Guidebook giant Lonely Planet may be seeing the error of its ways in the most dramatic way possible after scrapping the price for some of its iPhone city guides this week.
Officials were left red-faced in early-April when the launch of the Lonely Planet iPad app was roundly criticised for its $20 price tag.
Within days of the launch the price was halved as negative comments on iTunes quickly piled up.
So it was curious to see how this week Lonely Planet made 13 of its most popular city guide iPhone apps available for free, a decision it said to help the thousands of travellers stranded in cities across Europe following the volcanic ash crisis.
Clearly the move has been a roaring success as officials say an eye-watering three million downloads of the apps have since been made on iTunes.
Certainly on the UK version of iTunes, Lonely Planet city guides have secured nine of the top ten positions in the free download chart.
As a result, officials have now slashed the price of 32 other guides in Europe, at least until 30 April.
Such a dramatic turn of events signifies two things:
- Lonely Planet did a superb job of marketing the free apps to displaced travellers, triggering a rush of downloads (the move was certainly covered across the media).
- Travellers per se are just not excited enough to pay for app-based travel guides, but a strong brand such as Lonely Planet can reap the rewards when it makes content available for free.