The Man Who Made $115M by travelling The World - Tony Wheeler, Lonely Planet

0:00Tony, having never met you before, Chris and I by the way are massive fans of Only Planet So we're very excited for this. And we have this image in our head of this well-trodden path, well-traveled, experienced genius of travel. And then today... It's like a sixth sense. I mean, he's not... Right, the savant of travel. He feels it. And actually, what turns out is this disheveled guy sweating. He's traveled all across London. He's managed to make a trip from Liverpool Street to Shoreditch last about two hours. Yeah, it's pretty accurate. Yeah, every single corner you buggered up, like how to get here you can travel everywhere in the world except for london it turns out getting here has been the trip from hell today you know i started off by going to the wrong place i had the address down wrong yeah you know so obviously i get there and they didn't they have no idea who you are because you're not there yeah and then i foolishly decide oh i'll take the tube that'll be faster which it generally is yeah but today it wasn't i should have gotten a taxi and let the taxi worry about it first of all because the train broke down some i don't think anybody jumped in front of the line.

1:02I have had that happen this year. But somehow the train got stuck and they're telling you, oh, we'll be moving in a few minutes, a few minutes, a few minutes. And then I get off at Liverpool Street and I just get lost getting from Liverpool Street to here. It's your own... Google Maps are just not doing what they should. It's jungle too much for him. Your own real odyssey this morning. It was, definitely. Challenges. You know, it was no fun. Yeah, this background really, it sort of gives a perfect introduction as to why you're the type of person who's like, I better write a bloody book because I cannot figure out how to get from A to B properly.

1:34Very accurate. So on that note, we're big Lonely Planet fans. So this is very exciting for us. You've actually got two super fans here. Two super fans. Some people, I imagine, might genuinely not know what Lonely Planet is. That is possible, right? Or they not have used it. So can you just explain what is Lonely Planet and who is it for? And I guess the difference between what it was then and what it is now. Well, it started, my wife Maureen and I, we set off from London on a trip that ended up taking much longer than we anticipated. Much like today. You went to Liverpool Street. We went to Kabul in Afghanistan.

2:12That was more like it. And we ended up thinking, you know, someone should write a book about the sort of travel we've been doing. And that was a very accurate idea because there were people going to Kabul in Afghanistan, but there weren't any books about it. So we just happened to jump into a market that hadn't yet developed. And it did develop and, you know, wonderful, I think. Can you take us to the journey of then writing those books? So, you know, as a business, as a career, as a job, like, how did it actually start? How did it happen? Well, we ended up we bought an old car in London. We drove it as far as it would go, which turned out to be Afghanistan.

2:48We sold it. We carried on. We ended up eventually in Australia. and then we were going to work there for a year and eventually come back to London. But in that year, so many people asked us, what did you do? Where did you do it? How did it all work? And we thought, well, there's a market opportunity here because they just weren't the sort of guidebooks that later on, you know, later on, there was Lonely Planet, there was Rough Guides, there was Moon, there was, there were all sorts of opportunities, but those books weren't available at that time. so we did a book about that first trip we'd done the one driving the old car to afghanistan the first book was called what across asia on the cheap right so that's what it was all about it was about going all the way across asia and doing it on the cheap yeah i looked that up before i thought it was such a such a cool title because you were you you were backpacking you were yeah absolutely you know you know i don't think the word had really been invented at that time yeah was it called lonely planet it was called lonely planet from the very start yeah cool and you went to lbs right london business school so yeah so it's interesting right because you went on this you know how to do it on the cheap and i go from a to b and i'll write about it but also i've got a i've got business experience so probably you had an intention at some point to use your business experience to create a business and this sort of presents itself yeah it did it did present itself i hadn't realized that was going to be it you know i didn't have a clue at all now the first book we did was an accident but having had done one book and that first book in a small way was successful.

