The first book was an accident. We travelled around Asia and didn’t think: “We’re going to do a book about this.” It was a question of realising that there weren’t any books about the places we’d travelled through. People wanted information, we had it, and we thought: “Why don’t we provide it?”

The second book was planned. We set off thinking the reason for this trip was to do a book. People immediately liked it and were talking about it. We had feedback that we were doing the right thing and it just grew from there. The post-war baby boomers were coming of age and their horizons were wider than their parents’ had been. I think at that time there was this feeling that the world was growing so fast and there were so many jobs around; the swinging sixties and all that stuff.

If you packed in your job, you’d find another one. So if you wanted to take six months off, you did. At the same time, jumbo jets were coming in and the cost of travel was falling. Everything was getting wider, bigger and further away, so there were a lot of factors coming together at the same moment. It was a good time.

Also, people were travelling further, so it wasn’t just a question of visiting Spain, France or Italy, but going on to Africa, Turkey and beyond. The way of travelling had also changed. Young people were more easygoing about it. “I’m going to keep travelling until my money runs out.” It wasn’t a question of going off on a three-week holiday. Lonely Planet was a symbol of that change.

We were a tiny publishing house, and our feeling was the big publishing houses were doing the big places. We were too small to compete with them, so all we could do was what they weren’t doing. So we were very much looking for the niches in the market; looking for other places.

The interesting thing was that we were lucky to be jumping onto things that were growing very fast. And a few years later, when the more mainstream publishers realised these were not small markets, but big markets, we were really established in those places.

A lot of people start businesses because they love whatever the business is about. But then, at some stage, they find themselves not doing what they love, but  running a business. I’ve been lucky. Fairly early on, I brought other people in to do the business side, so I’ve not been locked behind a desk. I’ve been able to keep on travelling. If there’s been an area of the business that I’ve been good at, it’s been dreaming up the books, creating them and so on. So I’ve concentrated on that side and let other people run the business. That’s worked. It’s a field that I love and I’ve sometimes said that if I ever lost my enthusiasm for travel, the company would too.

The Lonely Planet Story: Once While Travelling, by Tony and Maureen Wheeler, is published by Crimson Publishing. Priced £9.99, it is available from www.crimsonpublishing.co.uk  and all good book shops.