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to talk to the man behind one of the most popular books. is now. hello again and welcome to spotlight the uncertain show on r.t. i'm now doing all of my guests. as transport gets faster and information spreads wider as fancy hotels get more expensive along with guided tours and our tourist services more and more people take chances and travel the globe by themselves it makes a vacation

a bit risky sometimes but way more faster one of the main aides are those who decide to roam on their own is the legendary lonely planet guide book one of the founders tell me what it is my guest on the show. with cheap and travel came the era of mass tourism the travel industry is one of the biggest employers in the world but the larger it has become there are those people who shun the package tours and look for something a little different it's called them lonely planet guides were created the first books were written in the early seventy's most people hippies and backpackers but the lonely planet founders tony and mon reed wheeler found the trend and turned it into the world's largest guidebook publisher now lonely planet publishers over five hundred titles remoting tonnage of tourism and eight languages.

so tony welcome to the show thank you very much for being with us today great to be here well first of all what and how would. did you get addicted to traveling do you remember your first trip well maybe the first trip when you decided that this is this is your favorite stock i'd always love travel i've traveled as a small child of my parents but i always say you don't actually travel until you leave your parents behind and do it yourself so my this is what i'm doing with my kid that wasn't traveling you know it's not for them for you know even out there nothing really the out there it's traveling by yourself that really starts it off and i traveled when i was at university but the first trip the trip the really started lonely planet was forty years ago this year it's lonely planet's forty years old next year my wife and i were living in london we bought an old car that the idea was would just drive as far east as the car would take us and we drove it to afghanistan. we started in london way to get across the channel zoo to the

netherlands we drove through europe we crossed over the bosphorus in istanbul into turkey right across turkey across iran afghanistan we sold the car for about a year swapped it for a plane ticket but. we kept on going we carried on down into pakistan across india and down to thailand we hitchhiked from bangkok in thailand down to singapore we took a ship across to indonesia where we went down through indonesia in bali we met some new zealanders with a yacht and we hitched a ride on their yacht and ended up in australia while i. you mean that in all these countries that you mentioned you didn't need a visa becoming we need a visa as we need it is for three or four of them yell how did you get them early on our way we got the visa for iran when we were in turkey the visa for afghanistan in iran i forget where we got the indian visa but we got these as we went along usually liberals because now it's easier but those days they didn't like doing that

i remember living in london and as an accredited press and getting in london for a russian journalist to get a visa to switzerland or to israel was they say why don't you go down go and get your visa back there and they are going to what you wanted so you want to go all the way home to get a visa if you want to just go on traveling go there well so so after you mention all that well i guess i don't have to ask you why you preferred individual tours from the very beginning rather than guided tours rather than the organized tours you know we certainly travelled that way and what happens when we got to australia we were planning just to work there for a few months and come back to europe but we'd had such a good time we'd enjoyed ourselves so much we thought oh let's stay for a year let's save up enough money to travel for another year and during that year in australia we wrote the first lonely planet guide book it is a little sense of freedom of the that you like about the word yeah absolutely i want a sense of being a hippie or any number of legit call of the hippie trail in those days travelling

across asia but no it was the freedom it was the fact that you you learn so much but really when we go to australia we've been travelling for six months and i could just about remember every day of the six months and really generally in life what do you remember if you did someone says what did you do last month you've forgotten there was a six month period and it was all absolutely clear well i travel agencies and airlines going bust revolutions tracking popular tourist destinations unexpected natural disasters and they have to make someone planning your holiday wonder what is safer to travel independently or to go. tour tour operator spotlight you limited me there has more. that the economic downturn of two thousand and eight was harsh and tour operators almost every country had to cope with stranded citizens unable to return home the icelandic volcanic ash of two thousand and ten through european travel further into turmoil as if all of this was not enough the arab spring

