Our Story
A beat-up old car, a few dollars in the pocket and a sense of adventure. In 1972 that’s all Tony and Maureen Wheeler needed for the trip of a lifetime – across Europe and Asia overland to Australia. It took several months, and at the end – broke but inspired – they sat at their kitchen table writing and stapling together their first travel guide, Across Asia on the Cheap. Within a week they’d sold 1500 copies. Lonely Planet was born.
Today, Lonely Planet has offices in Franklin, London, Melbourne, Oakland, Beijing and Delhi, with more than 600 staff and writers. We share Tony’s belief that ‘a great guidebook should do three things: inform, educate and amuse’.
Our Writers
Korina Miller
Korina grew up on Vancouver Island and has been exploring the globe independently since she was 16, visiting or living in 36 countries and picking up a degree in Communications and Canadian Studies, an MA in Migration Studies and a diploma in Visual Arts en route. As a writer and editor, Korina has worked on nearly 60 titles for Lonely Planet and has also worked with LP.com, BBC, The Independent, The Guardian, BBC5 and CBC, as well as many independent magazines, covering travel, art and culture. Korina wrote Plan Your Trip, Understand and Survival Guide.
Alexis Averbuck
Alexis Averbuck has travelled and lived all over the world, from Sri Lanka to Ecuador, Zanzibar and Antarctica. In recent years she’s been living on the Greek island of Hydra and exploring her adopted homeland. A travel writer for over two decades, Alexis has crossed the Pacific by sailboat, and written books on her journeys through Asia, Europe and the Americas.. She's also a painter – visit www.alexisaverbuck.com – and promotes travel and adventure on video and television.
Anna Kaminski
Originally from the Soviet Union, Anna grew up in Cambridge, UK. She graduated from the University of Warwick with a degree in Comparative American Studies, a background in the history, culture and literature of the Americas and the Caribbean, and an enduring love of Latin America. Her restless wanderings led her to settle briefly in Oaxaca and Bangkok and her flirtation with criminal law saw her volunteering as a lawyer's assistant in the courts, ghettos and prisons of Kingston, Jamaica. Anna has contributed to almost 30 Lonely Planet titles. When not on the road, Anna calls London home.
Craig McLachlan
Craig has covered destinations all over the globe for Lonely Planet for two decades. Based in Queenstown, New Zealand for half the year, he runs an outdoor activities company and a sake brewery, then moonlights overseas for the other half, leading tours and writing for Lonely Planet. Craig has completed a number of adventures in Japan and his books are available on Amazon. Describing himself as a ‘freelance anything’, Craig has an MBA from the University of Hawai'i and is also a Japanese interpreter, pilot, photographer, hiking guide, tour leader, karate instructor and budding novelist. Check out www.craigmclachlan.com
Zora O’Neill
A freelance writer since 2000, Zora speaks Arabic with the accent of an Egyptian soap-opera queen. She has written more than a dozen guidebooks to many of her favourite places, from Amsterdam to Yucatan. She is the author of All Strangers Are Kin, a travel memoir about studying Arabic in the Middle East. She lives in Queens, New York -- handy for airports, but also for fantastic food from all over the world.
Leonid Ragozin
Leonid studied beach dynamics at the Moscow State University, but for want of decent beaches in Russia, he switched to journalism and spent 12 years voyaging through different parts of the BBC, with a break for a four-year stint as a foreign correspondent for Russian Newsweek. Leonid is currently a freelance journalist focusing largely on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine (both his Lonely Planet destinations), which prompted him to leave Moscow and find a new home in Rīga.
Andrea Schulte-Peevers
Born and raised in Germany and educated in London and at UCLA, Andrea has travelled the distance to the moon and back in her visits to some 75 countries. She has earned her living as a professional travel writer for over two decades and authored or contributed to nearly 100 Lonely Planet titles as well as to newspapers, magazines and websites around the world. She also works as a travel consultant, translator and editor. Andrea’s destination expertise is especially strong when it comes to Germany, Dubai and the UAE, Crete and the Caribbean Islands. She makes her home in Berlin.
Helena Smith
Helena is an award-winning writer and photographer covering travel, outdoors and food – she has written guidebooks on destinations from Fiji to northern Norway. Helena is from Scotland but was partly brought up in Malawi, so Africa always feels like home. She also enjoys global travel in her multicultural home area of Hackney and wrote, photographed and published Inside Hackney, the first guide to the borough (https://insidehackney.com). Her 1000-word autobiography won Vogue’s annual writing contest, and she’s a winner of the Independent on Sunday’s travel writing competition.
Greg Ward
Besides covering the Ionian and Dodecanese islands for Lonely Planet's Greece, Greg has also written the New Mexico chapter for Lonely Planet's Southwest USA, and has been writing for many years about other destinations including France, Spain, Japan, Australia, Hawaii and Belize. See his website, www.gregward.info, for his favourite photos and memories.
Richard Waters
Richard is an award-winning writer who first cut his travelling teeth in Guatemala, stumbling unprepared into the last days of the Civil War whilst trying to nurse his camper van back to life. He writes for The Telegraph and Sunday Times on subjects including wildlife and adventure travel. For Lonely Planet he’s cowritten over 25 books. He lives with his family in the Cotswolds. Greece has been in his blood since he visited Corfu as a kid in the first wave of British tourists. He’s been back 20 times and counting since. You can read some of his stories for The Independent at: www.independent.co.uk/author/richard-waters
Stay in Touch
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USA
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UK
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Published by Lonely Planet Publications Pty Ltd
ABN 36 005 607 983
10th edition - February 2018
ISBN 9781787019508
© Lonely Planet 2018 Photographs © as indicated 2018
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