Lonely Planet Markets to Travelers in the Face of Disaster

If you’ve spent the past few days sleeping in an airline terminal and taking baths in the sink, guide book publisher Lonely Planet has your back. Lonely Planet has made 13 of their European iPhone city guides available for free download for travelers stranded due to the eruption of Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull. The iPhone guides are usually priced $9.99 to $15.99 in the iPhone App store, but they can be downloaded free until Thursday, April 22.

Of course, you don’t actually have to be a stranded traveler to get the discounted apps, I downloaded the Paris and Barcelona apps from the comfort of my San Francisco apartment.

Lonely Planet is getting great PR and media coverage from this move and their social media mentions are way up. This Trendistic chart shows them spiking starting Monday afternoon when they made the announcement and continuing today.

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I’m sure some cynics will see this as brash opportunism on the part of Lonely Planet, but this isn’t opportunism, it’s just smart marketing.

Are there current events that you could be capitalizing on to promote your brand?