Still a Lonely Planet guidebook is good value for steering you through the adventure of a foreign country, and with one tucked under your arm on a flight from Dakar to Ulan Bator, you will be readily identified as a “serious traveler.” It is this community of serious travelers that Lonely Planet brings together as they wander the world.

Started in 1973, the series was borne out of a passion for travelling by founders Tony and Maureen Wheeler. The name itself came from a 1960s film called “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” and a resulting record by Joe Cocker. The first Lonely Planet guidebook was just a stack of paper, stapled together and titled “Across Asia on the Cheap.” It filled a niche for travelers who were ready to pack light, blend in and travel wide but frugally. The success spawned the next edition, “Southeast Asia on a Shoestring” or as most veterans know it: the Yellow Bible, so called because of its yellow cover and indispensable advice. It’s still one of the most popular titles and has sold over 500,000 copies.

Now nearly 30 years later, Lonely Planet has 600 guidebook titles in 12 languages covering 150 countries and regions, and has branched out to include walking guides, atlases, phrasebooks, and a travel literature series. The Wheelers are still very much a part of the scene, as they travel to far-flung destinations and between the company’s four locations in Melbourne, California, Paris and London.

As with anything for which one is passionate and very much directly involved, the brand evolved from the Wheelers’ enthusiasm and philosophy. However, with more people on the move, the competition for guidebooks is getting fierce, and as Tony Wheeler freely admits, the brand needs to be more proactively managed. Titles such as the Moon Travel Handbook series are superior to Lonely Planet when it comes to covering Latin or South America, and if it’s the cultural scene in a big city, Virgin City Guides (yes, that Virgin) captures the market better.

But Lonely Planet’s closest competition in the English language category is probably the Rough Guide, a series that positions itself to the young at heart, saavy, cost conscious traveler (sound familiar?). Lonely Planet has the advantage of being first to market (by ten years) but Rough Guide has been able to branch out and guide readers through other topics such as jazz, the Internet, football, etc.

Besides the competition, Lonely Planet has an interesting internal dilemma in managing the brand. The whole series is largely dependent on the strength of its writers. And although the staff of Lonely Planet is presumably converted to the cause – travel writing doesn’t pay well and there’s not much fame in it either – an entire region can suffer if a writer hasn’t done his homework or doesn’t inspire the traveler. (The Sri Lanka guide, which is flagrantly inaccurate, comes immediately to mind as a good example.) After all what is the value of a faulty guide? The comfort and direction one seeks in a guide makes the interaction with it that much more personal. If these qualities are not found, it damages the reader’s confidence and ultimately diminishes one of the key elements of the brand.

Not that inaccuracy is often the case with Lonely Planet. In fact, the title is sometimes the most expert guide on the shelf. And it is precisely in these areas that Lonely Planet should extend the most effort to ensure that the quality never fails the reader. The series works best in its niche as a guidebook for less-developed, far-flung countries where fun can be had without spending a lot of money and “off the beaten track” is still a possibility. Anyone who goes to, say, Europe hoping to do it cheaply is going to be miserable (and hated by the local population) within hours of stepping foot off the plane. Lonely Planet in Paris is not especially useful and one wonders why they don’t concentrate on the regions they do well and leave Paris to Michelin, Routard and the Guide Bleu. Trying to straddle Western cities or expensive regions is a stretch for Lonely Planet and crams the brand onto a crowded bookshelf with other more competent guidebooks.

For the time being, Lonely Planet is fully established and carried by student and professional alike. But if it is to survive the next decade, it will either need to scale back and own the regions it serves well or spread out like the Rough Guide (and perhaps work on the LP name, which limits the imagination for covering anything other than travel) and start covering other topics that will appeal to readers who’ve grown to trust the brand as a guide.

Robin D. Rusch lives and works in New York City.