No one knows where many travel businesses will land in the wake of Covid-19. Many will struggle. It was nevertheless a profound shock to hear the world's largest guidebook publisher, Lonely Planet, announce the closures of its Melbourne and London offices last week.

Much more than the backpacking bible it was when it began, the company accounts for over 30 per cent of the global guidebook market. For many, the rows of blue-spined books on their shelves form part of their travel DNA.

As every Lonely Planet aficionado knows, Tony and Maureen Wheeler set off across Asia with nothing but a "beat-up old car, a few dollars in the pocket and a sense of adventure" in 1972, before putting together their first book, Southeast Asia on the Cheap. It sold 1,500 copies in a week. From there, the books became the essential traveller's companion.

Maureen and Tony Wheeler's first guidebook sold 1,500 copies in a week Credit: Getty

This is no eulogy. In announcing the global redundancies, Piers Pickard, managing director, confirmed the company remains committed to publishing its guides; their Dublin and Tennessee offices remain open, albeit with some job cuts on the cards. However, the company is to fold Lonely Planet magazine, halt production of its "inspirational" titles, and the once mighty Thorntree traveller forum, a pioneering exchange of digital information, has been set to read-only.

I have been involved with Lonely Planet for over 20 years. I worked for the company first as an editor, and was in the London office as we watched, transfixed in horror, two planes fly into the World Trade Centre. A few months later, myself and many colleagues were made redundant in the fall out.

Thus began my career as a freelance Lonely Planet author. Setting out to research, I used to receive a folder of scrappy reader letters, sometimes surprisingly detailed diaries, occasionally diatribes. Nowadays, authors receive a file of one-line emails, but still there's a connection between writer and readers. The experiences were incredible, interviewing a young man who'd spent his formative years sleeping in New Delhi railway station, testing a route overland between Mali and Mauritania, and chartering a rattling van to drive across the Egyptian desert. Despite the company's many changes, it has always funded authors to visit every place they write about, providing an authoritative and independent voice in an increasingly information-overloaded space.

In 2007, the Wheelers sold the company to BBC Worldwide for £130 million. The BBC's commercial arm steered the company through more difficult times, but one of its successes was the launch of Lonely Planet's magazine. Creating stories with author and photographer teams, it won multiple press, writing and photography awards. Oliver Berry, a freelancer on the magazine, describes the early research trips: "They were fiercely hard work, but amazing fun. I remember one where Matt Munro (the photographer) and I were commissioned to go to Borneo - just for one feature, we summited Mt Kinabalu, trekked into one of the island’s last untouched areas of rainforest and travelled a day upriver to stay with an Iban tribal chief."

Maureen and Tony Wheeler in 1998 Credit: Getty

As digital media made it easier to crowdsource your way around the world, and as the global financial crisis bit, times got tougher in publishing. Guidebook sales fell 40 per cent. In 2013 BBC Worldwide sold the company again, to the US-based NC2 (owned by the Kentucky-based billionaire Brad Kelley), for less than half the price it had paid. However, reports of the death of the guidebook were premature, and Lonely Planet and other companies, such as the smaller Bradt Guides, reported a steady climb in sales in the years pre-Covid. Some insiders believe that the latest cuts are in order to make the company a more attractive prospect to a new buyer.

John Noble, an expert on destinations including Spain, India and Mexico for Lonely Planet since 1986, says: "It's tragic that so many highly experienced, dedicated, talented, knowledgeable inhouse staff are losing their jobs." But, he adds: "People will always want to explore the world they live in. As long as that goes on, a lot of them will be wanting some good guidance."

His daughter, Isabella, who also writes on Spain and India, says: "Travel is likely to become more expensive and complicated. Many of us will want to support the small, special businesses that make each destination unique – and we'll need reliable, encouraging, well-researched voices, like Lonely Planet guidebooks, to help us find them."

Kevin Raub, Italy-based Lonely Planet author of 95 guides, from Brazil to UAE, says: "The optimist in me thinks that if Lonely Planet plays its financial, editorial and technological cards right, the company could emerge as a force for travel's future. Physical guidebooks may one day be museum pieces, but the curiosity and need for trusted traveller information will never go away."

Digital nomad Lauren Keith was a Lonely Planet commissioning editor until last year. From lockdown in Istanbul, she wonders: "If you hack off nearly all of a tree's branches, will it ever look the same again? I hope Lonely Planet, and the fulfilling experiences it's given travellers for nearly five decades, survives, but if it doesn't, perhaps that leaves a gap in the market for a couple of intrepid millennial or Gen Z overlanders to fill."

Wherever we are going, in the post-Covid landscape, we're going to need trusted travel voices more than ever.