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The key to a robust — and growing — business in the travel, tourism, and hospitality industry is marketing that’s truly strategic

Learn EXACTLY how to market YOUR travel, tourism, and hospitality business strategically so that you can expand your audience, attract a consistent stream of new customers, and grow to new levels of revenue — all in just 7 weeks!

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You’ve got a business in the travel, tourism, and hospitality industry…

...whether it’s a museum or cultural institution, a winery or brewery, a tour company, a local attraction, or a destination marketing organization.

No matter what type of travel, tourism, and hospitality business you have, one thing’s for sure across the board:

The last year and a half has been ROUGH.

The global pandemic wreaked havoc on our industry and left so many businesses dried up.

And now, as the U.S. opens up again, it’s left those in the travel, tourism, and hospitality business industry still standing with a lot of heavy questions.

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Questions like:

What can I do to protect my business in the future?

How do I create a healthier stream of leads?

How do I rebuild my business after a devastating year?

How do I reach new audiences so that I can expand and grow?

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You know that marketing has a lot to do with it —

but up until now, your efforts have either felt like throwing spaghetti against the wall…

...or relying on the same one or two marketing approaches and hoping that they’ll work. 

There are many times you feel like your marketing efforts may be wasted…

...as you spend time and money on a particular method and then struggle to see results.

You suspect there are plenty of opportunities that you’ve never even thought of…

...ones that could breathe fresh life into your business and help you see real growth.

But without the guidance or the framework to help you find those opportunities and leverage them to attract new clients and customers, you keep doing the same old thing…

...crossing your fingers that it works, while worrying about the future and wondering if there are new avenues for growth that you’re allowing to pass you by.

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Hear this: I understand your worry.

The last year and a half HAS been devastating for our industry — and there’s so much rebuilding to do.

But in that rebuilding there’s a lot of OPPORTUNITY.

Opportunity to rethink how we market and talk about our businesses.

Opportunity to partner with other companies in our industry and tap into new audiences.

And opportunity to better protect our businesses by taking a more diverse approach to attracting new leads.

The #1 way to tap into those opportunities and grow your business like never before is TO BEGIN TO MARKET STRATEGICALLY and have a strategic marketing plan.

So many businesses — especially small to mid-size businesses in the travel, tourism, and hospitality business industry — are run by owners or directors who are wearing lots of hats. 

They are responsible for MANY facets of the business, with marketing just being one.

This can easily lead to their marketing functions becoming automated, stale, or non-diverse because there are so many other things that need to be done.

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It can also lead to some common assumptions about marketing — and if there’s truly a need to take a strategic approach — such as:

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#1: Marketing is an expense that I can’t tie directly to revenue or visitor traffic, so it’s not worth experimenting with.

Marketing that is truly strategic IS an expense that can be tied to results. Developing a strategic plan for marketing pays benefits because you no longer waste money on marketing tactics that don’t drive business results.

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#2: I already am (or have hired) an experienced and trained marketer, so my current marketing should be fine.

Markets and marketing are in a constant state of change, and having a strategic plan allows you to be ready for the changes. It also allows you to adapt your plan based on results, and provides confidence in your ability to continue to drive business growth.

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#3: Most of my business comes from the local market or repeat customers who already know about my business. It is too hard to find new customers or reach visitors from outside our area.

Reaching new customers and out-of-town visitors has never been easier — especially with a strategic plan. Expanding your audience helps your business grow, and it also smooths out the peaks and valleys of your sales cycle and protects your business.

Marketing your business strategically — and having a strategic marketing plan — allows you to become so much more efficient, effective, and successful in your marketing efforts (and as a marketer)!

That’s because strategic marketing provides you with:

A thorough understanding of the full range of marketing opportunities that exist for your business

Clear goals for business growth

Specific strategies that will make sure you take the right action to meet your goals, and

Clear goals for business growth

The good news is…

ANY business in the travel, tourism, and hospitality business industry can benefit from strategic marketing — and can start implementing it right away.

With the right guidance and framework, you can:

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Create a more diverse and integrated marketing approach that allows you to create a healthy pipeline of new customers for your business

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See clearly how you fit into the travel, tourism, and hospitality business industry and how to pull more business as a destination — not just as a local business

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Use real strategies to expand your audience, rebuild your business, and grow new revenue

I know it may seem impossible to imagine achieving all of this after the difficult year that your business has had…

...but it’s absolutely possible — and 100% doable.

