In the summer of 1981, Mark Ellingham, just graduated from Bristol University, was travelling round Greece and couldn't find a guidebook that remotely met his needs. There weren't many in existence - and the choice came down to 20 Dollars a Day blandness, or the academic Blue Guide, whose 800 pages on the ancient sites somehow omitted to mention the existence of a decent beach, or even a taverna.

In a bid to avoid getting a job, Mark and a small group of writers set about creating their own guide. It was a guide to Greece that aimed to combine a journalistic approach to description with a thoroughly practical approach to travellers' needs, a guide that would incorporate culture, history and contemporary insights with a critical edge, together with up-to-date, value-for-money listings. Back in London, Mark and the team finished their Rough Guide, as they called it, and talked Routledge into publishing the book.

That first Rough Guide to Greece, published in 1982, was a student scheme that became a publishing phenomenon. The immediate success of the book, with successive reprints and a Thomas Cook prize short-listing, spawned a series that rapidly covered dozens of destinations. Rough Guides had a ready market among impecunious backpackers, but soon acquired a much broader and older readership that relished Rough Guides' wit and inquisitiveness as much as their enthusiastic, critical approach. Everyone wants value for money, but not at any price.

Rough Guides soon began supplementing the "rougher" information about hostels and low-budget listings with the kind of detail on restaurants and quality hotels that independent-minded visitors on any budget might expect, whether on business in New York or trekking in Thailand.

These days the guides, distributed worldwide by the Penguin group, include recommendations from shoestring to luxury and cover more than 200 destinations around the globe, including almost every country in the Americas and Europe, more than half of Africa and most of Asia and Australasia. Our ever-growing team of authors and photographers is spread all over the world, particularly in Europe, the USA and Australia.

In 1994, we published the Rough Guide to World Music and Rough Guide to Classical Music; and a year later the Rough Guide to the Internet. All three books have become benchmark titles in their fields, which encouraged us to expand into other areas of publishing including popular culture, sports and digital trends. Two important additions in 2006 were the Rough Guide to Climate Change and the Rough Guide to Ethical Living, meeting the demand for the same brand of accessible and up-front writing on topical issues.

Of course publishing these days isn't just about books and, as you would expect, Rough Guides have also migrated to digital platforms. Downloadable e-books, digital maps, podcasts and podscrolls all allow access to Rough Guides on the move. Not something that Mark Ellingham may have been able to forsee way back in 1982, but an innovation infused with the same motivation he had back then - meeting the needs of travellers today.

• Travel guides to more than 200 worldwide destinations
• Dictionary phrasebooks to 22 major languages
• Travel Specials including 'First-Time' destination guides and World Party
• Maps printed on rip-proof and waterproof Polyart™ paper
• Music guides running the gamut from Opera to Elvis
• Reference books on topics as diverse as Climate Change and Shakespeare
• Pop culture books from the iPod to MySpace to Cult Movies
• Downloadable digital maps, e-books podcasts and podscrolls
• More than 200 World Music CDs in association with World Music Network