4:18Then we thought, well, let's do another one. And we were going to be heading back from Australia to London. We never actually got back to London. But we set off and it took us a year to get from Sydney to Singapore. Which is, you know, traveling slow. And of course, you know, at that time, this is 1974, you know, you ask an American, you know, should I go on holiday in Southeast Asia? And I say, holiday? You know, you come back in a wooden box. you know it's a there's a war going on there uh indonesia but the british embassy down a few years before singapore was extraordinarily straight laced yeah you know it wasn't the sort of region that is now where everyone's been to thailand too so we were sort of in a way that was pioneering as well do you do you remember how successful that first book was i always i'm so interested in the the the genesis of this which as we will talk about went on to become an unbelievably impressive business yeah do you remember how that first book actually performed absolutely i mean the first book you know we we did that across asia on the cheap both of us maureen and i had full-time jobs so we were doing it in the evenings and weekends and um i you know we did it ourselves we published it ourselves um and then i i took a day off work to sell it you know i i said i'm not gonna be at I worked next Thursday, and I spent that day in Sydney going around the bookshops.

5:42And amazingly, you know, I showed it to bookshop owners, and they were very helpful. You know, they told me what they liked about it, and they bought copies. And before we knew it, we'd sold all. We'd printed 1 ,500 copies. That was all. Wow. And they were all gone in a week or two, so we printed another 3 ,500, and they all went. And then we thought, hmm, this is interesting. So we both quit our jobs, which we were going to do anyway to set out back to London. And instead of setting out back to London, we set out to discover Southeast Asia. That's so cool. So just for clarity, you sold 5 ,000 books and you used that money essentially to be like, let's do this again and write a new one.

6:24Yeah. I mean, we've been saving up money to travel anyway. So that whole year we lived in Sydney, we lived on one salary and saved the other. so we had a year's salary saved up to travel with but instead of traveling we used it to well to travel but to travel researching a guidebook and you know and it was what do they call it um you know it was definitely shoestring travel bootstrapping you know where one project pays for the next one and you know we bootstrapped our way from one book to another book to a lot of books and i suppose for context for the for the audience you know i looked up before 2007 the business was doing something like 80 million a year in revenue yeah we i forget what it was the money it grew a lot wild was it that much i can't remember well i also i also read that 2007 is when you sold 75 the business to the bbc yeah we did we we you know it did grow and grow and you know The first 10 books we did, I wrote five of them.

7:28I wrote the Across Asia, the Southeast Asia, then I wrote an Australia book and a New Zealand book and a Papua New Guinea book. And then other people started coming to us with ideas. Was Maureen like, I'm not going there with you. You did that one on your own. No, she generally traveled with me. We've traveled together a lot and apart a lot as well. But we started getting other writers and the list grew. and then we had employees and the list grew some more. And it was, we did eventually, at the time I left, it had been way over 100 million books. Wow. A lot of books sold. And of course, we weren't only doing...

8:10Sorry, can I just clarify? That must be one of the best-selling books of all time, surely? No, no. 100 million? No, that's all the different books, not just one. I'm quite aware, yeah. Sorry for downplaying your own achievement here, but that's ridiculous. There's quite a few books that sold over a million. I mean, the Southeast Asia Guide was... I mean, the India Guide hit a million really quickly. Really? What's your best-selling book? Not mine anymore, so I don't really know. I would guess it might be... Actually, do you know Australia probably is it? Because so many gap-year travellers go to Australia.

8:43Southeast Asia, Australia is like gap-year. Yeah, it's gap-year paradise, you know. That's entry-level gap-year. That's what I did. Well, why not? I did South America. Well, that's good as well. I mean, they all sell a lot. I have to tell you a story about how Lonely Planet helped me avoid death. Sure of it. Basically, I was in Brazil traveling and there was a very clear chapter in Lonely Planet that essentially said something about Salvador, saying this is one of the most beautiful places in Brazil. The city's vibrant. It's unbelievable. however there's a 99 chance you will get mugged so you know this is like the most likely place to get mugged in the whole of brazil so just be warned and wear a money belt and put your money behind all of this kind of stuff and i was like christ hasn't said that anywhere else in brazil and brazil's been quite intense like in general i felt like i was gonna get mugged every day in brazil anyway so this must be pretty bad anyway i went out um i got mugged three times in one night in Salvador exactly like the book told me I would and each time I had like the right amount of Brazilian reals in my pocket this basically said you know leave leave like you know basically two quids worth in your pocket every single time when they come over to my just give them that be like oh take all my money on that kind of thing anyway it happened three times in one night and I was like if it wasn't for that book and and telling me in advance to do like this is how to go out in Salvador I could have got a lot hairier anyway so thank you for that you've saved Dan's life Well, you know, a lot of places I've gone, particularly dodgier places, you know, the first thing I read is the what's going to go wrong thing.

