From its first edition of Across Asia on the Cheap in the 1970s, the company expanded into the world’s largest travel guidebook publisher and now produces around 500 different titles in multiple languages. The company has also been involved with several television programmes.

However, redundancies announced last week - mostly affecting writers and editing staff - have left many ex-employees wondering about not only their own future, but also travel writing as a whole. 80 staff, a fifth of the workforce, have been let go, with the redundancies spread over the company’s five main offices.

Lonely Planet’s future became more uncertain after it was sold by its former owner BBC Worldwide earlier this year. Having bought the company for an estimated €150 million in 2007, BBC ultimately offloaded the company for around €60 million to the American NC2 Media earlier this year. The new owners have pledged a fresh focus on the brand’s online presence and user-generated content, although have thus far declined to elaborate on the printed editions’ future.

Lonely Planet has already established a moderately popular Internet forum through their Thorn Tree community (which was briefly shut down by BBC late last year for not “[conforming] to standards”). However, despite the brand name and reputation, they have struggled to attract the same level of online attention enjoyed by competing sites such as TripAdvisor.

Online travel sites have also challenged Lonely Planet’s printed market, although former LP writer Zora O’Neill argues “any dope on TripAdvisor can say something's ‘the best,’ but only Lonely Planet authors have visited 25 hotels and can honestly use the superlative like that.”

Although smartphones and Wi-Fi have dramatically increased the amount of information travelers can access, mobile data is still too expensive to practically use abroad, while the broadband infrastructure in many countries remains poor. That's not to mention the constant need to recharge electronics.

For those reasons, many will be hoping Lonely Planet and other printed guide companies such as the Rough Guide stick around for the foreseeable future. At the very least, we can only hope it’s a good few years before the latest editions go out of date.