I would forget UGC for a long while yet. Just commit to seeding/curating routes yourselves. If you want to involve influencers, generate the routes based on their travel blogs or comments and then link back to them. Saves them doing any work on what will be a wasteland app to start with.
UGC: Our first phase definitely looks closer to what you're describing than the long term goal. We're seeding the major US cities ourselves, then bringing on influencers in those same cities to create routes from their own lifestyle/brand and cross-post on socials — the seeded routes give them a baseline for the format we're going for. UGC from regular users is the longer-term bet, not what we were expecting within our first week of launch.
Your "generate the routes based on their travel blogs, link back" idea is one I hadn't considered, but it's something to think about. Appreciate your input!
I like the idea of exploring what others had found before. Maybe it doesn't need to be gear towards just travel but also this gives an opportunity for locals to explore places they've never knew before too?
I've also recently launched a walking app - made for myself but thought others would enjoy too. I had added an anonymous collective walk counter which encourages others to keep walking.
BTW, Mapbox does give sponsorships to projects/apps for displaying how their product is being used so once you get to a certain level you could submit a form for it. I know this project was sponsored by them: https://gpx.studio/
Here is my project if you are interested to checking out. Feel free to take any feature you find in there for your app. https://github.com/walktalkmeditate/pilgrim-ios
Some ideas I had back then on the business side of things - you could explore getting travel influencers on board to market it and create their own custom itenararies. Then you can also connect to booking websites to earn income and give commission shares to route creators.
This is almost 1:1 with a project we worked on several years ago. Unfortunately it never launched - founder ran out of money. It was one of my favourite projects we’ve done and I genuinely believed in the concept, so I was sad we couldn’t see it come to fruition. But glad someone else is giving it another go!
Without giving away anything confidential, I can say your cold start plan is very similar. Can’t say it’s a good or bad plan because we never saw it executed in practice… but it’s not unreasonable!
I think distribution and stickiness will be a challenge. Even if you get enough content that users will have a great first experience, most people don’t travel that often, so getting them to come back regularly won’t be easy.
Best of luck - would love to see this succeed!
On distribution: agreed. Stickiness is the hard part for sure. Our angle is that the app should also work as a way for users to discover their own city through other people's POVs — not just for travel. We also built in a collaboration feature and private routes, so it doubles as a planning platform whether you're going solo or with a group.
We're hoping the creation side carries the retention we're looking for. Following a route is one side of the coin. Making the route, collaborating with friends, planning places you want to visit over weeks — that's where we're estimating (hoping lol) most of our retention will come from. Can't say for sure yet, not enough data. Thanks again for the comment!