Lonely Planet Publications are one of the largest travel guide book publishers in the world with offices in Melbourne, London and Oakland, with over 500 staff members and 350 authors. All Lonely Planet guidebooks are the result of on-the-ground research and draw from the collective knowledge of a global travel community. They are constantly evolving and always improving.

As part of this evolution, in 2008, Lonely Planet embarked on an ambitious project to re-engineer their publication mapping platform based around RDBMS and GIS technology. This project included the evaluation of technologies, business and functional requirements analysis, application design and build along with a parallel stream of business change and process re-engineering.

Lonely Planet had a number of requirements that differ from the “normal” mapping challenges faced by organisations including multi language support, global coverage, highly variable scales and extents and a close association between map elements and associated textual information contained within guidebooks.

Lonely Planet engaged Spatial Vision to design, build and deliver the new Mapping Platform based around ESRI’s ArcGIS technology. The two organisations developed a collaborative project team and used a unique approach to the design and development of the new system.

This paper provides an overview of the approach taken by Lonely Planet and Spatial Vision in developing the new Lonely Planet Mapping platform. The paper outlines the technical, data and organisational challenges that were overcome in the course of the project and highlights lessons for other organisations embarking on large scale process re-engineering projects