I know this is true because I’ve helped so many businesses just like yours create the marketing strategy and strategic plans they’ve needed to see a big shift in their success.

I can’t wait to help you do the same.

Hi, I’m Nicole Mahoney.

My passion and experience for the travel, tourism, and hospitality business industry has spanned nearly 30 years.

Growing up in a small family-owned business, I first became interested in — and saw the potential created by — event marketing and planning. I eventually went on to run one of the largest festivals in the New York region, called the Lilac Festival, and was also involved in the construction of my community’s brand-new baseball stadium. Both of those events brought my attention to what tourism can do for a community — and I developed a love for the small businesses that the travel, tourism, and hospitality business industry supports.  

Fast forward to 2009 when I created Breaking the Ice Media, a marketing agency that specializes in PR, event planning, and digital marketing for travel, tourism, and hospitality businesses in all segments of the industry.

Through working with our clients, I realized that one of the biggest issues we were consistently seeing was the tendency for businesses to want to jump right to marketing tactics without paying enough — if any — attention to their marketing strategy. So many businesses were focused on short-term quick wins instead of thoughtfully planning a long-term marketing strategy for continual growth and success.

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So, I became passionate about helping my clients create strategic marketing plans, and to really step back and think through the strategy that’s driving their marketing so they can meet their business goals.

When the pandemic hit, the need for strategic marketing became more important than ever.

Strategic marketing — and having a strategic marketing plan — was not only the best way to get through the pandemic, but it’s now the best way to recover and begin to grow again as the travel, tourism, and hospitality business industry opens back up.

With services restricted or shut down altogether and resources — both human and budgetary — stretched very thin, it was (and still is) imperative that businesses think through their marketing plans and get as strategic with expanding their audiences, finding new opportunities, and leveraging them as much as they possibly can.

It’s been crucial for our clients’ businesses — and it’s crucial for YOUR business, too.

That’s why my team and I have taken our nearly three decades of expertise in marketing, our intensive focus on the travel, tourism, and hospitality business industry, and our proven step-by-step framework for creating a strategic marketing plan and designed an online program for YOU.

The mission is to help you start thinking long-term about your marketing so that you can create an effective, efficient, and highly successful marketing strategy that will not only help you recover from the upheaval of the pandemic but will allow you to grow your business in ways that make it better than it's ever been before.

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Ready to learn how?

Building a Strategic Marketing Plan for Your Travel,
Tourism, and Hospitality Business:

A COVID Recovery Roadmap

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Building a Strategic Marketing Plan for Your Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality Business is a 7-week online course that will help you identify the marketing opportunities that are available for your business, define clear goals for growth, determine the specific action that needs to be taken to meet your goals, and create a strategic plan that will support long-term success.

As part of Building a Strategic Marketing Plan for Your Travel, Tourism, and Hospitality Business, you’ll receive:

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Seven Learning Modules

That will lead you step-by-step through creating a strategic
marketing plan for your business

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18 Tools

To help you dig deeper into what you’re learning in the course and implement it into your work

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Here’s what you’ll learn and explore in each module of Building a Strategic Marketing Plan for Your Travel, Tourism, and

Hospitality Business…

Module One: Knowing Where You Are Now and Where You Are Going

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We’ll kick off the course by defining what a strategic marketing plan is, as well as why you need one. You’ll understand the process for how to create a strategy step-by-step. Then we’ll do a situational analysis on your business so that you can understand exactly where you’re at right now and the most important foundational elements that you’ll focus on to drive you forward.

In this module, we’ll use the following tools:

Strategic Marketing Plan Template that will help you learn about and build your own strategic marketing plan

Situational Analysis: Building Your Background Worksheet that will guide you through an analysis of your own business

Module Two: Finding the Opportunities

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In Module Two, we’ll explore the various marketing opportunities that may exist for your particular business. We’ll analyze your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) and then explore the target audiences and segments that may hold new potential for your growth. Then, you’ll identify opportunities that you’d like to research further, as well as how to conduct research to confirm that a particular opportunity is worth pursuing and how you might go about pursuing it.

In this module, we’ll use the following tools:

SWOT Analysis Tool to help you determine the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for your business

Finding the Right Research Focus Prompting Questions to help you identify the opportunities that are worth pursuing in your business

Secondary Research Resource Links that allow you to dive deeper into the research process