Mobile App Content Strategy

I directed content operations and editorial strategy for Lonely Planet’s January 2026 mobile app launch, working with Product, Engineering, and Design to turn structured travel expertise into a POI-based planning experience. The app launched in key markets and now covers nearly 500 destinations.

The operating-model change

The most consequential outcome was a change in how Editorial works. Editorial became a product-development partner, shaping the content model alongside app features, release planning, and cross-functional dependencies from the start.

That changed the questions we could answer together: what content types belonged in the launch, how could the same POI connect to an itinerary or experience, what had to be ready for a market release, and where did editorial quality alter product decisions?

Building for a shared system

I designed the app content model around Points of Interest as connecting nodes. A restaurant can surface in a neighborhood guide, appear in multiple itineraries, and connect to related experiences. The Contentful architecture behind the app supports a single-source model across print, web, and mobile, with one commissioning pipeline serving every channel.

Leading the launch

• Developed release planning that mapped destination availability to key travel moments, including SXSW and summer travel season
• Worked through content-model refinement sessions with Product and Engineering as app requirements evolved
• Advocated for sprint priorities that kept strategic content types on track
• Coordinated editorial dependencies while guidebook and web operations continued in parallel
• Prioritized and scoped a guidebook-to-app editing automation, built by Engineering, that reduced manual editing work
• Led a 20-person content organization through launch

Second launch: Best in Travel 2027

The model got its second test with Best in Travel 2027, which launched on September 23, 2026. The obvious move was to push all 50 picks into the app. I argued against it. Travelers find Best in Travel through social, newsletters, and the website; the app is where they plan. So we made the app the planning layer: direct app coverage where destinations were strong, parent-level coverage where that was good enough, and web-only coverage for narrow picks.

In June I re-sequenced the August–December release schedule around app demand and destination readiness, keeping the committed near-term releases locked. At launch, Discover programming put the Best in Travel destinations in front of app users and pushed them toward planning actions: saving places, building trips, and exploring guides.

Impact

• 100,000 downloads by late September 2026, nine months after launch. CNN’s Best in Travel 2027 coverage followed the app as it closed in on that milestone.
• 4.7-star rating on the App Store
• Nearly 500 destinations covered, up from the launch set in key markets
• Built almost entirely from existing content: of 730k+ Contentful entities, only about 50 were created new for the app

The app launch established a shared way of working: Editorial participates in product definition, planning, and launch coordination. That makes content expertise more useful to the product, and it surfaces product constraints early enough for Editorial to respond with judgment instead of last-minute production work. Best in Travel 2027 tested the model against a fixed public launch date.