling Lonely Planet went into that and it's still going strong today.
Pru Chapman:
Incredible.
Tony Wheeler:
And it does mainly education and that's the next question, what does it do? It does education and health, those two things. A lot of it in Southeast Asia, but increasingly in Africa the obviously, we're not going to cover the whole world, we did have the odd thing in Central America, we said this is silly, we shouldn't be spreading ourselves too thin. So the emphasis is on Southeast Asia and South Asia a bit, and Africa. And that's where I think there's currently they've got about 70 projects involved in those two main activities, education and health.
Pru Chapman:
That's incredible. And I'd really encourage our listeners to head over to the website and check it out and get involved, if possible, as well. Because I love this feedback loop. like you said, you're aware that you were doing work in these regions and making profit from writing guidebooks about them. So that giveback loop is a really special one. And Tony Wheeler-
Tony Wheeler:
I got to say, sorry go on.
Pru Chapman:
No Please go ahead.
Tony Wheeler:
No, no, it's okay.
Pru Chapman:
Well, I was going to say that you are certainly not slowing down by any stretch of the imagination you still I mean, not right now but traveling widely you've released not one but two books recently. The islands of Australia that you mentioned a little bit earlier and also on travel which is a great book too.
Tony Wheeler:
Yeah, the on travel one is a little sort of essay on why I felt travel was important, what people get out of travel, what the countries we traveled to get out of us. Traveling, there was a little amusing, a little extended essay really on travel. Which actually I then the Lonely Planet, Italian partners, wanted to, translated into Italian and then said they'd like it to be a little bit bigger. Could I sort of expand on it so, there's an Italian edition of it which is rather larger than the English language Australian edition. And I think I'm about to have another go at it for another publisher. So it's a little essay which as you read it in half an hour, but it was kind of fun to do and it was an interesting project. But the [crosstalk 00:58:17].
Pru Chapman:
And it's also interesting to get your take on it.
Tony Wheeler:
Yeah, yeah, it was good. I have to say, I think travel is a good thing. I think it's how we see the world it's how the world sees us. It's travel is not a one way thing, it's a two way thing. And always you go places, and it's the people you meet as much as the things you see which count both directions. But the islands of Australia book, which is a much bigger book, just opened my eyes to I didn't realize we had so many islands. I forget now if 7000 or 8000, but it's a very, very large number of islands. And they're a fascinating blend of different sorts of islands from their islands that population is indigenous, their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Actually, as I was finishing the book, I went up to the tourists red islands, the islands that go from the north of Queensland up to Papua New Guinea. Which I'd briefly been to them before Thursday Island, but I hadn't explored them in any fashion, I haven't now, but I did explore them much more than I had before. And there's no tourists there beyond Thursday Island. There aren't many on Thursday Island. But further north there are just no tourists at all.
Tony Wheeler:
And they're really interesting islands and effectively ignored by Australians in general. Partly because it's it is difficult to get there, you need permits and things. But they deserve more attention and I think it would be a good thing in both directions if... Be a good thing for the Torres Strait Islanders to have more visitors from mainland Australia. And a good thing for mainland Australians to see this little part... I mean, one of the Islands I went to was Maree Island where or what's it called Maria Island in English, Maree in the local dialect, which is where the Marbury case originated from. So this really important part of not just modern Australian history because it goes right back to the arrival of the first British colonialists who just declared it was Terra nullius and we could just take it and make it ours and the fact that someone was living there already well, when we're going to ignore that, well, that's the Marbury cases where that great wrongs was effectively righted. So, Torres Strait has enormous importance to modern Australia. And yet Who goes there? Nobody.
Pru Chapman:
And maybe this is something interesting that will come out of COVID. And I think we're all paying a bit of and now that things have calmed down a little bit, and we kind of we're in our homes and I think we're looking at how we're going to come out the other side is, as we say, maybe that's the upside is that Australians start realizing that there's more to Australia than just the East Coast or Melbourne.
Tony Wheeler:
Yeah, yeah [crosstalk 01:01:11].
Pru Chapman:
In all directions.
Tony Wheeler:
I haven't made any sort of case to. I've written a couple things about to Australia islands and maybe I'll do a bit more of it because I think it would be a good thing if we went up there in larger numbers and paid some attention to these islands and I think it'd be a good thing also for the islanders if they had because at the moment they're totally supported by taxpayers money effective, it's a little bit of fishing and there's some very nice artwork. I've got a very nice turtle etching hanging on the wall here. But the more tourism would not hurt, it could be well... It wouldn't be over tourism. It could be small scale tourism, which would be a good thing.
Pru Chapman:
Interesting I'd have a look into that. Well Tony Wheeler I'm going to bring us up to a close in just a minute but I have a few questions that I asked all of our one wild ride guests here so rapid fire let's go to your coffee.
Tony Wheeler:
Oh God Almighty, I like both. I can't start the day without coffee but I don't drink coffee the rest of the day, I drink tea. And I put back my tea liking to that first Asia trip. Before I went across Asia that time I was a sort of English tea drinker. Tea came with milk and sugar. Tea no longer has milk or sugar in it. And it was Turkey and Iran and Afghanistan that really turned me on to tea, India didn't. Indians, they can make good tea as well, they can make terrible tea. But tea is an Asian thing, but coffee as well. I like coffee.
