How Lili Montes is Building the Future of Travel Journalism Through Authentic Voices

By: Natalie Matzuka

Student Journalist at the University of California, Santa Barbara
Travelers around the world desire a deeper connection to the places they explore. People want
authenticity, unforgettable experiences, and the hidden gems that can be hard to find in curated
itineraries. For most people, planning trips can be exhausting, from scrolling through reviews,
saving locations, and building day-by-day plans; this structure can dull the anticipation and
freedom of exploring.

But one day in the future, a traveler could walk down State Street in Santa Barbara, California,
and pause. Voices of past travelers, unfiltered and immediate, become part of the environment
itself. A deep laughter about an experience someone had just steps away initiates a slight smirk
from the listener, layered invisibly into the space for others to discover on the go. As they
continue walking, they are guided through the experience of another, reflecting and reshaping
their own adventure in real time.

This is the future Lili Montes, founder of the travel-storytelling app Limon, imagines a world
where travel is no longer defined by curated images or star ratings, but by human voices
embedded directly into the place travelers find themselves in.

Growing up in Livermore, California, Montes was surrounded by a common complaint that there
was never anything to do. What she realized was, there were actually things to do, but finding
them was difficult. To her, the discovery process has always felt incomplete, a collection of
ratings and photos say very little about what a place actually feels like.

By the time she attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, she and her brother,
Ramon, dove deeper into the travel industry looking for problems to solve. They found a way to
fill this gap, but the idea for Limon didn’t come from inspiration alone, it came from passion.
When searching for places online, Montes, along with many others, found themselves navigating
through hollow information. Platforms like Yelp or TripAdvisor offered only fragments of their
experience, “you would see a sentence about someone’s experience, some photos, maybe a
five-star, but that doesn’t give any context to what a person’s experience was like or unique
stories you could only get by talking or listening to someone,” said Montes.

Social media platforms were no different, it reduced the travel experience as people would “try
to show off where they had been,” she said, “but it was missing the personal stories behind it.” In
the midst of all the reviews, itineraries, and “must-see” lists, the important elements of traveling
were missing: authenticity and connection.

This insight became the foundation of Limon, an app built around audio storytelling. Instead of
static recommendations, users record and share spoken reflections from their travels, creating a
feed of lived experiences rather than curated highlights. “Audio is known to be the most
authentic form of media,” said Montes. “It allows people to actually reflect on what they went
through, what changed them.”

But when she imagines the platform decades from now, the screen itself begins to disappear.
By 2050, Montes envisions storytelling woven directly into the act of moving through the world.
Travelers no longer sit down to plan every detail in advance. Instead, as they walk through
unfamiliar places, they are prompted to candidly speak, to describe what they see, what surprised
them, what they loved and what they didn’t. These voices attach themselves to physical
locations, transforming streets, storefronts, and landmarks into layered archives of human
experience.

“You’re able to, on your trip, create the story,” said Montes. “But then also pick out your next
spots you’re going to based on the stories you hear.” The process becomes fluid, unfolding in real
time rather than through predetermined itineraries.

In her vision, the environment becomes interactive. A person standing on a corner may hear
multiple perspectives at once, a favorite meal, a hidden spot, a moment of personal growth, all
tied to that exact place. These stories do not only exist in isolation, as physical spaces begin to
form around them. A soft ambient audio fills the space, overlapping voices creating a low,
constant hum. Strangers becoming participants, reacting together, and adding their own stories
on the spot.

Travel becomes less about following directions and more about navigating through the voices of
others, while making a mark using your own. It is not the reviews and five-stars that connect
people to a place, but the memories and stories we make while experiencing it.
Technology is a vital playmaker in the future of Limon. With artificial intelligence evolving,
Montes believes AI can act as a guide, filtering and personalizing the vast amount of content
available. Learning travelers habits, preferences, and values can personalize recommended
stories that feel both relevant and immediate.

“The better that AI becomes, the better it’s going to get to know you,” said Montes, describing a
system that can surface meaningful experiences without overwhelming users. Still, she
emphasizes that technology cannot replicate what makes travel meaningful, “Human storytelling
is always going to be at the core,” said Montes. “Those lived experiences, you can’t replace
that.”

Even as the platform evolves digitally, her vision remains grounded in human connection. For
Limon, communal conversations bring people together, sharing stories rather than speaking in
isolation. In the future, she sees blending digital interaction with physical gathering spaces and
shared experiences, bringing the human element you experience while traveling into the content
you create for it.

For an audio travel journalism app like Limon, the future is shaped by external forces such as
technological advancement and shifting user behavior, as much as it is by the founders own
intentions. However, Montes continues to work with, rather than against the test of time and
technological improvements, and build Limon into a platform that carries authentic voices and
continues toward a version of audio storytelling she believes could exist.
At its core, Montes’s work is driven by a single problem she has been trying to solve since the
beginning: how to help people discover places through voices they trust. Now, and in the future,
Limon is the answer to that gap.

In that world, travel is no longer reduced to ratings or rankings. Instead, it is something heard,
felt, and continuously reshaped, one voice at a time.