Vol. 2: The Detail

yeforTravel Research Case Study
The School of Mobile Vol. 2 - The Detail Chapter 1 - The Travel Buying Cycle
Lonely Planet: Mobilising Compelling

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“We feel like we can’t simply be an ac�ve bystander. We have to invest but we have to invest intelligently.
We have to have the right kind of people in place who have skills and experience in this area. Over the last
couple of years I have been working hard to bring on people who have deep experience in mobile. There are
some ba�les we will fight and some we won’t. We will work with partners who have specific exper�se to
help us achieve par�cular things. The mobile ecosystem/value chain is very complex and I would say again
that pla�orm fragmenta�on is a key issue.” – Chris Boden, Vice President, Lonely Planet
In-house vs. Partners?
Lonely Planet’s
• Lonely Planet plan to develop their media on par�cular formats
mobile Learnings/
for next genera�on devices. They see this as their compe��ve
recommenda�ons:
advantage and therefore have to have control and deep involve-
ment in the development of their formats. The process is kicked off 1. You need to have a willing-
by looking at emerging pla�orms and internal capabili�es/exper�se ness to experiment and be
and directed efforts in those direc�ons.
prepared to fail.
• Lonely planet almost always develop their mobile products with
2. Barriers are coming down, it
mobile developer help. Crucial to this is that they retain the IP (in-
used to be a private members
tellectual property) and ownership of the concept and end result.
club where admission was
Lonely Planet generate the concept then work with people who
granted to only those who
can help them to develop it. Thus the developers involvement is
could speak Javanese. 25,000
essen�ally wrapping the product for new pla�orms.
apps in nine months is indica-
• Mobile devices are a different beast in that you can’t just transplant
�ve, it is becoming easier.
the content to mobile. Mobile consumer expecta�ons are different
3. There are many companies
to tradi�onal media users. They want mobile offering to be loca�on-
that have been trying, and it
aware, interac�ve and socially-enabled and this requires a different
kind of thinking/product strategy. Combining core proposi�on with an
has been a trial to establish
emerging social media proposi�on is a challenge but essen�al.
mobile businesses. They have
• Lonely Planet has built up an ecosystem of contributors. This leads on
deep skills. There are small
to rela�onships with developers with specific exper�se and pla�orm
development houses that are
knowledge. From this stems the ability to see possible synergies, how
almost desperate to partner
things �e together through the process of building the ecosystem.
with established travel compa-
• Lonely Planet is a company with a great heritage, brand and good-
nies. They are generally willing
will that has a community of people who have had life changing
to operate on a risk/reward
experiences thanks to Lonely planet. What we are not is a technology cost/revenue sharing model.
company. 4. Mobile is a unique proposi-
• Lonely Planet is rela�vely new to digital and mobile is nascent so the �on for the travel industry as
company decided to bring on exper�se early on, allowing them to
many of the mobile companies
apply their knowledge and link it to buy in to the Lonely Planet
are comfortable working in a
culture. Since Lonely Planet is not a technology company the
shared risk/revenue model.
challenge is to tap into technological exper�se in a scalable way. The
Need to be aware of this.
focus was therefore to leverage the brand and content, develop a
5. If you do not have an ability to
number of powerful building blocks and get developers tapping into
enter into development your-
Lonely Planet and essen�ally using us as a pla�orm (e.g. Blog Sherpa)
self, if you have a suitable con-
• According to Lonely Planet the ques�ons that should be asked are:
cept this can be enough for a
• “How do we tap into exis�ng capabili�es and contacts through
developer and it does not have
leveraging assets that we have?”
to cost a fortune to experi-
• “How do we get scale through partnering rather than
trying to do everything yourself?”
ments. So Partner!
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