introduced more losses for tourism industry blocking some of the most popular destinations such as egypt and tunisia two thousand and eleven so the dozens of two operators and travel agencies go bust world wide the situation draw ever more troubles online to book their holy days independently people found it better to arrange each aspect of their trip individually to make it cheaper to get the eighteen year old they want and secure themselves from dealing with an agency on the brink of bankruptcy even russia where people have traditionally preferred package to was news of travel agencies going bust greatest growth in n.y. home today who gains however greece has become quite a popular destination for tourists who wish to economize the turmoil the country's going through has forced prices down one of u.k. consumer advice borders however has recently want to race from making independent

travel plans to greece it suggested get an a two package was safe as a travel agency has to take its customer home no matter what. isn't true after we saw that is it true that booking your vacation through through a travel agent may be safer than going on an image or look i think it is it's totally up and down you could be on that travel agency that goes bust or you could be in a situation where you really want to try. religion say to bring you home i think it's up to an individual it depends what they're doing and where they're doing it and how they want to do it i've never been a person for group tours but i have occasionally if you want to go to antartica the only way you can live here i've been down to antartica three times and the only way you can go to antartica les you've got your own icebreaker no you need it you need a group tour but what will what i do usually when i go to new destination where

never been before i usually use the trolley because they know they know what to suggest where we are today but when i go to to familiar place when i go to europe i always book it by myself i mean everything i mean how tells a tourist car is a well it's cheaper and it gives you it gives you more options i mean to give you more freedom and you know you're not going to be stuck with the same people are going to every family is your wife your kids it's very individual there isn't a single tourist agent that can that can well meet all your all your interests there's no true i certainly use travel agencies quite often but not all the time not consistently at all well before you created the lonely planet what was your source of information maps like well the you know the thing was there wasn't that much information and the the the decision to create their first lonely planet guide book which was a book about that trip we did across asia was because there was no information available and we started off with lonely planet doing books to places that there

just was not information provided so we were really the first on the scene and a lot of these countries well. as you said was born this is seven seventy three seventy three was our first and there you and your wife marie you produced your first book this was called a asia on the cheap present right is it true that you literally did it on a kitchen table is now yeah we had a small small apartment and we reproduced it on the kitchen table and did the whole thing ourselves took it out around the bookshops and sold it but the amazing thing was it did sell and. we realized that people did want to do that sort of travel and that's what inspired the second book we did and then other people started coming to us with similar ideas when was the turning point when you decided to decided to turn it into an into into your business you know almost immediately we had our first book out for a few weeks and we thought we i don't think we sort of we realized at the time how big it was going to become was in the end we eventually had five hundred people

were getting lonely planet so it was a reasonable sized business so it was all about money from the very beginning but generally it wasn't at all from the very beginning it was about travel and i know there isn't many occasions in our early years when we we had a choice of doing one project or another and it would be one project that we knew would make more money or there was one project that we thought was more interesting to be a more interesting place to go to and we always opted for the more interesting place it was always the it was the travel that was more important than the money but you know and i've been interviewing lots of people and in fact all the people who have made big bucks and became famous they all say the same thing never do what you think will bring you money do what you think is right and i'd actually make more money in the long run hundred percent correct and part of that is if you're doing so your novel if it goes wrong you had a good time doing it yeah right you know i met bill gates once and i always say that i think bill gates didn't set out to be the richest man in the world he was

a computer geek who loved computers he wanted to solve computer problems well guidebooks did exist before world war i remember seeing this guy when i was a kid well but what so special what so what was so one president of the i think it was a number of factors one one was that we we very often had the we did the first guy to nepal the first guy to my first guy to thailand there were lots of places where we had the first book on the scene but also they were very much aimed at young independent travelers we were back in those days young and. independent was what it was all about as we got older and less independent kids came along and things the perspective of the books changed but first certainly was that youth and in susie has an independence and i think also as we got bigger they were one of the factors was that we were totally involved in travel it wasn't a it was much more the love of travel than the business that made it made it work says tony we're co-founder of film the only planet travel guide spotlight will be

back after we take a short break so stay with will continue in the. everyone wants to be pretty. whether they're all ladies own engine driver. but it might be quite tricky to get a fancy cut. because you live out here in siberia. and the only way to get to you is by trying. to pull started here. for going global and now it's my.

