Lonely Planet Malta & Gozo: Perfect for exploring top sights and taking roads less travelled (Travel Guide) Paperback – 1 July 2023

As always, a great guidebook from Lonely Planet. Great ideas on the main things to see, reassuring essential information, and great suggestions on where to eat and drinks, as well as good historical information and helpful maps.

I always like the Lonely Planet travel guides. This one follows a similar structure to others from them, but is more compact than other guidebooks I have. It impressively divides the small island of Malta (the same size as the city of Bristol!) into key areas, provides an insight into the history, culture, and must see sights. Each area has a recommendation for what you should see depending how much time in the area you have. Has helped me plan my upcoming trip and usefully pointed out one of the top museums I want to see needs to be booked months in advance due to very restricted entry numbers.

Almost perfect to organise a holiday with. Possibly more detail on various restuarants to recommmend,but I suppose that would be out of date as soon as it's publ

Always buy a lovely planet for each holiday. Smart and informative.

Full of useful information regarding Malta and Gozo, I would highly recommend.

Excellent as usual from Lonely Planet. Good value great service

I regularly buy Lonely Planet guides, but this one is a shocker. The basic facts about sights and monuments remain, but much of the most useful content has been removed. Valetta is full of (often quite pricey) restaurants, but this was not reflected in the guide which listed almost none of them. And those that were listed gave no indication of where they were located!The usual useful LP maps with locations of shops, cafes, sights, and restaurants now only contain the sights. No walking routes to follow, a thin and superficial section on history and background, and more expensive than the guide I bought to Istanbul last year despite being almost half the size. If this is their new direction then I will not be buying any more Lonely Planet guidebooks.

I recently bought and the used the following Lonely Planet guides : Peru (2021 edition), Bolivia (2019 edition) and Egypt (2021 edition). They were all to be as expected from the guide book publisher I have used since I quit my job to travel to India, Pakistan, Australia & New Zealand for a year in 1989. They weren’t perfect then, particularly the Pakistan edition which was quite inaccurate. However I was a convert and used this guide book publisher for many more travel adventures and family holidays. They seem to improve every guide book I bought and I was not really tempted to change my ‘go to’ guide book publisher.Unfortunately this Malta and Gozo (2023 edition) guide has proved to be the worst guide book by far I have tried to use. Gone are the list of recommendations at the start. I used to base my visits on these recommendations and they virtually always delivered great travel experiences. There are no lists of recommended restaurants or places to sleep. The odd one or two places are mentioned but not in any kind of detail. No prices are given, which I can understand as they will always change, but it does give you a reference and comparison with other places.It seems as though the publisher has been sold on several times since the originators, Tony & Maureen Wheeler, started the company. It appears to me that the latest conglomerate to acquire the business has put profits before quality to the detriment of the guide books. For my next trip, whenever that shall be, I shall have to consider choosing another publisher or even getting an older edition of the guide book in question. I do hope they revert back to the format of 5/10 years ago. All we can do is complain and vote with our feet and see what happens.