Lonely Planet Founders, Hard at Work, Receive Lifetime Achievement Award

Tony Wheeler and Maureen Wheeler, founders of the widely-known Lonely Planet Publications have received the 13th UNWTO Lifetime Achievement Award from the United Nation's World Tourism Organization. The prize, given to individuals with visionary leadership and significant contributions to  the global tourism sector, is richly deserved.

Maureen and Tony Wheeler, founders of Lonely Planet; photo c. UNWTO

According to the UNWTO blog, a trek along Asia’s ‘hippie trail’ in 1972 led Tony and Maureen Wheeler to establish Lonely Planet Publications. Over the following four decades, they produced hundreds of guidebooks which have now sold well over 100 million copies in English as well as in numerous other languages.

Lonely Planet also ventured into many other travel areas including a television series and an award-winning travel website. The New York Times described Tony as ‘the trailblazing patron saint of the world’s backpackers and adventure travelers.’

We've always appreciated Maureen Wheeler's pioneering spirit, as evidenced in the Lonely Planet Travel With Children (Lonely Planet Travel With Children) series which she began.

Since the sale of Lonely Planet, Tony and Maureen have been involved in numerous other activities, many of them with a travel connection.

The foundation they first established within Lonely Planet now works with more than 50 projects in the developing world, principally in Southeast Asia and East Africa, mainly in education and health.

Additionally, the Tony & Maureen Wheeler Chair of Entrepreneurship at London Business School is held by Professor Rajesh Chandy, whose work concentrates on entrepreneurship in the developing world.

In Melbourne, Australia the creation of the Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing & Ideas played a key role in the city’s recognition as a UNESCO City of Literature. Maureen is the Chairperson of the annual Melbourne Arts Festival and the Principal Patron of Opera Australia’s production of "Wagner’s Ring Cycle" in Melbourne in 2013 and 2016. Tony is a director of Global Heritage Fund, which works to protect and develop archaeological sites in the developing world.

Tony’s interest in our world’s more unusual travel destinations led him to write Lonely Planet’s Bad Lands and later Dark Lands.

He is currently working on a new book on The Islands of Australia – there are more than 8,000 of them – for the National Library of Australia and on Lonely Planet’s forthcoming Epic Drives of the World.

We can't wait to see what else they undertake in the lifetime left to them.

Blog post source:  UNWTO