Navteq, a provider of digital map, traffic and location data services for in-vehicle, portable, wireless and enterprise, has expanded its travel and leisure guide portfolio with the addition of Lonely Planet for Navteq: Travel Guide.

At launch, the travel guide will cover 19 cities in Australia and New Zealand, with expansion planned to other countries such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand soon thereafter.

"Navteq's expanded travel and leisure offering in Australia is essentially another layer of data tied to the Navteq map," said Aaron Dannenbring, vice president for Asia-Pacific map and content products at Navteq, Chicago.

This data is in XML format, and is thus compatible with a broad spectrum of customer devices and applications, including in-vehicle, Web-based, wireless and other portable devices.

"We expect a multitude of handsets and other mobile solutions to carry this enhanced travel guide," Mr. Dannenbring said.

Offering reviews for thousands of points of interest throughout Australia and New Zealand, both of which ranked among the top five travel destinations according to Lonely Planet's 2008 Travellers' Pulse Survey, the content enables navigation applications to provide recommendations about where to stay, eat or spend leisure time.

Over the years, Lonely Planet has extended the coverage of its travel guides to every country and into the virtual world via Lonelyplanet.com and the Thorn Tree message board.

In October 2007, BBC Worldwide acquired a 75 percent share in the company, pledging to uphold Lonely Planet's commitment to independent travel, trustworthy advice and editorial independence.

Today, Lonely Planet has offices in Melbourne, London and Oakland, CA, with around 500 staff members and 300 authors.

Navteq supplies digital map information to power automotive navigation systems, portable and wireless devices, Internet-based mapping applications and government and business services.

Consumers increasingly rely on and seek more information from their navigation systems and mobile devices.

In fact, according to the Travellers' Pulse Survey, 82 percent of respondents said that they always or sometimes take a mobile device with them on their travels and 24 percent indicated they use mobile phones to obtain practical travel information.

Navteq's ability to combine a navigable map along with travel guide content helps meet this growing demand. The company claims that people worldwide use its map service more than 100 million times each day.

Travelers use mobile maps to help them find stores, restaurants, fuel stations and other points of interest.

Whether it is for in-vehicle navigation or pedestrian-oriented applications, Lonely Planet for Navteq is designed to help save consumers time while providing relevant information from a trusted brand.

As with Navteq's POI content, Lonely Planet for Navteq lends itself to quick and flexible integration into location-aware applications.

First, Lonely Planet content is precisely matched to the Navteq map, enabling consumers to navigate to their desired destinations.

Navteq also leverages integration-friendly formats and location referencing, which will speed integration into customer applications.

Plus, Navteq's ongoing relationship with Lonely Planet also allows updates to the publisher's content to be accurately reflected in the product.

"At Lonely Planet we have a long history of providing information about sights, restaurants, shops and other locations all over the world," said Jeff Trounce, global manager of client solutions for Lonely Planet, Oakland, CA.

"Whether you are travelling or you're a local, it's important to get this detail in the right place at the right time, and this collaboration with Navteq allows us to do this on a mass scale," he said.