Daniel Houghton

Three years after graduating from Western Kentucky University, Daniel Houghton, 28, took the helm of the now 44-year-old travel brand, Lonely Planet, in 2013. One of his first tasks? Laying off 75 people, one-fifth of the company’s employees, many of whom worked on Lonely Planet's free-spirited print guidebooks (though layoffs touched every team). Guidebook sales, industry-wide, had plummeted 40% from 2007 through 2012, so Houghton decided Lonely Planet had go digital to survive. One year after he took over, digital accounted for 30% of Lonely Planet’s revenue, and print sales also rebounded, up 27% since 2013. In his first month as CEO, Houghton circumnavigated the globe three times in two weeks, meeting Lonely Planet’s partners and staff in offices spanning five continents...

Last August, while eating dinner on a beach in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, I got into a conversation with a writer who’d worked as a Lonely Planet author for years, but quit when the gig became less lucrative. Six months earlier, she told me, a little known billionaire had bought the storied guidebook company and put a kid in charge. A kid, I asked? “Yeah, he’s like 22,” she said. Turns out Daniel Houghton was 24 at the time, but she guessed his email address, which I tried later that night, after a few drinks...

I'm supposed to go flying over New Zealand's South Island with the director of the world's largest guidebook company, but I'm feeling haggard. Last night, Daniel Houghton and I made a little tour of Queenstown's bars: Winnies, the Buffalo Club, Zephyr, a few other places. There was a retractable roof, a lot of Red Bull and vodka, dancing and yelling, and a video of a man in a wingsuit tearing through narrow canyons. I left the last place—I think it was the Boiler Room—before Houghton did. "I don't feel anything yet," he said, ordering another drink around 2:30 a.m...