10:18And it is amazing how often the local scam, and obviously in Salvador, the local scam is point a knife at you or something. Yeah, it's a knife or a gun. Gun, yeah. We only had a knife, but it was both of those. Yeah. I've only ever been mugged like that once in my life. And where was it? Bogota in Colombia, which is a bit like Salvador, I guess. you know so i'm sort of not surprised when the guy my wife and i bogotá yeah a bit hairy yeah you know and uh i mean i've had the odd things stolen and you know generally i think that's stupid of me why did i do that i had my entire backpack including my passport stolen in malubala in australia and the gold coast i think that's how you say it um and very annoying you know had to go to adelaide or brisbane where was the passport office somewhere yeah anyway it was a very as you know in australia as you know is enormous it's highly inconvenient to have to try anyway but this stuff happens when you go traveling yeah it does and the good news is the next stop was asia where the clothes were going to be cheap again i was like i just can't buy the clothes in australia i'll probably survive yeah absolutely i just want to take us back to the uh to the business for a second so in reading and researching about it before you sold 75 the business to the BBC Worldwide in 2007.

11:31Can you tell us about that experience going from an entrepreneurial business with your wife and you had built the business? And who approached you? Actually, the BBC approached us, but we were looking for somebody. We talked with a lot of people. There was no shortage of people who were willing to buy it. There were one or two publishers who said, when you want to sell, just remember we're here, our hand is up. And it was basically, we'd been And by 2007, we've been in it for a long time. We loved it the whole time. It was a wonderful business to run. One of the things I really like about it is I regularly bump into people and they say, do you remember I used to work for you?

12:11I said, no, I don't remember you actually. But it was a time when I was away somewhere else or something. And they'll say, well, that was the best job of my life. I really enjoyed it. And that's terrific. When people say that to you, that is really good. And there's a lot I do know and I do remember. And, you know, and I do know why they enjoyed it. But it was great. You know, we enjoyed running it the whole time we were running it. But around that time, years leading up to 2007, it was time to move on. Our kids weren't. It wasn't going to become a family dynasty. We weren't going to be like succession and thinking who's going to take it over.

12:45Neither of our kids, you know, were keen on running it. And any business, if you're going to be in business, you've got to be totally focused on it. You've got to love doing what you're doing. And I love doing the books. But, you know, the world was moving digital. And although I'm, you know, I'm onto internet as much as anybody else, but it's not the passion for me that the books were. So, you know, we were the two of us were the wrong people to be running it into the future. And why not go now? So we decided to sell. And we sort of waved the flag around and various people turned up. and the one that we said yes to in the end was the BBC.

13:26Does it feel like the right decision? No. It wasn't a bad decision. Wow. You know, I guess we hadn't really totally realised what a political animal the BBC is. So the biggest media company in the world, right? Yeah, and they're good people. I've got a lot of time for them, you know, and I've still got lots of contacts at the BBC who I'm still friends with and so on. But, you know, part of the talk was the BBC, you know they supposedly survive on the television license yeah which i pay even though i never watch television you know it's ridiculous but um you know there's also the bbc money-making side and i think probably top gear is the best example of that the international licenses right yeah you know that that's licensed all over the world and the money flows in from it which then goes to doing the nice everyday things.

