There's an urgent feel at Luxe City Guides with its new owners led by CEO Simon Westcott set to revamp the Hong Kong based publisher that broke the rules 11 years ago by launching the first of its pocket-sized, wittily-worded fold out guides.
"The evil genius of Luxe guides is no pictures, no map," Mr Westcott says.
There are now 36 titles, 1.5 million copies sold, and 21 apps, so there's a lot to do and very little time. Mr Westcott, a former Global Publisher at Lonely Planet, and his partners are out to make their investment in the dying world of print publishing pay.
To do this they are going old-school with some modern twists. The basic strategy is straight from the newspaper success manual 101, producing more content more frequently while delivering it faster for a fee. Hold the front page!
Luxe will also stretching the brand into transaction-based concierge and travel services; stuff that earns them money. There's a strong chance that one day it will sell accommodation, probably sourced from the affiliated website Mr & Mrs Smith, of which Mr Smith is Chairman, Asia Pacific.
But first things first – the immediate priority is launching a new website and content management system, hopefully by the end of July. The CMS will also power fresh apps pumping out subscriber updates every two months rather than every two years.
"Right now our apps are now basically e-books. We're starting again completely, moving into a more frequent content update cycle."
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