Contentful CMS Implementation

I served as the editorial and content model lead for Lonely Planet’s Contentful CMS implementation, working alongside platform engineers, product teams, and third-party consultants to build out our multi-channel content operations.

The Problem

Lonely Planet’s content lived in disconnected systems—guidebook data in print workflows, articles in Drupal, destination information scattered across databases. Launching a mobile app meant either creating content from scratch for a new platform or finding a way to unlock what already existed. The manual alternative—identifying, categorizing, and migrating guidebook content piece by piece—would have taken years. We needed a content-to-product pipeline that could get us to launch in months, not years.

What I Built

The heart of this project was rethinking how we structure travel content. I designed an architecture where Points of Interest serve as the central hub, with experiences, itineraries, and destinations all connecting back to these shared nodes. This meant we could build a recommendation in one place and have it flow naturally into the mobile app, the website, or a print guidebook.

The guidebook ingestion process I helped implement took existing guidebook data, parsing it to identify content types, metadata, and taxonomy, then inserting it into Contentful. This allowed us to scale app content operations on a 6-month timeline—beginning in June 2024—instead of the years-long effort that manual identification and categorization would have required.

I also created what we called Core Content Tags, a universal taxonomy that works across every channel. Whether content lives in the app or on the web, it gets classified the same way. This consistency is what makes personalization features possible.

The trickier challenge was organizational, not technical. When I joined the project, the prevailing mindset was “replace everything.” I worked to shift thinking toward an ecosystem model where Contentful complements our existing systems rather than gutting them. Getting buy-in from editorial, engineering, and product required a lot of conversations and incremental wins.

Technical Details

Variant Architecture: I designed a “variant” structure that connects related content across channels. A restaurant recommendation might exist as a full web article and a condensed app card, but they’re linked through a master variant. Each version stays optimized for its platform while sharing core information.

Content Migration: I prioritized the migration of 10,000 website articles from Drupal into Contentful, further unlocking this content for the app and establishing a single source of truth across platforms.

Team Training: Beyond the architecture work, I trained editors in the new CMS and wrote the documentation they needed. This included an Editor’s Guide, supplements for photo editors, and technical resources for Engineering and Product.

Impact

• 99% content reuse achieved for app launch—repackaging existing content into a high-utility UX that helps users take action, save what’s useful, and plan trips that feel unique to them
• 70k+ POIs structured with metadata and taxonomy, forming the backbone of destination recommendations across all platforms
• 10k website articles migrated from Drupal, creating a unified content repository
• 6-month timeline from kickoff to app-ready content, versus the years a manual approach would have required
• “Commission once, publish everywhere” efficiency across print, web, and app—with destination introductions, practical guidance, and experiences all available for reuse
• Transitioned the team from relying on external consultants to owning the system internally

Working Across Teams

A big part of this role was the content model sessions — working through architecture decisions with engineering and product stakeholders over multiple rounds. When sprint priorities started drifting, I advocated for keeping strategic content types on track so we’d hit our app launch deadlines. The technical work mattered, but so did making sure everyone stayed aligned on what we were building and why.