14:17And, you know, that was the sort of the pitch that was made to us. And we sort of thought, okay, Top Gear is the cars thing. Lonely Planet will be the travel thing. And the sad thing about it, we actually did have a television production company within Lonely Planet at that time. We'd done a bunch of travel programs and we thought, well, the BBC is going to get behind that and really, you know, that's going to grow like crazy. And instead, what they thought, you know, if we get behind this, people will be saying we're taking the name and commercializing it and you know instead of putting their foot down on the accelerator they put a foot on the brake wow and so it it didn't go wrong but it didn't go really right either it's so strange because it's almost like they took you out of market to not compete with them and then not do anything about it i could really see that working as well at the time i can see it too that would be such a great show yeah you look at things like planet earth and you know a blue planet like there's such and there was i mean we did do some things yeah and there were some things we did with them that really worked very well but it wasn't overall the um the story that we were and of course and the other thing you know was happening that we hadn't appreciated this was just the time where suddenly trip advisor you know started becoming a big thing and people were looking much more and more towards the digital side of it so in a way you know we perhaps we chose the right time to sell out we were talking about just talking about this so 2007 you sell 75 of your stake yeah and 2011 you sell the other 25 of your stake for something like 118 million or something you know we one of the things that the crazy things about all this is that we um when we sold we we had another partner in the business and the bbc wanted john singleton no relation to anybody around here um and the bbc wanted him out of the picture as soon as they could it's kind of a colorful character john um so you know he's still friends um he's still a friend with him yeah he's he's a real he's a great guy but a colorful great guy i love he is what's the word they use in in australia an identity anyway um so the the the initial money a chunk of that went to john rather than to maureen and i to get john out of the picture and then one of the things we'd as it turned out very wisely done we'd sold it to the bbc in australian dollars and um at that point it was you know it was the top of the market when we sold and also the australian dollar went and the pound went so it It cost the BBC a hell of a lot more money, you know, in Australian dollars when they bought the rest of it.

17:00And it wasn't that, you know, that they hadn't done something stupid or we'd done something clever. It was just that the exchange rates had altered dramatically. But timing wise, you sell 75 % of the company in 2007 and the remaining stake you sell for considerably more in 2011. And just to point this out, there's arguably the two greatest times in history for a company like Lonely Planet to get out of the business. 2007, the iPhone comes out. 2011, social media starts to take hold. Yeah. Those are two potential killers for a book-based business. Yeah. What is your prediction for what we should do next?

17:37Where do we put our money? We tell you more about our businesses than you tell us when to sell. I just have no idea. I mean, it was, you know, in retrospect, it was a very clever time to do it. And the fact that, you know, we chose the exchange rates at the point as well. But, you know, we were doing lots of effectively Lonely Planet started with social media from the very start. Because those very first books we did, we had in the back, you know, things will change. The, you know, places we recommend will go downhill. New ones will come up. Of course, yeah. Write and tell us about them. And, you know, now someone would just, you know, click and send you an email or whatever.

18:13But then, you know, they sent you a postcard. and we got just stacks of postcards and the fact that they did take the trouble to do that indicated how much they liked the whole idea it was a it was a good thing incredible incredible timing as well i mean 2020 you know hindsight is 2020 but when we were reading about it before we were like this guy is a magician one of the funny things you know the bbc then sold it um and the to an American media company who just, again, didn't, the BBC, you know, went up a bit, but didn't go as much as they should have done. The new one just kept it on the level, didn't wreck it, didn't do anything great.

18:52And he sold it again to another American media company, a company called Red Ventures. And there was an article about Red Ventures a year or two ago, I think it was in the New York Times, saying that this is the biggest media company you have never heard of. And they're into all sorts of different media things, including one of the things and I met the guy who runs this site before before I knew anything about Red Ventures a website called the points guy and this is for chasing your frequent flyer points god I didn't realize what a big deal it is yeah chasing frequent flyer points but for some people it is but the really nice thing about Red Ventures Rick Elias the guy who started and still as the CEO, was on the Hudson River US Airways flight.

19:36He landed in the Hudson River, got rescued off the wing of the plane, boat taken to shore, gets in a taxi, goes back to the airport, gets on the next flight. I thought, there's someone who travels. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. So on travel and how travel is changing, what are your views nowadays of the change in work, the change of travel digital nomads you know digital influencers travel influencers what is your take on the world right now i i've got no specific i'm interested in all of it i i went a couple of years ago to uh a sort of influencers weekend in um in the states yeah and oh man i'd love to see you there oh it'd be so great it was you know i really enjoyed it it was something you turned up late and stressed no i turned up totally relaxed and you know what things i knew just nothing I knew nothing about, you know, and I and I was fascinated by it.

