Website terms

Last updated: March 2025

These terms govern your use of the sites (as defined below) including your participation in our online community (whether you're registered, contributing content or just browsing). Please read and check these terms regularly as they may change from time to time.

Definitions

The term “Services,” means, collectively, various websites, applications, widgets, email notifications and other mediums, or portions of such mediums, through which you have accessed this Agreement. 

The term “Content” means, collectively all text, photographs, images, illustrations, designs, audio clips, video clips, “look and feel,” metadata, data, articles, graphics, images, scripts, software code or the like associated with any and all Services provided.

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Using our sites

By using any website owned and operated by Lonely Planet, such as Lonelyplanet.com or Budgettravel.com (‘the site/s’) you agree to be bound by these terms.

No commercial use of sites is permitted. You may use the sites for personal, non-commercial purposes only.

If you are under the age of 18 you need your parents' permission before using the sites or registering.

Our Community Guidelines apply to your use of the sites, so read them.

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Prohibited Use of the Service

You may not access or use the Services in violation of applicable laws, including export controls and sanctions, or in violation of our or any third party’s intellectual property or other proprietary or legal rights. As between you and us, we are the sole and exclusive owner of the Services and Content. Any use or access, as further detailed below, is strictly prohibited without written consent by us.  

You may not access or use, or attempt to access or use the Services to take any action that could harm us or a third party. You further agree that you will not attempt (or encourage or support others) to circumvent, reverse engineer, decrypt, or otherwise alter or interfere with the Services or any Content or make any unauthorized use of the Services. 

Additionally, you agree that you will not:

  1. use any robot, spider, scraper, deep link, or other similar automated data gathering or extraction tools, program, algorithm, or methodology to “scrape”, access, acquire, copy, or monitor our Services or any portion of our Services or for any other purpose, without our prior written permission;
  2. take any action that imposes, or may impose in our sole discretion, an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure; 
  3. copy, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, compile, disassemble, distribute, or publicly display any Content (except for your personal information) from our Services without our prior written permission and the appropriate third party, as applicable;  
  4. interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper working of our Services or any activities conducted on our Services;
  5. bypass any robot exclusion headers or other measures we may use to prevent or restrict access to our Services; nor 
  6. use the Services for the development of any software algorithm, program, machine learning model, neural network, artificial intelligence or generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool, including, but not limited to, training or using the Services in connection with the development or operation of a machine learning or AI system.  This includes any use of the Content for training, adjustments, or grounding any machine learning or AI system, including as part of retrieval-augmented generation.

For the avoidance of doubt, you are specifically prohibited hereunder from performing any “text and data mining” (TDM) activities as those activities are described under Art. 4 of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, we allow public search engine operators to use web crawlers to copy materials from our Services. This permission is granted solely for creating publicly available search indices of our Services' content and does not extend to creating caches or archives of these materials. We may revoke this permission at any time, either broadly or for specific cases.

Unless expressly allowed in this Agreement, you must not:

  • Collect or harvest any personally identifiable information, including account names, from our Services or Content;
  • Use any communication systems provided by our Services (such as forums or email) for commercial or solicitation purposes; nor
  • Solicit users of our Services for commercial purposes without our prior written consent.

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Lonely Planet trademarks and copyright

All content on the sites is owned by Lonely Planet Global Inc. (us) or licensed to us by our registered users and other licensees. You may not copy, store, scrape or use any part of our site without permission.

Our trade marks (including but not limited to the Lonely Planet, Thorn Tree and Budget Travel trade marks) may not be used in any way or for any purpose without our permission.

More information about our intellectual property, can be found here.

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Contributing to the sites

If you engage with someone else’s application on a site (e.g. using or posting content on the application), an independent legal relationship is formed between you and the application provider. An application provider may impose terms on your use of their application.

You agree that all of your contribution to the site is your own work. You license us the non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide rights to reproduce, communicate, edit, store, adapt or otherwise use any content you upload to the site, including any feedback that you submit through the site, via third party applications available through the site, on the site and in our other products (your content). This includes the right to sublicense to others at our discretion.

