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Destination On The Left

Destination On The Left is a travel and tourism industry podcast hosted by Travel Alliance Partnership. Each episode explores successful collaborations, creative marketing ideas and best practices for both consumer and travel trade marketing programs. Interviews are a mix of Destination Marketers, Industry Leaders, Consultants and businesses in the industry.
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Now displaying: September, 2022
Sep 28, 2022

Scott is a longtime travel industry data guru, having served in senior executive roles at United, Adara, and Orbitz. He was instrumental in the founding of Orbitz and is CRO at Journera, which has been recognized as one of the World’s “10 Most Innovative Travel Companies“ by Fast Company and a “Technology Pioneer” by the World Economic Forum. Participating companies include United, American, Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, IHG, and many others.

On this episode of Destination on the Left, I talk with Scott Garner, Chief Revenue Officer for Jounera, about the brand’s unique data collaboration model that sees hotels, destinations, and airlines working together. He describes how the shared data helps marketers to create a 360-degree view of the travelers’ journey, identify potential customers and anticipate their needs seamlessly.

What You Will Learn in this Episode:

  • How Journera facilitates seamless travel experiences and how they got the six big founding partners on board
  • Why competing travel brands come together and share data to learn how the consumer is moving through the planning and purchase stage of travel and arrival
  • How to focus on the areas of common interest and common benefit when creating a partnership
  • How to foster communication and collaboration in the travel industry while still allowing brands to retain their uniqueness
  • What Journera does with the data to benefit and provide those solutions for their clients
  • The importance of data in digital marketing in the travel industry
  • What historical data tells you a lot about a person’s future behavior and how that helps marketers in the travel and tourism industry

Collaborating with Shared Data

Journera was founded to take advantage of the insights that the travel and tourism industry can take from sharing data to make the visitor journey as seamless as possible. Scott talks about why it’s so important to bring together travel companies, even companies that are competitors, for the common good, which is to make the travel experience better. Travel involves piecing together many components, and you need companies, from airlines to car rental agencies, to enhance the traveler experience, and sharing data is the way to do that.

Retaining Uniqueness

There are times when Journera partners compete fiercely against one another, but there are also times when they’re stronger and need to collaborate and work together to create more efficient marketing solutions. Scott describes how he and his team create a win-win scenario while also being mindful that there are some parts of that relationship that have to be fenced off. The critical thing is to focus on the areas where cooperating benefits everybody involved, especially the consumer.

Using Data to Move Forward

At the core of what Journera does is assess data and then distill the findings to make them more usable in a marketing context. Scott describes how the team integrates individual partners’ data into their broader digital ecosystem, enabling marketers to target their potential visitors with greater precision. He outlines how data drives intelligence, which in turn helps DMOs make sound investment decisions to put themselves in the best position to move forward with confidence.

Resources:

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Sep 21, 2022

Michelle Ng brings people closer together by creating rewarding experiences through her two businesses – Vancouver Foodie Tours and Granville Island Gifting. Forbes has named Vancouver Foodie Tours one of the top 9 food tours in the world. They offer food walking tours, introducing guests to the culinary gems, vibrant cultures, and history that make Vancouver unique.

Michelle’s second business, Granville Island Delivery Co, was founded at the start of the pandemic as a way for the community to support local artisans and to send Granville Island gift boxes to friends and colleagues. Michelle has been recognized by The Entrepreneur magazine and Vancouver Sun for her contributions to uplifting the community during the pandemic.

What excites Michelle the most? She loves to generate happiness and appreciation by creating rewarding experiences that uplift the community. Michelle’s story is of resilience and optimism.

On this episode of Destination on the Left, I talk with Michelle Ng about how she built her Foodie Tour business over 12 years and how her pandemic pivot led to the formation of a second company. She shares what she sees as a successful food tour in other destinations and why technology is core to both of her business’s success. We also dive into a collaboration Michelle kickstarted involving other small tour operators and how that collaboration has subsequently resulted in an injection of funding.

