Travel – The Daily Opinion

Lonely Planet Demise?

Travel publisher Lonely Planet has been forced to let go some of its staff, leading to speculation that its future is uncertain.

In a recent article in the Guardian, the company has “shed its editorial staff as part of an overhaul followings its sale by the BBC”, resulting in fans and travellers taking to Twitter to create something of an early eulogy to the Melbourne “home-grown” company, using the hashtag #lpmemories to describe experiences had largely in part to the indispensable travel guide.

From its humble beginnings in the 1970s, Lonely Planet was a pioneering publication in that it encouraged would-be travellers to venture “off the beaten track” and made suggestions as to the best way to get a true taste of the place they were visiting.

Comprised of a small but dedicated team of people with a limited budget and a genuine love of travel and adventure, Lonely Planet sent people – ready, willing and able – to all corners of the globe to experience and soak up the local culture, while writing about it along the way.

Even as the world moved into the digital age, Lonely Planet was not to be left behind and in fact launched its website in 1995 in a bid to achieve what their guidebooks were doing in the context of an online community. Yet it is precisely the recent claim that the new owners of Lonely Planet want to focus less on content creation and more on a “digital strategy”, which is signalling a downturn of the company’s fortune.

Even in the midst of the global recession, there was undeniably a market for travel and adventure, as Lonely Planet reported healthy business in 2008, but book sales have been declining ever since another key indicator of the digital age.

Particularly, the market for travelling “on a shoe-string” ought to have seen business for Lonely Planet increasing – rather than decreasing – over time, but in being forced to let go the very people who invest their own time and energy into gaining a first-hand insight into a previously unknown place, they are losing the “expertise” which has for a long time, made them such a trusted and dependable guide.

With people migrating to sites such as TripAdvisor, who allow literally anyone to write a review regardless of how much experience or knowledge they actually have, it is perhaps inevitable that Lonely Planet would begin to struggle to compete.

Furthermore, the “digital strategy” being proposed by the new owners may not even be a negative thing for the company. The hope, in any case, is that somehow they will be able to retain the personal touch, and words of wisdom for which they have become so well known, as they are moved on into an uncertain future.

Scottish Island For Sale

The isle of Tanera Mor, just off the north-west coast of Scotland, is going on the open market for sale, for the price of £2.5million.

It is the only inhabited island in the Summer Isles archipelago and provides a rare opportunity for anyone willing to enjoy a unique lifestyle. It comes with nine other residences, a thriving bird colony, a post office, and a ready-made tourism industry. It also inspired a book written by someone who once lived there, and is rumored to have inspired the setting for The Wicker Man.

The current owners have greatly appreciated living on the island, having relocated from an English dairy farm in 1996, but now they are preparing to move on and hand their home to someone else, saying that “it is time for someone else to have the privilege of looking after this amazing place.”

After a meeting with the local community of Coigach, who turned down the chance to take over responsibility for the island due to current environmental projects, it was decided that Tanera Mor should be owned independently, considering that there would potentially be great interest, and the island would be able to fetch a healthy price. Furthermore, the new owners would have to be environmentally responsible, caring for an ecosystem that houses a colony of rare bird life, and would ideally be willing to be part of a small and close community, if not mostly living on their own. For those who enjoy almost total isolation, and living in harmony with nature – and with enough money – it would be the perfect home.

Despite its relative isolation, the island has in fact been inhabited since Viking times, and the name derives from the words “harbor island” in Norse, so its habitable nature should further appeal to those looking to buy.

A property consultant overseeing the purchase has encouraged anyone who fits the bill to come forward and claim a unique opportunity for an island lifestyle, where they could enjoy continuing “support and commitment from the local Coigach community”, and particularly those who would make the island’s sustainability a priority.

Why Does Nom Nom Time Turn to Hospital Time?

There are many reasons why that great looking tin of sardines would be good to eat, but there are also many reasons why the emergency room is a good possibility. That’s right, the Food Standards Agency has conducted a study that has shown that more and more people are getting food poisoning due to food that was consumed when it should have gone in the bin.

But why did they do this? Well it’s not because they were suddenly exposed to radiation that caused mass brain damage. It’s because they decided to make food go further by utilising leftovers and the power of smell. In other words, the date on the packet was completely ignored; although the people who wrote about this seemed genuinely surprised.

Anyway, the Food Standards Agency is expecting the number of food poisoning cases to peak this summer so we don’t actually know how bad it will get yet. According to them, though, it will get much worse.

If I had to give my opinion I can tell you exactly why more and more people are now taking a risk by just smelling food instead of obeying the date on the packet.

1. People just can’t afford to buy so much food these days. Food prices are going up all the time and it’s getting to that point where lots of meals just aren’t worth creating anymore. The government always moans that we should be healthy and we should spend hours cooking these elaborate meals, and yet what they don’t seem to understand is that the bad food tends to be the cheapest food, and that’s all that many people can afford. Lower food prices and this wouldn’t happen as much.

2. The unemployment rates. Regardless of how expensive food prices are, it doesn’t matter if there’s no money coming into a household. People are still losing jobs even today and it only looks to get worse as Spain announces that it needs a bailout. So if people can’t afford good food then they are going to take a risk. We have a free healthcare system so it’s cheaper to actually get food poisoning. Start getting people back to work and the numbers will go down.

3. Travel costs. If you look at those who commute to work in this country then you will quickly discover that it’s one of the biggest expenses around. The buses and the trains are an absolute joke in this country. We have to pay some of the highest prices in Europe for trains where we might not even get a seat. Here’s an idea. I would rather have my taxes raised if the government could nationalise both of those industries and lower the prices.

Empty fridge

All of those reasons contribute to the rising number of food poisoning cases, and the Food Standards Agency will be recognising this. What people need to accept is that if you are going to implement austerity in a country then you are not only making the people depressed but you are also making them unhealthy. It just seems to be incredibly unfair that everybody else has to suffer because a few prats at the top won an election every five years and now think they can play in the Casino of Capitalism.