Bad news for the web and digital folk at Lonely Planet with the team taking the brunt of widespread redundancies at the same time as the entire department heads north to London.
Headcount at the guidebook giant will be cut by nearly one in five (17%) as a result of sweeping changes to the company following poor financial performance in recent months.
Around 70 people, mostly from the company's digital division, will lose out as the company looks to recoup a massive AUS$13 million wiped off revenues as a result of the strength of Australian currency (which the company operates in) which skews the 80% of the revenues coming in from outside the country.
The company currently employs around 350 people in Australia (its headquarters are in Melbourne) and 100 elsewhere around the world but primarily in its London and California offices.
The vast majority of the remaining members of web team will now move to London and new roles will be created as a result of those not being able to make the huge personal switch to a new country.
An official says part of the reason to locate them to London is to bring the department closer to parent company BBC Worldwide following its purchase of the remaining shares from founders Tony and Maureen Wheeler last year.
There are no definitive plans as yet, but some integration or sharing of expertise and skills could be a possibility. Ties are already getting closer between the two, with BBC running Lonely Planet content on its non-UK website.
CEO Matt Goldberg has continually stressed how important digital is to the company as it looks to become a multi-channel publisher, but the latest development is the second time in the space of a year that the web folk have been on the receiving end of redundancies.
An official says there is "no change" in its overall strategy for the web with today's redundancies as a result of the financial state of the company, declining print market, sluggish global economy and weak retail sector.