20:32So I mean, I don't want to be an influencer, but I'm kind of interested that the you are an O.G. Influencer. I mean, back in the day that that was essentially influencing. Yeah, it was. Yeah, I guess it was. You were essential. You were basically travel blogging. Yeah, indeed. Indeed. But I didn't realize it at the time. It was fascinating. And now, you know, and all that stuff, the digital nomads thing, that's fascinating. The idea of people living in kind of an interesting. and let's face it, people always have. I'm always fascinated by the fact that the greatest regret of my travel life was I was in Afghanistan in 72 and I never went up to Bamiyan to see the Buddhas.

21:09And I've got friends who were there. I didn't know them at the time, but around the same time and did, I've got their photographs of them. And I have been to Bamiyan when they're 2006, was it? You know, after the Taliban had destroyed them. but it is amazing how many people were in Afghanistan at that time I'm constantly meeting people yeah I said okay oh yes I was there I was there in you know 69 or 78 just before it all went downhill one of the one of the ones I just met him last year in New York I sort of knew about him for years a guy called Tom Freston who was in Afghanistan the same time as us but he stayed there for about eight years and he set up a making afghan clothes business called hindu kush and exported his clothes from kabul and afghanistan to um you know this europe and the states and everything else had quite a nice little business going for quite a while he had to leave when the soviets came in you know and the whole thing just fell apart so he had to come back to europe and think what do i do now what did he do now he started mtv i mean i've had eight years in afghanistan this is good experience what shall i do mtv that sounds perfect good perfect yeah i met him and he's living he's got the house that um that andy warhol used to not the studio the house he lives in the it's got a you know a plaque outside andy warhol lived here whenever to whenever that is very cool it is very cool so i guess when you do lots of traveling this is my assumption uh you know there's some there's some gift of the gab there's some having to talk your way around certain dodgy locations, especially on a budget shoestring as well.

22:49I certainly know that's how I got around on a proper shoestring when I was traveling. What did that kind of experience teach you in business? Like, how can you relate that to, for example, like your ballsiest business move that you might have made? Look, I think I said this a couple of minutes ago, you know, you've in business, you've really got to do something you're passionate about for a bunch of reasons. I mean, one is and we didn't make any money for ages, you know, And if he didn't make any money, he went straight back into doing another book. And I really resented paying accountants and lawyers.

23:20Because any money I paid them, I think I could use that to do a book. I could send someone out to explore somewhere and they could come back with a book. Paying lawyers' fees or accountants' fees. You've got to do it, of course. But it didn't make you happy doing it. So you've got to be passionate about what you're doing. And if you're passionate about it, the fact you're not making any money doesn't matter. you're enjoying yourself you know you'd rather do that than anything else in the world and the fact that it's not a money maker is unimportant but also if you're passionate about something people pick up on that they see you know hey this person really likes doing these travel books the travel books must be good i think that's true just about any business i always think you know i didn't meet bill gates once i spent 45 minutes with bill gates i've met sergey brin and larry page as well but anyway do they know who you are as in oh yeah yeah the bill gates thing was because microsoft was talking about buying lonely planets oh yeah yeah so we we um we talked about it and you know it just i mean this was it was really pre-internet it was the days when um that they were doing those doing an encyclopedia on um on dvds yeah you know before wikipedia popped up um so yeah we we met him and and i've i've always said you know i don't think that um bill gates and the two apple guys started those businesses because they were going to be the richest people in the world they started the business they were computer geeks you know they loved doing that stuff that's what really you know made their made their day so so i suppose nowadays you've got entrepreneurship is so much more in favor you know like when you were when you were starting your business and you know being effectively a then influencer you know that was incredibly novel you know that wasn't an everyday thing whereas now entrepreneurship is all over the place you know people are seeing it as a genuine route so what advice would you give you know to youngsters now starting businesses and where do you think people are making the most mistakes oh i really i just repeat what i've been saying you know do do something that you're passionate about don't worry about the money immediately if it works the money will will come later on you know if i look back to mistakes we made in one of them was we we didn't value what we were doing enough everything we did for one pound 95 could have been two pound 95 and you know later 19.95 instead of 14.95 and it would make life a lot easier you know that extra 50 of the the selling price would have definitely made things easier um and you know you're saying yeah you're absolutely right that entrepreneurship is much more of a field of interest these days and you know i did go to london business school and you know the idea of being an entrepreneur wasn't so much you know you you'd left it in those days and you went into banking or business um consultancy or all those things you know and um london business school rather you know they rather love me because I'm somebody who did something slightly different.

