• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, April 2, 2007

Travel media company Lonely Planet has launched LonelyPlanet.tv (LP.tv), an online community featuring Lonely Planet TV programming, user-generated videos, blogs, forums, ratings, geo-location information and other applications.

LP.tv complements and extends the company's 10-year-old flagship site, lonelyplanet.com. The main site offers a mix of LP-generated destination articles and photo galleries, podcasts, RSS feeds and an enewsletter, plus UGC areas that include a bulletin board for exchanging travel advice and opinions; a blog for sharing travel experiences (Bluelist); and classifieds for finding travel partners, resources and jobs at a planned destination.

E-commerce features include LP travel books and guides (over 500 print and digital titles), an accommodations review/booking service, flight booking, and an area selling insurance and travel items.

The new site is designed to enable travelers to easily share their own videos and experiences even while on the road, as well as comment, rate and interact in a variety of ways with professional and user-generated content.

LP.tv operates on a customized Reality Digital Opus platform--chosen, according to LP executives, for its ability to allow users to upload videos from files, webcams or mobile phones in seconds and its seamless social networking capabilities.

LP.tv's professional component offers extensive video selections from LP's television division, which produces travel programming aired on the Discovery Channel, SBS, Eurosport and Current TV. The flagship "Lonely Planet Six Degrees" series screens in over 100 countries.

LP.tv videos are organized into six themed channels, including a video version of Bluelist recommendations, parties, best/worst travel experiences, and encounters with people.

While LP felt that the online video brand extension was best showcased on its own site, the two sites are extensively cross-linked (the main site's key areas appear on a navigation bar at the top of the .tv home page, for instance), and are likely to become even more integrated over time, according to LP Director of Partnerships and Licensing Blake Hutchison.

LP is offering two main advertising packages on the video site: a standard package that includes a banner and skyscraper plus Quigo contextual ads, and a premium package that includes banners and skyscrapers and enables "ownership" of a specific channel or content area.

Sponsorship options include one in which a brand can take part in the production process by creating a dedicated channel or theme.

"LP will seed the channel, and community will add to it," explains Hutchison.

Brands can moderate the content, as well as use the content in their own marketing efforts. The sponsor may also participate in a promotion or sweepstakes, and the sponsored channel is co-branded with LP through premium advertising and home page presence for the campaign's lifespan.

A second sponsorship campaign option enables commercial use of LP.tv, in which a brand can make its own videos available to the site's audience.

LP.tv videos are also being offered in syndication singly, as a group, as a channel, or as a pre-prepared compilation.

The site has no commitments yet, but LP is in discussions with numerous travel and lifestyle-oriented brands, says Hutchison. He adds that even while in beta, with no promotion, the site has been pulling traffic and UCG video contributions.