Lonely Planet Reviews 

At the bottom of thailand airways org says lonely plant recommends this site the company is a scam can you confirm you recommend this site. Thank you for contact me I will change review.

Horrible. New lay-out is useless. All practical information is gone. Better to keep the same lonely planet book from 10 years ago on the same destinations and get more info out of it.

I've bought Chile and Easter Island LP. I'm disappointed to find out that it was nothing compared to the previous ones that I bought. It lacks of tips and information about tours, transfers, place where to stay and eat,....
It's a unuseful expensive guidebook!
I would have given it back if only I
had not written some notes on it before starting reading.
I've already written to the "support, feedback..." as they say to do.
I will never get a LP in the future.

I have written this to Lonely Planet directly, but just have to repeat what everyone else is saying here too. The new LP books are a total, complete, utter disaster (am I making myself clear? ;) They have taken out all the useful information and left a kind of travel brochure. The more we tried to use the new editions the more frustrating and annoying the whole experience became. Unless LP change back, and quickly, I suspect their business is toast. I just cannot imagine anyone paying for this stuff anymore. It's all very sad for us, because LP made a real difference over the years. Now we will have to piece together the picture individually, scouring the internet for the needed information. Imagine all the wasted hours on the part of people repeating the same process! This was the value that LP added, and now they have decided they don't want to be at the centre of that network anymore. I cannot imagine what is left for them in terms of a business.

NB LP “replied” below, but it’s clear they never read my message. I said I had already passed this on directly to them right at the start, and yet they tell me how to do this. All very sad. How do these people imagine this is going to end from a commercial point of view?

We just bought guides to Argentina , Vietnam and Malaysia not realising there is a new format with no useful information. The Vietnam book has Angkor Wat in it but doesn’t say it is in Cambodia or even how to get there ! Gutted as we loved these books and found them useful for planning a trip and part of the excitement before going.

When I received this latest Thailand book 19. Edition 30. April 2024 from lonely Planet I was really annoyed an felt screwed over. But this new version is totally different from the previous versions. Now you will find in it only descriptions of the touristic places in Thailand with many new photos. Most of this information you can also find in the internet and other Thailand Travel books and I wonder if the authors of this new version really made a research trip to Thailand because in this new version all the important travel information which the previous versions showed is now missing. For example this new version does not show anymore the adresses of bus stations, hotels, restaurants etc. and how to travel from one place to the other. Therefore this new version is absolutely useless for backpackers who want to travel independently on their own in Thailand. Also the maps are very pale and difficult to read. Bus stations, hotels are not annymore marked in the maps. It seems to me that this version is aimed to the package tourists in Thailand and not anymore to the backpackers

I have used Lonely Planet extensively since the 1980s, but they have recently changed their editorial policy and no longer give the specific information about hotels, transport between towns etc that was so useful. Instead you get more pictures and a lot of waffle about experiences. I bought the new edition of Vietnam last year, but I had to ditch it in favour of an older edition. I have looked in bookshops at the recently published guides to other places and they are the same
Why have they done this? They have abandoned a winning formula. .

After Namibia, Japan is the second new edition Lonely Planet guide that I have bought and returned IMMEDIATELY. Nothing to do with the old and very detailed editions, a real waste of money. Very little information, many useless photos, too expensive. The older editions were just perfect, I wouldn't have changed them for the world, but after Covid many prices changed and many businesses closed so they are no longer up to date and reliable. It's really a shame that to get detailed and updated information I will have to switch to competitors.

Bought a book from LP about southern Italy. It literally misses the point. I discovered any self proclaimed travel writer on the intetnet has more to say then LP.

Have used the guides from Lonely Planet for over 15 years and was very satisfied with all the practical information. So I just bought new guides, written in 2023. I do not know what I saw. There is no real information in this guide. All information is global. For example information about transport says only that you can take a taxi or a bus. No practical information about location of busterminal, important buslines, distances, costs etc. No information about opening times or costs of musea/ sights etc. No information about off the beaten destinations. So everything you would buy a Lonely Planet buy for is not there. Plus layout is unclear.

beware of the lonelyplanet task scam. I got scammed with the supposedly job doing tasks but have to put out money through crypto wallet. Just because I wanted to get my money back, I was told I needed to finish the task. In the end, I finished the supposedly task, but it just asked for me to send bigger money.

Placed an order for three books at the beginning of April, two weeks later had not had any updates, contacted customer support who took a week to get back to me. They said they can re-send the order so I waited again for this replacement order but again - no progress past the order confirmed stage so after contacting their customer support once more I am left waiting for a refund.

Tl:dr; don’t order directly from their website as the only thing you will be receiving is frustration and disappointment.

I really like their products. But I ordered a book 9 days ago as I'm going on a trip. I have received a tracking link, but that tracking just says that they have received data about the package. This usually means that they have not even received the package yet.

I will likely not get the book in time for me to use it for planning and maybe not even to bring it on my trip.

These days, I think 2-3 days from order to receiving the goods would be best in class. 3-5 days would be ok. More than a week is substandard and disappointing. Its been 9 days, and its not even shipped yet - that just sucks.

If you can't do direct-to-consumer sales better than this, maybe you should stop doing it or let someone else take care of it.

Order MHI-358-GM123634. Not even arrived within the preposterously long 10 day delivery (10 days? We're in the 21st century, right?). I've been to the destination and back without the guide I paid for. Nowhere on their site to comment on this. I suppose a refund is out of the question, you useless lot?

So disappointing. The latest Vietnam Lonely Planet had absolutely no useful information. Maps, transport options, prices, emergency information, eateries and addresses, all non existent. Maybe useful for emergency toilet paper.

RIP LP, ZERO stars

Can you please give some basic information about bus and train companies operating in a particular area, and maybe even some route information, instead of the CONSTANT 'You really need a car'?! It's also disgusting that you're charging the same price as before, but now we get about 1/4 of the advice and 100 times as many pictures.

New Loneley Planets are completely useless! I really hope you will do something with all the bad reviews!

LP has been our travelbible for over 40 years. Always lóved the lay-out with the streetmaps and traveldirections. To our dismay LP has changed the lay-out completely (LP Egypt Nov 2023). It has been turned into one in a dozen travelbooks now. The word guide is sadly not applicable anymore. What a loss !
We sincerely hope that LP will jump back into the niche they left since we do not want to be 'guided' by our smartphones whilst exploring new areas.
Emma and Willem

Having used LP for over 35 years we bought the latest Morocco edition for our recent trip, having visited the country several times before.

What a shadow of their formal selves these books have become; it is utterly useless.

There is just no information on Accomodation, Eating, Practicalities or Emergency information. The maps are so poorly printed they are unusable, and for some reason have overprinted circles obscuring what detail there is underneath. But this doesn't really matter as there is so much missing and inaccurate on them they hold no value. Even the very few places mentioned in the superficial text might be omitted, as are tiny details like railway stations, Emergency Hospitals, Police Stations and even attractions.

What we do get are shallow, chatty, blog-like opinion pieces which tell you how great Morocco is, but not actually how to find the greatness.

I understand that the world has changed and many folk travel head-down, phone out and rely on review sites for information. However, a guide book should be both our planning resource and a reliable fallback to get a decent room, meal, help in emergencies and inspiration for the next day’s travel. This book is neither.

If i could give 0 stars I would; as it is the one star is arguably merited since not all Moroccan toilets provide paper.