What You Will Learn in this Episode:

  • Michelle’s journey and how she got to where she is today with her two businesses
  • How food has a magical power to bring people closer together and break down barriers
  • What happened to Michelle’s business when the COVID-19 pandemic hit North America
  • How the Granville Island Delivery Co. came into being to serve the local community
  • How Michelle evolved the design and marketing of her tours to better suit visitors who don’t know anything about Vancouver
  • Michelle gives an insight into her most popular tours and why visitors love them
  • How technology has enabled Michelle to be able to run a successful business
  • The part collaboration has played in spreading the word about Michelle’s businesses and attracting visitors
  • Michelle shares her advice for listeners hoping to grow and scale their business

Refining Your Business

Michelle Ng, founder of Vancouver Foodie Tours and Granville Island Gifting, shares why she is constantly in the process of tweaking and refining the experience she offers her customers. She describes why it is so important to her to be constantly listening to her customers, what they’re asking for and what they’re interested in. Pursuing excellence and creating rewarding experiences is very important to Michelle, and she highlights why it’s at the core of what she does as a business owner.

Creating a Network

We discussed how Michelle got involved with her local destination marketing organization and details the two most effective steps she has taken to develop her business. She walks us through what she has learned from some of the world’s most successful examples of food tours. Michelle also shares how the DMOs in Vancouver, in British Columbia, and in Canada have supported her work and provided access to the international markets by showing her how to pitch and win the business of tour operators worldwide.

How Collaboration Led to Collective Success

Both of Michelle’s businesses are built on a foundation of collaboration, and she shares how that has contributed to her success. Michelle describes why she really believes in uplifting the community in everything she and her team do and why, whenever they are looking at partnerships or any other business decisions, they’re striving to create win-win relationships. They view their foodie tour experiences through the lens of setting up an experience, interaction, or initiative in a way that serves everybody that’s involved.

Michelle also shares why she reached out to some of the small group tour companies in the city, who she felt were giving the highest quality experiences in the city, to suggest they form the Experience Vancouver Group so they could learn from each other and share their expertise.

Resources:

We value your thoughts and feedback and would love to hear from you. Leave us a review on your favorite streaming platform to let us know what you want to hear more of. Here is a quick tutorial on how to leave us a rating and review on iTunes!: https://breaktheicemedia.com/rating-review/

Sep 14, 2022

Kelly Blazosky is President of Oneida County Tourism & Founder/Partner of Adirondack Barrel Cooperage. She is an experienced President with a demonstrated history of working in the non-profit organization management industry specializing in Destination Marketing. Kelly is skilled in Nonprofit Organizations, Advertising, Marketing Strategy, Public Speaking, and Tourism.

On this episode of Destination on the Left, I welcome Kelly Blazosky back to the show. Kelly was my second guest way back in 2016 when the podcast launched, so I’m excited to learn more about her journey in destination marketing since then. Kelly also shares her three-prong approach to marketing Oneida County and explains why moving from generalized messaging to specific detailed messaging has helped her county stand out from the crowd.

What You Will Learn in this Episode:

  • The learning curve for Kelly in moving from destination marketing in Ohio to New York State
  • How Oneida County is standing out from the crowd as a destination
  • How to lean into partnerships to attract visitors to a broader region
  • The framework that gives Kelly’s team a clear-cut way to execute their marketing campaigns
  • Past challenges and the creative solutions that Oneida County Tourism found to move through them
  • Why Kelly and her team find so much value in working with an external marketing agency
  • Some of the exciting things that are coming up in Oneida County, including the new cheese trail
  • How DMOs can help, support, and be part of the community they’re in

Oneida County’s Marketing Framework

Kelly explains how her community has found that when it comes to consumer engagement across the various marketing platforms, it’s most effective to focus their efforts on three things; events, experiences, and exhibitions. She and her team have found that it pays to be very specific in their messaging and regularly highlight particular art exhibitions or events happening in the area.

We also discussed how she overcame resistance to that approach and was able to show that by stepping outside of the box, they were able to attract potential visitors’ attention.

Creative Collaborations

Kelly and I discussed some of Oneida County’s current collaborations, including their partnership with the Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute (MWPAI), a wonderful free museum housing paintings from artists from Van Gogh to Pollock. She describes how the MWPAI moved to a changing exhibition model and began planning them further out, which enabled Oneida County Tourism to prepare promotions and highlight the events, such as curated talks and lunch and tea events.

