Maureen Wheeler

Maureen Wheeler was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. At age 20 she moved to London, where she met and later married Tony Wheeler. She is a co-founder and director of Lonely Planet Publications.

Maureen met Tony when she sat down on a park bench in London to read Tolstoy in 7 October 1970. She decided to travel with Tony, to complete an overland journey from London through Europe and Asia, then on to Australia. That trip resulted in a guidebook Across Asia on the Cheap and laid the foundations of the travel publisher Lonely Planet.

In backstreet hotel in Singapore in early 1975 they wrote their second book South-East Asia on a Shoestring. Tony Wheeler says: “Although we’ve continually refined the information organisation, and in 2004 pushed through a complete reorganisation and redesign, the pattern we established with that first serious book has remained remarkably consistent to the present day.”

Australia became their permanent home during the 1970s, but Maureen was convinced that they could never support themselves through Lonely Planet and began study at La Trobe University later that year she, where she completed a Bachelor of Social Work in 1980. Afterward, she committed herself full-time to developing the business.

Maureen says 1979 was the key year, “We moved into an office rather than working from our house, we took on a partner (Jim Hart), and we took on the India book which resulted in the biggest book on India that was ever seen. Up until then, there were three of us - all the books were stored in this little tin shed out the back and under the beds and everywhere else. It was a very amateur, home grown business.” In 1981, with a staff of ten, Lonely Planet India was published, becoming an immediate bestseller.

After giving birth to her two children, Tashi and Kieran, the numerous questions Maureen received by parents wondering if travel had to be postponed until the children were older, prompted Maureen to write a guidebook. Her years of experience on the road with her children allowed her to write Travel With Children to give advice on how to make travel as stress-free as possible.

Over the next few decades Lonely Planet became a publishing icon. Lonely Planet has offices in Melbourne, London and Oakland, with over 500 staff members and 300 authors. (Lonely Planet 2008) The company sells six million books each year, 90 per cent overseas. Lonely Planet has printed more than 54 million copies of its 600 guides in 17 languages and has $85 million annual turnover.

In 2007, 'BBC Worldwide bought a majority 75 per cent share in Lonely Planet, which is speculated to have given the Wheelers more than $100 million. They will retain 25 per cent ownership of the company and remain with the company.

Maureen organised the very successful Lonely Planet travel summits held in 1994, to celebrate the company’s 21st birthday and then again in November 1997.

Maureen has been the driving force behind Lonely Planet’s corporate contributions program established to provide financial assistance for humanitarian projects in developing countries. The next step of her philanthropy is in creating the Planet Wheeler Foundation by funding it with money from the sale of Lonely Planet to the BBC.

One reason for selling the majority share of the company to the BBC was so that the Wheelers could spend more time travelling. "Travel these days is a part of our lifestyles. People are more surprised by those who don’t travel than they are by people that do. Over the last 30 years travel has gone from being an absolute luxury, or something that only mad young backpackers did, to being something that everybody tries at least once. It would have been hard to imagine 30 years ago."

Awards

1999 - Australian Business Women’s Network award for the most Inspiring Business Woman for the year.

2001 - Honorary Doctorate awarded by University of Ulster, Northern Ireland

2002 - Lloyd O’Neil Award for Services to the Australian Book Industry awarded jointly to Tony Wheeler and Maureen Wheeler.

2005 - American University’s School of Communication (SOC) and the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation inaugural Eric A. Friedheim Travel Journalism Lifetime Achievement Award.

Positions Held

2000 to 2006 - Director on the Board of Tourism Tasmania, serving two terms.

2005 - Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sport, Tourism and Hospitality Management in the Faculty of Law and Management at La Trobe University.

2006 - Director on the Board of NT Tourism.

2008 - Advisory Board of Australian Aid International.