log in. to. choose your place to take your stuff. to. make your statement. the works you put the street. welcome back to spotlight on alba knob and just a reminder that my guest on the show today is telling me wheeler co-founder of the lonely planet travel guide book tony over all these years what was the reaction of travel agents you have the traditional guys that made money and travel

business because you were at least for the first couple of years you were there the employees i mean the people who spoiled that business once i got don't think we did i think very often we actually pushed more people towards them so that people who would who weren't going to travel at all were suddenly saw what had. to go to this place i'd like to i'd like to see it myself so we i think in many ways we worked with travel agencies i think the thing that's really changed travel agencies has been things like internet booking and the airlines not wanting to deal with travel agencies anymore i think there's been other factors apart from guidebooks i think i books very often are working hand in hand with travel agencies did you ever do any advertising like somebody like a country where i can hotel chain say then do something about how small we were we've always refused to do that our feeling was we had to be independent when people read our if we said this is a good hotel they had to feel that was our own our own view that it was

a good hotel not because we're going to go to a good country and a good trip and they were ready to pay you to tell the world that they were good no we didn't do that so you know it's a bad or they keep the money we would we had to have our independence. ok now let's talk about russia back in the seventy's russia then the soviet union was not really in destination for individual children or especially not for backpackers here when i did the first lonely planet book on russia the first no defined of a book from on russia or appeared just as the u.s. ceased to exist and it was the most difficult book we had ever done that we had to deal with interest to put it together we it turned out i interest the soviet. what it was to be the k.g.b. i think they were i didn't have very many things that. i don't think we appreciated just how big russia was but we set out to do a book that was this big in many became this big and this big and this big so the

book grew and grew we made more and more of paid trips it just became more and more difficult and more and more expensive and then when it was finally finished suddenly we had a country that didn't exist anymore with what do we call it week we did even our name for it. so you didn't do don't rush to start doing it on the sort of video we did actually we call. the first book the u.s.s.r. even though the u.s.s.r. didn't exist it was the soviet union it was having such a big experience how would you rate russia today in terms of going there not just seeing the same base on the red square but like going there you're stuck i think it's a country that still has a lot of potential that hasn't been realized yet for foreign visitors which is i think that it's that it's so big and they very much is still going to a limited number of places they go to obviously to. where absolutely and so in petersburg you know those two those are the two big destinations but you know we know how many times owns there are all the way across russia it's

a big country and i think it's still a destination that people the first thing they think is oh it's going to be difficult it's going to be dangerous it's going to be a problem the visas are going to be horrible to get and there's still that image about the place and i think it could still be it could be easy i mean the visas could be easier than they are and i think when that starts to develop when we start to get more visitors find it easier to come to russia i think tourism here will expand a lot but what do you think is the main problem why why don't the russian tourist agencies why didn't the seemingly people do go outside the red square outside the winter palace in st petersburg they need to get more visitors here and then there is as long as visitors are limited by the difficulties of getting in the front door they're not going to go out so widely and you need more visitors coming in and those visitors will go out more widely and they'll come back and they'll talk about it and they'll attract more visitors because the very best advertising is always word of mouth it's people who've been to a country and say hey i had

a great time there you should go as well have you yourself been sort of a backpack and stream route in real shoes no i have not and i'm still a beginner you know i did about about fifteen years ago i drew up a list of things i must do i must go to damascus i must walk up to mount sion to bet i must die. on the truck lagoon in the pacific i made this list up and one of the things was i must go and take the transurban express i still not done it it is still on my list so so i just wanted to was about to ask you what will be the route in russia that you would suggest probably starting trans i would i don't know that's the one i've really got to do so i'm sure an experience to talk about the child sabeer express i am i never to give myself i fly i need to get to know east i fly but when you go on the translated beren express i mean i mean the train do you really get to see russia what i mean was just look out the window you can as well watch a movie i mean i don't think i did the you should do that i think what you should

