Lonely Planet magazine headed to US

Lonely Planet, made famous for its guidebooks for the hippie generation in the 1970s, is bringing its magazine to the US in September.

“It will be our eleventh magazine worldwide,” said Piers Pickard, the publications director, from the company’s London office.

Aside from the British one, most of the other editions are licensed deals with foreign publishers who pay a fee for the name.

The US title will be an owned-and-operated entity based in Franklin, Tenn., just outside Nashville, where its guidebook editors covering North and South America are based. It is currently owned by NC2 Media, headed by billionaire rancher and one-time tobacco titan Brad Kelley, who is now ranked as the fourth-largest landowner in the US.

Lonely Planet was founded by an Australia-based husband and wife team, Maureen and Tony Wheeler, who started telling restless 20-somethings how to travel across Asia on the cheap. They sold it to the BBC for $210 million in 2007, just before the Great Recession hit and took its predictable toll on the travel guide market. The operation was sold to Kelley’s company for just under $80 million in 2013.

Although the company still calls Melbourne, Australia, home, more than 75 of its 400 employees are based in Franklin. It also has a big sales and marketing presence in Oakland, Calif., pushing the total US headcount to 115.

The quarterly publication will hit Sept. 2 with a guaranteed circulation or 450,000.

Lauren Finney, most recently a senior editor at Niche Media, where she worked on the launch of Austin Way Magazine, will be the editor.

The company is adding a half dozen editorial staffers and will use the ad sales staff that is already selling its digital properties.

“Launching a travel magazine in 2015 feels pretty brave, but travel magazines have been experiencing big growth in the US and we’re already the largest guidebook publisher in the world,” said Pickard.