Lonely Planet Grabs an Opportunity to Help Customers – and Build Brand Equity

In a recent post I talked about how Lonely Planet is participating in social media, but not taking all the steps to encourage its customers to become actively engaged. In this post I want to talk about how the same company, Lonely Planet, is currently taking advantage of an opportunity to assist some of their customers.

On April 14, 2010 volcanic eruptions began at Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland spewing debris up into the atmosphere. The resulting ash clouds forced authorities to close airports and airspace, grounding airplanes and canceling across Europe and beyond. The repercussions have completely disrupted the European transportation system, stranding travelers around the world for over a week.

Instead of seeing this disruption in travel as a hinderance, Lonely Planet has jumped on the opportunity. On April 19th they posted a blog entry announcing that they were offering 13 of their European iPhone city guides for free to help stranded travelers through Thursday April 22nd. They then shared this information via Facebook, Twitter, and direct email message to their community members. This is a gracious and timely offer that will most likely earn Lonely Planet some positive brand equity. Smart move.

And, for the stranded travelers, the links to the free guides can be found at the Lonely Planet blog.