Pru Chapman:
You can have both.
Tony Wheeler:
But I'm living in the coffee capital of the world. Melbourne it's, we'd like to think.
Pru Chapman:
Oh, indeed you are. All right, fate or freewill.
Tony Wheeler:
I think again, this both things come into it. And I think one of the fate things that Maureen and I very often talk about. How did we meet? We met in Regent's Park on the seventh of October 1971. Or was it 70? 1970. 7th of October 1970, because I was sitting on a park bench in Regent's Park reading a magazine and this very beautiful woman came along, walked along this path looking for somewhere to sit down to read a book, and the only park bench that had any sun on it was the park bench I happen to be sitting on already. So she sat down on the other end of the park bench. And one year two day later, we got married.
Pru Chapman:
Wow, the rest is history. That is fate.
Tony Wheeler:
Well that has to be fate. I mean, she could have kept... The sun could have been shining somewhere else, she could have walked out a different path that never would have happened.
Pru Chapman:
Fascinating. Interestingly me and my partner met in a park very randomly as well.
Tony Wheeler:
People do random ways, which is a nice thing.
Pru Chapman:
Do you have any kickass daily habits in place, anything that you do every day without fail?
Tony Wheeler:
Oh, God, I can't say go to the gym every day. But I do go to the gym and now I'm doing gym by Zoom. My personal trainer Zooms into me three days a week. I've got lots of habits. I get up and I have coffee and the papers and now checking the figures on the internet. And I do that before I get around to having a shower and getting dressed and shaving and facing the world. So I'm very disreputable for the first hour or two of the day since I don't have to go to work. I've got lots of regular habits. I'm a regular cyclist, I cycle places and all sorts of things I do in a regular fashion but yeah, if I could start the day with coffee in the newspaper or the news, it would not be a regular day.
Pru Chapman:
Now it's quite surreal to be asking the founder of Lonely Planet this very question. However, I do ask all my guests so if you could jump on a plane tomorrow and go anywhere in the world with anyone where would you go and who would you go with?
Tony Wheeler:
It's not a bad question because there's no true trips [inaudible 01:05:40] I've actually just answered this question for a British newspaper. And they said okay, "We reopened the doors where are you going to go first of all?" And I said, "Well, I can only just go outside, I'm going to go for a walk along the Yarra River." But if suddenly the doors reopen, and we can go anywhere, then I'm going to do that trip that I should Be on right now. I'm heading off to South America. I'm going to Montevideo the Uruguayan Buenos Aires and I'm going to go to Fray Bentos a town where the tin meat pie was invented. I'm going to Colonia del Sacramento, the town on the River Plate. Got that name right, it's Colonia in there Sacramento, is it deller or del? Anyway. I'm off to South America, so maybe that. Then who knows there are other trips that were planned this year, which maybe if things reopened before the end of the year might still happen in some fashion, I don't know.
Pru Chapman:
Is there anyone of particular interest that you'd also like to hear me interview on the podcast?
Tony Wheeler:
I haven't even thought of that. I have to look through my list and see who you have interviewed and think about if I can think of somebody who would be good to talk to.
Pru Chapman:
Finally, Tony Wheeler, how can people connect with you?
Tony Wheeler:
I've got a website. You can go to my website and it does say if you want to connect to Tony Wheeler Wheeler, it gives you a thing you can click on and the message does come to me which I can ignore if I want to or I can respond to, I want to. Fortunately not too many people do that because I don't want to be inundated. I mean, I'm not a social media person. I'm not on Facebook, and I'm not... I went last year to a event in Boston, which was really for influencers and instagramers and I spoke for an hour and everybody seemed very happy what I talked about. But I was not at the cutting edge of this thing. And I was just... I learned a lot more about influencing and instagramming than I ever knew before and I was slightly amazed and bewildered by it.
Tony Wheeler:
So I am not in the special media space. I do not have a Facebook account, which these days I void it, I just want to keep away from I don't want to touch it. Don't want to touch anything that guy has done. I don't want the damage he's done in some countries in the world and I don't want to be part of it. So I-
Pru Chapman:
I think that's a wise decision stay away. [crosstalk 01:08:17].
Tony Wheeler:
Because I agree there's some terrible things about it. And I don't want to be, I'm going to say dirtied by it. I don't want to touch it.
Pru Chapman:
Well, then people if you're interested more in all to our listeners in hearing more about where Tony Wheeler is, his website is a great place to land and you've got the journal going there, which does keep us up to date with where you are, so I like it that way. [crosstalk 01:08:41].
Tony Wheeler:
I'm not always up to date, I sort of lag behind a bit on it sometimes. Sometimes I am right up to date. And other times I'm sort of something I did a month or two ago that I finally get down to writing something about so remind you do it, Tony Wheeler.
Pru Chapman:
Wonderful. Tony Wheeler, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been an absolute pleasure and yeah thank you for sharing the airwaves with me.
Tony Wheeler:
Not a problem at all.