Nikki Emmans
Marketing | Communications | Digital | Growth
Lonely Planet: Reinventing the Guidebook
If you’ve travelled the world, there’s a good chance you’ve used a Lonely Planet guidebook on your adventure. Founded in 1973, the company quickly became the leading travel publisher producing guidebooks to travel destinations across the globe.
Upon joining Lonely Planet as Director of Online Marketing, I became part of an exciting new commercial team tasked with reinventing the Lonely Planet offering online, making it discoverable and bookable. Taking decades of Lonely Planet content from guidebooks and establishing the best architecture and tools to help travellers take Lonely Planet with them digitally required a complete digital transformation.
Throughout my time with Lonely Planet, I worked with UX designers, editorial team and internal development team to scope, test, launch, optimise and drive traffic and growth for the following digital products;
Lonely Planet Destinations: Digital guidebook content helping visitors get to the heart of every destination including; things to do and see (POIs), transport, accommodation, and travel advice.
Lonely Planet Bookable Products: Lonely Planet recommended hotels, car rentals, adventure tours, and sightseeing tours (affiliate model).
Lonely Planet Guides App: Available on iOs and Android, Guides provides the ability to use location data to view recommended things to do, and places to eat and sleep with downloadable offline content.
Lonely Planet Articles: Tips and advice from Lonely Planet experts, contributors, and community.
Lonely Planet Shop: The Lonely Planet shop is your one-stop destination for Lonely Planet guidebooks, ebooks, pictorial and reference books, and kids books.
Remit also included driving transactional revenue, advertising inventory and website engagement through digital marketing, PPC, CRM, A/B testing, analysis and reporting across Lonely Planet e-commerce and commercial channels - online shop, travel bookings and digital advertising.