26:25You know, that's nice. I do think that's a great lesson to young entrepreneurs is that they often pour their heart and soul into businesses and then drastically undercharge for the product they've created because of a fear of not being able to sell it. And I think as you become more experienced, you realize the value you've created, I think. Yeah. I think the other side of it is to really enjoy your company, to employ people well, to give the best service. you do need a margin that you can work with. Oh, yeah. You know, I think we were, I hope you touch wood, that we were good employers. You know, the people liked working for us, and we did a lot of the good things.

27:03I mean, when the business got a bit bigger, we had a gym in the office, and we employed a trainer. Yeah. It was a bit ahead of our time. Totally. Those sort of things, you know, do count, I think. And, you know, people, it's part of the reason they enjoy working with you. um but yeah i i think you know we did undervalue on the other hand you know we did if i it's it's so easy to say afterwards oh i should have done this you know it's if we we all had that vision we'd know on the monday morning which horse to bet on on sunday yeah on sunday you know which is pointless because if you you know if you knew what to do i mean tony you you sold your business for 88 million pounds so i mean you know not not a bad outcome no but it went very well glad you had that figure because i remember i looked it up before because because as someone who's used the product forever like i was at lake atlan my wife on christmas we still had the books i you know i had no idea of how impressive the actual business was and to build a business of that size i think is beyond the wildest dreams of so many people and yet it's a product we absolutely love so in my mind it's kind of the perfect business you know well we had a lot of people and you know when we left at the end you know we had 500 employees wow um plus the writers the writers were all freelance basically they were travelers yeah yeah they were travelers yeah but the the people in the offices there were about 500 of them so it was a reasonable science that's not small no i've got a confession for you i was one of your uh unofficial writers in uh southeast asia because in bangkok you were able obviously to get fake journalist passes and so the the thing at the time was you know no i in southeast asia it wasn't so necessary but i did go to japan and book a few uh hotels being on a very serious journalist from the planet by the way there was a lot of people doing it and i was just one of them so i'd like to be honest i know i i know would you get a reduction of free stay yeah uh they basically put you in like uh you know if they had a spare it was never a nice room whatever they had but it was just like you get in the back you were a con man and we really disapproved of that i think we'll make an episode about con yeah yeah yeah 100 i wasn't i wasn't proud of it but at the same time when am i ever going to get to tell you the truth so you know this is my confession um okay too late me to do anything about it yeah tony i i apologize sincerely but thank you for helping me actually i couldn't afford japan obviously so that was very helpful um you've got on record for saying that a year of traveling is more valuable to people than five years of being in education.

29:42And I would agree with that in so many different ways. The question is, how can you frame that in a convincing way to parents, right? My parents really valued travel. And so that's quite lucky in the same way as I value travel. But I think a lot of people would hear that and think that sounds like garbage. So can you make it a more convincing argument than that soundbite. You know, I've got a paragraph which a Spanish writer wrote about why young people should travel. And she just nails it, you know, why it's so good for them and how they learn about the world so much. And I think, you know, I have said that, you know, that gap here does outweigh the last five years of school or the next three years of college or university or whatever.

30:28Because it's a real, it's a learning experience and you you never travel when you're traveling with your parents if your parents are doing things you know when you suddenly your parents aren't there anymore oh god how do you book a hotel oh thesis i my parents did that you know you you're a it's a different ball game and i think it's a it's a great education and let's face it you know travel is is how we meet each other you know how the world gets together it's an important thing there's lots wrong with travel we all know about Greta Thunberg is telling us we should just stay at home and not go anywhere and if we go there we should yeah no one wants to go travelling with her let's be honest you know and she's in Switzerland Sweden you know it's damn easy from Sweden she was lecturing Japanese or Australians that option isn't there some of us like to travel go live your life come on I approve of her what she's doing But, you know, unfortunately, I'm going to keep on being a terrible person and traveling.

