Insight Guides are a corporation

Corporation

A corporation is created under the laws of a state as a separate legal entity that has privileges and liabilities that are distinct from those of its members. There are many different forms of corporations, most of which are used to conduct business. Early corporations were established by charter...

 based in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 who create travel

Travel

Travel is the movement of people or objects between relatively distant geographical locations. 'Travel' can also include relatively short stays between successive movements.-Etymology:...

 guides for commercial

Commerce

While business refers to the value-creating activities of an organization for profit, commerce means the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any...

 and domestic use. They produce travel guides and map

Map

A map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes....

s. They also produce globe

Globe

A globe is a three-dimensional scale model of Earth or other spheroid celestial body such as a planet, star, or moon...

s. Insight Guides was founded by Hans Johannes Hofer

Hans Johannes Hofer

Hans Johannes Höfer was born in Stuttgart, Germany. An artist, he wrote a significant travel guide to Bali, and eventually produced a whole series of travel guide books....

. Insight Guides are noted for their pionering technique of merging full-color photography to essays written by local experts.
The idea behind such concept is to to give readers not only reliable and practical information, but a real understanding into the historical and cultural background of destinations. Hofer's first book, published in 1970, was based on the island of Bali

Bali

Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east...

, and was funded by a local hotel

Hotel

A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. The provision of basic accommodation, in times past, consisting only of a room with a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a washstand has largely been replaced by rooms with modern facilities, including en-suite bathrooms...

 there. From there he built his publishing empire

Empire

The term empire derives from the Latin imperium . Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples united and ruled either by a monarch or an oligarchy....

, exceeding 400 guide books on over 100 destinations. In the late 1990s, he sold his share of the company to Langenscheidt

Langenscheidt

Langenscheidt is a privately held German publishing company, specialising in language resource literature. As well as producing monolingual dictionaries, Langenscheidt also produces bilingual dictionaries and travel phrase-books, as well as maps and atlases....

KG.