Travel guide book publisher Rough Guides has announced a move into "travel booking".
It’s by no means an unknown path: For example, rival Lonely Planet, which currently uses third parties including Booking.com and Skyscanner for its service, made its foray into facilitating bookings for its users many years ago.
However, it is an interesting move from a number of perspectives, including historical pushes into online, the scarcely realized brand potential and, more recently, what might be termed as the Culture Trip Effect.
The beaten track
From the mid-'90s, as consumer behavior changed and customers moved online, many guidebook publishers saw their audiences diminish and looked for ways to digitalize content and keep the eyeballs coming.
There were challenges in terms of finding ways to monetize online content, but there were also opportunities in terms of providing B2B travel content to existing companies and new entrants in the race to get online.
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