This is just one of the ways that they can work within their framework and attract people to engage with the specific events that interest them. It also means that when they’re talking with their other partners locally, they can direct them to the month-by-month programming for a particular exhibition which gives them more to talk about and helps them evolve.

Building Partnerships

Finding the right partner to collaborate with can often be a sticking point for DMOs, so Kelly shares her best practices and advice for listeners planning to create their own collaboration. She shares the importance of first defining which market you’re developing the product for, travel, trade, international, or domestic, then finding who are ready for those kinds of visitors.
We talk about why a key part of collaboration is finding common threads that have some relation to the story you want to tell and demonstrating why creating a well-rounded experience helps draw visitors by giving the DMO a better product to promote.

Resources:

We value your thoughts and feedback and would love to hear from you. Leave us a review on your favorite streaming platform to let us know what you want to hear more of. Here is a quick tutorial on how to leave us a rating and review on iTunes!: https://breaktheicemedia.com/rating-review/

Sep 7, 2022

Karen Kuhl is the Executive Director at Cayuga County Convention and Visitors Bureau. She is a tourism and management professional with hospitality and F&B experience and has 15 years of experience as a tourism destination manager. As the former Director of Tourism and Hospitality Operations for Selva Negro Ecolodge and as Owner of Tastefully Nicaragua, she focused on sustainable tourism in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. Her responsibilities included: marketing, sustainability certification process, human resources, long-term planning, and itinerary management. Karen’s experience in the public and private sectors makes her an excellent advocate for the Cayuga County CVB’s role in marketing and product development in the tourism industry.

On this episode of Destination on the Left, I talk with Karen Kuhl, Executive Director for the Cayuga County CVB. Karen shares the programs her destination is currently working on and how their offerings are evolving as they dive deeper into how the internationally known abolitionist Harriet Tubman lived and worked in the region. Karen’s team is also making a significant impact in DEI in the rural community and championing and supporting economic development as much as possible.

What You Will Learn in this Episode:

  • Where in the world Karen has worked, and what brought her back to the US
  • An overview of Cayuga County, where it sits, and what it offers
  • The importance of Harriet Tubman to Cayuga County and Auburn and how the CVB is using the significance of this historical figure to stand out from the crowd
  • Why it’s critical to build a solid foundation of DEI
  • Their Harriet Tubman initiatives and how they are evolving
  • How Cayuga County is promoting and elevating Black-owned businesses in their community
  • The challenges and obstacles Karen has worked through and creative solutions that have helped her team navigate them

An Important Legacy

Karen describes how her destination, the Cayuga County CVB, draws visitors in through their connection to the internationally famous American Abolitionist, Harriet Tubman, and how they use that link to elevate and support economic development in the region. We discuss how Karen and her team live Harriet Tubman’s legacy in Auburn by ensuring that the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusivity were built into the DNA of their organization.

An Evolving Story

The visitor experience in Auburn is a thriving story that continues evolving as the CVB finds out more and more about the businesses that were in town while Harriet Tubman would have engaged with them. Karen has also made a concerted effort to identify the broader individual Harriet Tubman was and uncover the human connection that so beautifully reveals all the facets of her character from the conductor of the Underground Railroad to a military leader, spy, nurse, and forger.

We discuss why it’s important as a destination marketer to appreciate all facets of why visitors might want to connect with a historical character and how CVBs can form partnerships that help them dig through the data to paint a fuller picture.

Authenticity and Purpose

Karen shares how her organization works with local businesses and community leaders to share their message, including putting together a grant to support the promotion of events around the Harriet Tubman bicentennial year in 2022. We also dive into why the tourists of today and tomorrow are traveling with a focus. And the importance of building a solid and authentic foundation as a destination and living it through your decisions.

Resources:

We value your thoughts and feedback and would love to hear from you. Leave us a review on your favorite streaming platform to let us know what you want to hear more of. Here is a quick tutorial on how to leave us a rating and review on iTunes!: https://breaktheicemedia.com/rating-review/

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