31:28Yeah, it's one of my favorite things, actually, about what you what you created was my wife and I go backpacking a lot and still do. You know, now we do Christmas every year is the fact that if I was traveling without the books, I would just stay in hotels. But because I travel with the books, I end up staying in places that are probably less expensive. But we end up meeting so many people. and so whether it's new years or christmas or whatever you have all these travelers that are away who've decided to be away who end up being friends yeah and so i've met these incredible people over the years that now are all around the world um and it's it wouldn't have happened without the recommendation to stay in this hotel or this guest room you meet you meet people and i i'm a great believer you know in the the the fact that travel does take you places and introduce used to do.

32:14It may look good on television, you know, maybe great watching the YouTube clip or whatever, but there's no substitute for actually going there and doing it yourself. And I've got so many stories of things that have happened because, you know, I was there. And there's also something really important about this at the moment. We live in a loneliness epidemic, right? There's actually, you know, the survey of your average American, your average American male in his 30s has an average of zero close friends that they can call if they have a problem zero horrendous yeah you know you think it's at least one or two it's not it's literally zero thank god i have you so exactly although text me don't call me yeah um leave a voice note um but it's it's one of those things where if you've gone through that period of your life and you do feel lonely and obviously lonely planet being a beautiful name for this but if you feel lonely and you feel like you can't connect.

33:11Let's say you live in London. It is very difficult to be like, well, what do I do? Go down the pub and make a random friend. No, I can't really do that. And when people come to me with this kind of problem, I actually say, you know, go traveling. That is a place that you can go make friends. For some reason, the social contract is just broken. Yeah. Where, okay, this wouldn't be normal for two like lads in Sydney or ladies in London to just meet up at a bar and become friends. But if you're from different places and you're both in Shanghai, it's totally normal and you really genuinely become close friends and you meet someone for a night and you're like should we travel together for the next three months I mean that happened to me all the time and I'm still friends with those people yeah and you know you meet them in Shanghai maybe it is you know you don't carry on that day but then two to three days later you meet them again yeah yeah yeah that's also so true right you're like oh you're the person I met you know what are you doing in Beijing normally because you're because you're following the lonely paraphrase it's exactly true yeah yeah yeah you call the same book you're doing the same thing yeah yeah oh you know you you need somebody else to fill the car up yeah to book the trip or whatever yeah yeah i've got it it works it's um it's an interesting point because like i say if you're following the lonely planet route you're going to a lot of the same places you see a lot of the same people so i suppose one of the questions i had before was how do you sort of square the idea of pushing people to travel and be outside their comfort zones and all this all the rest of it and visit new places and new destinations with what is clearly like the lonely planet effect, which is, you know, you recommend a cafe, I go to the cafe.

34:43And so does everyone. You're a lonely planet sort of person. You know, I've seen that in the ads. I'm looking for someone else who is a lonely planet sort of person. Yeah. I don't know. I'm too old for this now. Fair enough. Sort of related to Chris's point, though, there is a lot of over-tourism. Oh, yeah. Yeah. and i you know what's your what's your view of your impact on that like genuinely not to be overly challenging or difficult right you've done such an amazing job for people like us to go and discover the world and make it easy the downside effect of course like i'm sure the internet cafes of our era and the actual cafes and little restaurants to be so grateful for everything that you did there were also places that are going to be like this was better until lonely planet wrote about yeah yeah 100 correct you know and we we look around the world today and you know there's the Barcelona's and the Amsterdam's saying, you know, don't send us any more tourists.

35:37We've got quite enough. I don't think Venice is because Venice isn't a town anymore. Venice is just a tourist abstract. It's a sort of a real life medieval amusement park. But Barcelona and Amsterdam are towns that are overrun. I've just been in Albania and I've been to Albania twice in my life. 2006 when it was just reopening after the the hoja years and the pyramid scheme and the collapse of communism and all that stuff 2006 everybody was scared off from albania and not wanting you know just tiptoeing in the door well now i was there two weeks ago and you know it's it's definitely booming a bit i went to tirana last year and it was yeah rammed yeah it is you And it's a lot more now than it was last year.

