From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Rough Guides logo since 2005

Rough Guides Ltd is a large travel guidebook and reference publisher, owned by Pearson PLC. Their travel titles cover more than 200 destinations, and are distributed worldwide through the Penguin Group. The series began with the 1982 Rough Guide to Greece, a book conceived by Mark Ellingham, who was dissatisfied with the polarisation of existing guidebooks between cost-obsessed student guides and "heavyweight cultural tomes". Initially, the series was aimed at low-budget backpackers. Rough Guides have incorporated more expensive recommendations since the early 1990s and colour printing since the late 1990s and are now marketed to travellers on all budgets. Much of the travel content is also available online.

The initial focus on travel has broadened to a coverage of reference subjects, including music (world music, rock and hip-hop, jazz, classical and works on individual artists and bands) and a varied general reference list on topics such as film, literature, popular science, ethical living, Shakespeare, pregnancy and birth, and the Internet and related subjects such as e-Bay, blogging and iPods.

Most of the early titles were written or edited by John Fisher, Jack Holland and Martin Dunford, who along with Mark Ellingham were co-founders and owners of Rough Guide series. In 1995, they negotiated the sale of the series to Penguin Books, a process which was completed in 2002. In May 2007, Mark Ellingham said he had grave concerns about the growth in air travel because of its growing contribution to climate change.^[1]

In association with UK-based record label World Music Network, the Rough Guides have issued over 180 recorded anthologies of the music of various nations and regions.^[2]

In the late 1980s, the Rough Guides brand was 'spun-off' into a series of successful travel shows on BBC 2. Initially part of Janet Street Porter's DEF II strand, alongside Rapido and Jovanotti's Gimme 5, the show outlasted the 'yoof-tv' strand and became established in BBC 2's early 1990s evening schedule. Later editions of the show, usually hosted by Sigue Sigue Sputnik associate Magenta Devine (with various male co-presenters through the show's run), were repeated on the Sky Travel channel until 2005. A new Rough Guide series of ten thirty-minute programmes started production in November 2007 and is due to air on the UK's Channel Five, starting in January 2008. The new series is made by the award-winning factual TV company, Lion Television.

• Lonely Planet
• Not For Tourists

• Rough Guides
• World Music Network, the distributing arm of Rough Guides music recordings