Skift Take

Looks like Lonely Planet's new CEO is serious about getting deeper into certain sectors, even if they're not that forward looking.

Lonely Planet’s new CEO Luis Cabrera has wasted no time in exploring the “adjacent business opportunities” he mentioned when taking the job.

The travel guidebook pioneer has bought Gothenburg-based ArrivalGuides, which claims to be the world’s largest distributor of destination content, for an undisclosed figure.

ArrivalGuides has 625 destination guides and works with clients such as Visa, Hilton, and Eurowings to create white-label content distributed via their channels. It employs 15 people. No word yet on what will happen to the brand.

“ArrivalGuides’ model and established channel will allow us to explore more aggressively and creatively our B2B strategy and partner with companies in new ways. This is a perfect outlet for our expert content” said Cabrera.

Why Lonely Planet is acquiring ArrivalGuides as opposed to distributing its own existing content through third parties likely has to do with LP wanting to keep its destination and point of interest descriptions unique to its own channels, as well as acquiring ArrivalGuides’ existing customers.

ArrivalGuides partners with the likes of tourist boards and destination marketing organizations, giving them access to its platform to write and update content based on their local knowledge.

Lonely Planet announced Cabrera’s appointment last week. He took over from Daniel Houghton who left last year.

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story said that companies like ArrivalGuides traditionally work with a large pool of freelancers. We have changed this for clarity.

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Tags: content marketing, europe, lonely planet

Photo credit: Lonely Planet has bought ArrivalGuides. ArrivalGuides

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