36:23I'm willing to bet in a couple of years' time, Tirana will be Barcelona or Amsterdam, saying no more tourists. But there's lots of places. One of the ones, there's a book just written, I forget the name of the title, Paige McLanehan, I think it was, the woman who wrote it, The New Tourist or something. It's an academic sort of study of tourism. And she's looking at those places like Barcelona and Amsterdam that have got too many tourists. And she's American. She also brings up Hawaii, where a lot of Hawaiians say, don't send any more mainlanders. We've had enough of them. But then she also looks at Liverpool.

36:58You know, in Liverpool, I went to see Boys from the Black Stuff a few weeks ago at the National Theatre, which was a set in the Liverpool and the Maggie Thatcher era, when Liverpool was flat on its face. And Maggie Thatcher was someone who put her foot on their head when they were flat on their face. And, you know, Liverpool has really bounced back. and what's it bounce back from? Tourism. They've used the Beatles like crazy but they've got some great museums, they've got lots of things that really work well and she definitely says in this book that here's a place which has been welcoming to tourism and hasn't been overrun by it and would even like a few more.

37:37I go to lots of places where I often I'll probably find it's wrong now. I look at Ravina in Italy, a town a bit south of Bologna, a bit north of Rimini. Great town, you know, beautiful place, wonderful churches and mosaics and great Italian food and nice places to sit with a cold beer late in the early evening sort of thing. Sounds great. And not overrun by tourism, I didn't think. I'd go into one of these churches that was nearly 2 ,000 years old and I'd think, where are all the tourists? Why am I not elbowing my way in? So, yeah, you know, not everywhere is overrun. and I've done talks where I said, you know, here's our guide to Bali and our guide to Vietnam and our guide to, and all these places, people say, oh, that was great till there were too many tourists and Lonely Planet was what did it.

38:28We didn't, of course. We didn't build the airport or all the hotels or book all the flights and these things. But look, we also did a guide to Afghanistan. We only ever did one edition of it. We just thought Afghanistan might be reopening. Not the best selling. No, it was not the best selling. I was really proud we did it. I hope that the Taliban loved it. They visited and they never left. I've got a few photographs of, you know, military using it. And, you know, it was a great book. And when I went back to Afghanistan in whatever year it was, 2006, 2007, I took it with me and used it. And it was great.

39:02But if someone could say, oh, Afghanistan, well, that was OK until Lonely Planet came along. you know the the russians the americans the taliban we could live with that but lonely planet please no i'd be really proud of that yeah we need to bear game which is taliban or lonely planet yeah if i couldn't say i'd ruined afghanistan so nowadays like where are you traveling where are the places you're going like tell us a little bit about that just all over the place um you know i do it everybody loves italy you know italy's got so much going for it and you know the food's great they know how to live in it yeah and um one of the things delightful things is that the italians love lonely planet books i mean i i get better reaction in italy than i do in a lot of the english-speaking world really yeah is that how you introduce yourself yeah no they they know about lonely planet there and the the italian people who translate lonely planet guides into into italian they're always saying to me come to italy i went to rome for them this year i went to turin for them last year i you know i go somewhere for them every year and i'm always you know if they say come to italy again i always say yeah yeah why not so you know italy is a great place to go to again sorry i'm quite fascinated by this they invite you to italy as if you can't go to italy on your own volition who is they the edt uh edicion de torino they're the italian translators right and they they're putting on and they do an annual um sort of lonely planet travel weekend yeah in different cities and they have a lot of speakers come in mostly italians but you know a few people like me they have to translate for yeah and they get their bands that they actually tried to get van morrison last year and they couldn't afford him you know they they gave they made him an offer and i you know i was i said do you have that much money but um but it wasn't enough for van morrison so it's your favorite place that's one of my favorite places do you have a favorite place um yeah i often say that the departure lounge and it'll be and it'll be gap week tomorrow how many how many countries have you visited oh jesus um a lot there there is you don't know the number i do know i do know the number and i and my we're gonna we're gonna push you on this i know don't don't waffle around this one okay i i've got i've got it i could turn my laptop on and i can look it up we're gonna make because um there's okay there's two things there's a thing called the travelers century club and you've got to be you've got to go to 100 countries to be a member you must have done that easy left out in the dust easy we've probably done that yeah that's no trouble yeah and i but they i've spoken you know in america and in england a number of times um but then there's lots of people in the traveler century club who've been every they've been to every country on earth um which effectively means all the 193 UN countries.