The Guide could not exist without computer technology. As an unashamed technophile, I am excited by our new GHG Iphone application, which cost us more than £10,000 to develop but which costs you only £2.99 to download. It features all our selected hotels with their entry, picture, map and other elements that make the printed Guide a bestseller.

In its first two weeks on Apple’s Itunes website, the app, which also works on the Ipad, has sold nearly1,000 copies. A “search near me” button lists all the Guide’s selected hotels and B&Bs within bands of 10, 20, 30 and 40 miles. You can also search by name or place for a hotel, and there are lists of hotels in various categories ranging from romantic B&Bs to family-friendly hotels.

The Guide is a tiny player in a huge world-wide market. Apple has sold 50 million Iphones, and two billion apps have been downloaded. That is why I am confident that there is a big potential audience out there, keen to know about outstanding hotels and B&Bs. The GHG app, like the GHG website, complements rather than threatens the printed edition of the Guide which will remain at the heart of what we do, because hotels that feature in it do so on their merit alone, not because they pay.

I don’t often quote Rupert Murdoch, but he is right that good content can be published only if it is paid for. Putting his newspapers behind internet pay walls and making readers pay for access is the only way that high-quality journalism can survive. In the case of the Guide, the revenues from the website and the app will help support the print edition. That has allowed us this year to invest in a new redesign with full colour photographs of our selected hotels, which will make our 2011 edition to be the best we have ever published.

The other advantage of the new app is that it will help the Guide attract a new audience, much of it younger and from overseas. I would like to receive more comments like this: ‘As ever the GHG is priceless. Or, in words often heard here in the Deep South, now taken generically as referring to the book, its editors and its contributors: ‘You da MAN!’ Adam Raphael

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