do is go for a day and get off and spend a couple of days then go for another day so they use the train all the way across break it up on the road don't do it in a week do it in a month. it will take a month or two i mean you know you're absolutely you know it's a big country and if you're and if you're struggling beginning to gauge the russians i mean drink and. years you won't remember half of. which is right yeah well ok well let's from russia let's let's get international once again well what kind of people. you used to write for your books what's the criteria to be a lonely town a writer yeah they they have to love travel they have to travel a lot they have to know the country that they're writing about so very often they want to know now i mean you know now academically like a lot of times where you just know where i was like what way to eat where to drink them or where to pick up. all of the above you know you do have to as

a travel writer you have to cover everything you you have to be a little bit of an academic you can talk about the history and the culture and the the architecture and those elements of it but you also have to be a party animal who goes out and finds the bars and finds nightclubs you have to like food and know where the restaurants are you have to be able. well a good hotel from a bad hotel so you really have to do it right you so. i don't i don't write much on the books anymore but i read a lot of the books in the early days i know what it will what was the last you wrote in the last of the last one i had the last guidebook i wrote was i wrote a book to south georgia the island down near the arctic i went down or there was a russian ship that took me down there and the falkland islands i went down there and i also wrote a small book on east timor one of the time the newest us nation but the books that i did the book that i was most enjoyed working on this was about twenty odd years ago i worked in our india guide our india guide was a really big difficult very exciting book to produce. though to agree that

globalization today makes takes lots of fun out of out of travel because in the early days even i remember that in order to have real indian food you have to go to india and to have always through you had to go to deal to buy to buy real jeans you went to the state now you get everything in moscow and pair in london i mean where everything's there we all when we drive the same sort of cars we wear the same sort of shoes we listen they say so you food says that you know we know the more terrorists than anywhere in the world go to france france is the biggest tourist destination the single biggest as a nation and yet you know despite all those tourists the french are still french nobody changes that you go to france and you know you're in france. what about the russian version. is it written by russians there is no they'll be just translation it well it's not just a translation because you obviously have to change quite

a lot of things but you know if we if we say here's where you find they have the american embassy or the british consul or the greater institute whatever well that obviously is of not no interest to russians they want to know where to find the russian embassy if they need help in whatever country they're in so there is a certain amount of work that goes on to making the books suitable for russian uses and. what i know will happen is as the books develop we'll start to have more russian input into them russians will write to us and say hey you know you should mention this particular restaurant in particular because it really suits russians it's popular with russians the destinations that are covered that will also will change with time so although the books at first are essentially translations they're going to change the time you know what we're talking not about not about books about russia but but books about the world for for real russian radio and i would say while there is a specific thing well you mention. in putting it in your book where five english embassy and british embassy were fine english pubs well most of the people i mean

most of the people around the world they like to find their own but as a further russians are specific if you notice russians like places where they won't meet russians they don't know this is there. and i think it's very likely you don't go travelling to your own food at home you want to try something different it's only billfold you know i remember when russians first discovered portugal and this is what's so all what's so interesting about paul no russians. how can you explain that i think people very often they like to sort of find things by themselves and i remember one of the best russian travellers i met i'm three quarters of the way up to the mt everest base camp and you know you meet any other person walking in the other way you always stop and talk to them and this fellow comes walking down the trail from towards us manned everest in the background we stop and say hi where are you from and start talking to me he's a russian and he's walking around the power by himself so there was definitely

a russian who was emitting it was meeting anybody else at all let alone other russians. well since travelling and writing about travelling is you know is your trade is your business do you go on vacation do you go somewhere places like that i mean to some exotic island or something just a vacation. i try to help in sussex so what i do know that i've actually got to have it was i've got one home in australia one hundred in london in england and i tell people that during the year i spend six months in australia six months in london and six months everywhere else and that covers the year very well i find it makes a big city it does yeah it does because i have to keep running so there isn't a hotel or so some bloodline somewhere you like to take your family i like to try something new all the time that there's always some new place i'm going to do something new i'm trying thank you thank you very much for being with us and just a reminder that my guest today was tony wheeler co-founder of the lonely planet

travel guide and that's it for now from all of us here if you want to have your sounds problem or have someone in mind you think i should interview next time to drop me a line at al green of add the doc party here and let's keep spotlight interment movie back with more important comments on what is going on in and outside rush until then play an artsy and take.

russian airlines.