Rough Guides

Rough Guides Ltd is a travel guidebook and reference publisher, owned by Penguin Random House. Their travel titles cover more than 200 destinations, and are distributed worldwide through the Penguin Group. The series began with the 1982 Rough Guide to Greece, a book conceived by Mark Ellingham, who was dissatisfied with the polarisation of existing guidebooks between cost-obsessed student guides and "heavyweight cultural tomes." Initially, the series was aimed at low-budget backpackers. The Rough Guides books have incorporated more expensive recommendations since the early 1990s, and books have had colour printing since the late 1990s, which are now marketed to travelers on all budgets. Much of the books' travel content is also available online. Ellingham left Rough Guides in November 2007, after the company had celebrated "25 Rough Years" with a celebratory series of books, to set up a new green and ethical imprint, GreenProfile, at Profile Books. Rough Guides is now run by co-founder Martin Dunford and Andrew Lockett, under the aegis of Penguin Random House. It is based at the Penguin offices at 80 Strand, London, with a satellite office in Delhi.