The YAYS Neighbourhood Guide

This project illustrates my experience in creative project management, copywriting, and editorial direction.

YAYS is a Dutch hospitality brand offering premium serviced apartments in cities across Europe. Its concept is based on the promise of unlocking the neighbourhood and enabling off-the-beaten-track local experiences for urban travellers. By staying in a YAYS serviced apartment, guests base themselves in authentic, just-off-centre neighbourhoods favoured by locals, while still enjoying easy access to major tourist highlights.
Experienced concierges — the YAYS Insiders — are a key component of the brand experience. Trained to share ultra-local tips, they act as passionate ambassadors for the YAYS neighbourhoods.

The guide

The YAYS Neighbourhood Guide is a travel book distilling the local knowledge the brand is championing. The assignment was to create a series of pocket-sized books compiling a curated selection of YAYS’ recommendations for the neighbourhoods where YAYS has its buildings, in Amsterdam West, Amsterdam East, Paris, The Hague, and Antwerp. The guide was aimed at enhancing the brand experience. It was gifted to guests upon check-in and mapped unique spots that are normally not featured in mainstream guides.

In 2019, I was appointed to lead the editorial direction and redesign of the guide – which till then was only available for Amsterdam and had very limited content – and create 5 new local editions.

Goals:

• Highlight the added value of the physical guide as a keepsake
• Improve the content quality of the previous Amsterdam edition
• Differentiate the new book concept from the original version, which came across as too ‘salesy’, misleadingly suggesting that local businesses paid their feature in the book with commissions
• Make the content more engaging for readers, to ensure that they would in fact make use of it as a travel guide during the stay
• Improve the editorial quality of the text compared to the previous editions
• Add innovative features and sections to enrich the product

I was in charge of:

• User research
• Concept and editorial direction
• Creative Direction and book design, in collaboration with the Marketing Director
• Project Management
• Content design
• Copywriting, Editing, and Localisation
• Selection and coordination of vendors (design agency, editor, photographers, etc)
• Quality control.

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