You also consent to your content being altered, edited or adapted for such uses, or to ensure your content does not infringe these terms or breach the law, as we see fit. Although we generally attribute you as the author, it's not always possible. So you consent to us not attributing authorship to you, or only attributing your registered 'handle'. We will ask you before publishing your real name.

Prohibited content. You must ensure that your content does not contain anything that breaches any laws or rights, including by:

  • defaming any person
  • breaching any intellectual property rights
  • containing personal information (contrary to our privacy policy)
  • containing commercial advertising
  • containing excessively coarse language or content which would be rated R, RC or X by the Australian Classification Board (see www.classification.gov.au)

If you would like to include someone else's copyright material, trademark or other intellectual property in your content you must first obtain and keep their written permission.

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Removal of content and termination of accounts

We may remove your content from the sites in our discretion.

We may terminate or suspend your registration (and any future accounts) if you have breached these terms multiple times or if the breach is serious.

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Reporting abuse

IF YOU BELIEVE ANY CONTENT ON OUR SITES INFRINGES THESE TERMS, PLEASE USE THE REPORT ABUSE FUNCTION AVAILABLE THROUGHOUT THE SITES.

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Reporting defamation

Pursuant to the Defamation Act 2013, a valid defamation notification must contain the following information:

  1. Your name and email address;
  2. The location of the comments on our website that you are referring to, including what the comments are and why you believe they are defamatory;
  3. The meaning that you attribute to the comments and what aspects you believe are incorrect or just opinions;
  4. Confirmation that you do not have sufficient contact details of the users who have posted the comments (the Poster/s) to pursue this matter directly with those Poster/s; and
  5. Confirmation that you consent to Lonely Planet providing your name and/or email to the Posters.

Please note that your notification must be in writing and signed either by hardcopy or electronically by email to community@lonelyplanet.com with ‘Defamation notification’ in the subject line.

Upon receipt of a valid defamation notification, we will contact the Poster/s in relation to their comments.

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Reporting copyright infringements

If you believe that any content on our sites infringes your copyright, please notify us by providing a DMCA notice to our designated copyright agent at dmca@lonelyplanet.com.

Your notification must include the following:

  1. Identification of the copyrighted work or works you believe have been infringed and the holder of the copyright if you are acting on their behalf;
  2. Identification of the material that you believe to be infringing including its location on the site;
  3. Your contact information including name and address, e-mail and telephone number;

  4. A statement that:

    1. you believe in good faith that the use of the material was not authorised by the owner of the work, its agent, or the law;
    2. the information in the notification is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, that you are, or are authorised to act on behalf of, the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed; and
    3. you acknowledge that the notice will be sent to the user who uploaded the material at issue.
  5. A physical or electronic signature of the copyright owner or a person authorised to act on their behalf.

Upon receipt of a valid DMCA notice, Lonely Planet will as soon as possible remove the infringing material and provide a copy of the notice to the user who uploaded the material.

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Your privacy

The purposes for which we collect your personal information when you register or email us are: administering the site, sending you a password, contacting you about your content and keeping in touch with you.

You can access and update your personal information in the 'profile' section at any time.

We may disclose information about you to our authors (some of whom work on contract to us) and other Lonely Planet companies. If your content breaches these terms or the law, we may pass your details and IP address on to a law enforcement agency. Don't worry, we won't sell your contact details to marketing companies for spamming!

To find out more, please read our privacy policy.

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Liability and Disclaimer

You must:

  1. own all of the work you upload to the sites or have the permission from the owner of the content to upload it;
  2. be able to grant Lonely Planet the rights under these Terms and Conditions (so, for example, you cannot grant us exclusive rights if you have already granted someone else exclusive rights); and
  3. obtain the consent of the owner of any work incorporated into the content you upload on the sites;

because serious legal consequences can happen to you, Lonely Planet, and other parties if you do not (like legal action for infringement).

