International Lonely Planet author touring Australia next month

John A. Vlahides has been a cook in a Parisian bordello, a luxury hotel concierge, a safety monitor in a sex club, a personal chef, a French-English interpreter — and he’s one of Lonely Planet’s most experienced and prolific guidebook authors.

Now, Lonely Planet is bringing John A. Vlahides to Australia for a media tour of Sydney and Melbourne from 3-to-10 July 2009.

A native New Yorker who lives in San Francisco, John has contributed to 18 Lonely Planet guidebooks since 2003, ranging from California and the western United States to the Dubai City Guide. For Lonely Planet Television, he travelled to Morocco to shoot the pilot episode of the upcoming series Roads Less Travelled (screening on National Geographic Adventure later this year) and is scheduled to travel to Madagascar in July for his next episode. 'When researching a guidebook my favourite thing is to remember that I’m a folklorist whose job is to freeze-frame cultures in a specific period in history,' says John. 'We guidebook writers record how people live, what they eat, how they entertain themselves. This by its nature is ephemeral, constantly in flux. We’re the record-keepers for the day-to-day. That’s really cool.'

John is co-founder of the Northern California travel website 71miles.com. He also appears on San Francisco’s ABC7 (KGO) to talk about travel around Northern California. He previously co-produced a monthly TV travel segment, called 'One Night Stands with John Vlahides,' on San Francisco’s KRON 4 News Weekend. He has also represented Lonely Planet on various television and radio networks, including CNN and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

His travel articles have also been published by Conde Nast, King Features Syndicate, the San Francisco Chronicle, Sunset Magazine, Wanderlust, and San Francisco magazine, among others.

John studied cooking in Paris, and is a former luxury-hotel concierge and member of Les Clefs d’Or, the Paris-based union of the world’s elite concierges. When not talking travel, he sings tenor with the San Francisco Symphony, and spends his free time downhill-skiing, hiking the Sierra Nevada, touring California by motorcycle, and sunning on the beach beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.

'One thing you should do before you die is immerse yourself in a place where you don’t speak the language, and be forced to discover inner strength and courage you never knew you possessed,' John says. 'After all, travel is ultimately about self-discovery.'

John A. Vlahides’ Australian tour caps off the inaugural Lonely Planet Travel Month, which also includes a Golden Ticket Guidebook Hunt in Sydney and Melbourne, and a national book trade promotion offering two-for-one Jetstar flights with the purchase of any two Lonely Planet guidebooks from any Angus & Robertson store.

For further information or to arrange interviews please contact:

Adam Bennett

Media & Communications Manager (Asia-Pacific)

telephone +61 (0)3 8379 8000

mobile +61 (0)424 147 230

Fax +61 (0)3 8379 8111

email adam.bennett@lonelyplanet.com.au