Do they not realise that this forum promotes the "lonely planet" brand, and ultimately sells their guides? Even if 5% of sales of guides/downloads is promoted by this forum, is it not a worth-while loss-leader?
I agree. It is very difficult to directly monetize the value of websites, very few ever pull it off. But ever since Google figured out how to do it and sites such as Facebook and Myspace have managed to build traffic to volumes that are conceivably profitable, everyone else is scrambling to figure out how they can, too.
I suspect that someone at BBC saw this as a potential profit center and paid a price for the company with that profit in mind. They then prioritized getting this version of the site up in time for the Christmas shopping season, before the kinks had been worked out.
I also suspect that LP management deliberately avoided adding advertising prior to the BBC sale in order to make the lure of ad revenue part of the untapped potential that could entice a new buyer. Buyers look for untapped potential, so leaving some stones unturned is typical in these situations. The private equity investment made into LP a few years ago made it clear that the company was being groomed for sale, it was just a matter of when, to whom and for how much.
I think what they missed is the importance of the layout (their changes have made it tough to read) and that the regulars do need to be kept happy in order for queries to get answered, otherwise the occasional posters and lurkers will have nothing to look at. The traffic has fallen off noticeably, it's quite amazing to see how much it is declined so quickly. I have serious doubts that the web planners spent much time analyzing the user habits of the prior version before implementing their changes, which of course they should have done.