 

You indemnify Lonely Planet against all losses, costs and expenses directly incurred by Lonely Planet, in connection with a demand, allegation, action, proceeding or claim that you do not own all of your work, you are not able to grant Lonely Planet rights or you do not have the consent of an owner to incorporate their work into yours. Lonely Planet must take reasonable steps to mitigate its loss.

THE FOLLOWING APPLIES TO END USERS WHO LIVE OUTSIDE AUSTRALIA, THE UK AND THE EU:

WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE TO YOU OR ANYONE ELSE FOR ANY LOSS, DAMAGE, LIABILITY, COST OR EXPENSE SUFFERED IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OF THE SITE OR ANY CONTENT OR SERVICES AVAILABLE VIA THE SITES. THE SITES ARE PROVIDED “AS IS”. THE INFORMATION ON THE SITES IS GENERAL AND MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR YOUR PARTICULAR NEEDS. YOU SHOULD VERIFY CRITICAL INFORMATION (LIKE ADVICE ABOUT VISAS AND HEALTH AND SAFETY) INDEPENDENTLY BEFORE YOU TRAVEL.

WE MAKE NO WARRANTIES OR REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE SITES OR THEIR CONTENT AND EXCLUDE, TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, ANY LIABILITY WHICH MAY ARISE AS A RESULT OF THEIR USE. WE WILL NEVER BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL LOSS, OR LOSS OF PROFITS OR REVENUE ARISING OUT OF THE USE OF OUR SITES. YOU INDEMNIFY LONELY PLANET AGAINST EACH CLAIM, ACTION, PROCEEDING, JUDGMENT, DAMAGE, LOSS, EXPENSE OR LIABILITY INCURRED OR SUFFERED BY, OR BROUGHT, MADE OR RECOVERED AGAINST US IN CONNECTION WITH ANY BREACH BY YOU OF THESE TERMS.

Nothing in this Agreement excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or liability for fraudulent misrepresentation. Subject to the previous sentence, our liability to you under this Agreement is limited to resupply of the content or services accessed via the sites.

THE FOLLOWING APPLIES TO END USERS WHO LIVE WITHIN AUSTRALIA, THE UK AND THE EU:

 

WE USE REASONABLE CARE AND SKILL TO ENSURE THE ACCURACY OF THE INFORMATION PROVIDED ON THE SITES. INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THE SITES MAY NOT BE FULLY ACCURATE AND IS PROVIDED “AS IS”.

However, certain laws also provide non-excludable statutory guarantees, conditions or warranties for the supply of certain goods or services. Nothing in this Agreement is to be taken to exclude, restrict or modify any guarantee, condition or warranty that Lonely Planet is prohibited by law from excluding restricting or modifying.

Subject to your rights under law (which cannot be excluded), Lonely Planet:

  • DOES NOT WARRANT OR GUARANTEE THAT THE SITES WILL BE 100% ACCURATE OR CONTINUOUS AT ALL TIMES. THE INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THE SITE IS GENERAL AND MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR YOUR PARTICULAR NEEDS; and
  • is not responsible for:
    • loss that was not reasonably foreseeable;
    • loss that was not caused by Lonely Planet’s breach of contract or by Lonely Planet’s negligence;
    • business losses (such as lost data, lost profits or business interruptions) or loss suffered by non-consumers;
    • losses caused by factors which could reasonably be considered to be outside Lonely Planet’s control (such as faults in third party equipment); and
    • any loss caused, or contributed to, by your breach of contract or your negligence.

Subject to the above paragraph, Lonely Planet is responsible for:

  • loss suffered by you as a result of a serious breach of contract by Lonely Planet if the loss was reasonably foreseeable by both you and Lonely Planet when this Agreement was entered into; and
  • damage to property caused by Lonely Planet’s negligence if the loss was reasonably foreseeable at the time when this Agreement was entered into.

You must:

  • verify critical information (like advice about visas and health and safety) independently before you travel; and
  • take all necessary steps to minimise the extent of any loss you may suffer in accordance with this Agreement, and you must notify Lonely Planet in writing of your loss within 30 days.

Any legal issues will be dealt with under the laws of Tennessee, USA.

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