The arrival of a new customer to the agency is always an exciting time. Exploring new strategies, planning, analyzing new actions, experimenting… It’s a challenge and also an opportunity to renew or die, something essential in all jobs and even more if you work with a raw material as changing as ours: tourism, communications and, above all, the deepest desires of consumers, thrilling as well as volatile.

Recently in Interface Tourism Spain we’ve began working with a new client, Jamaica Tourist Board with whom we’re going to work as a full representation office in the Spanish and Portuguese markets, in communications and public relations as well as Tourist marketing and relations with the Tourism sector. This is a new client for us but not new in the market, because it previously worked with another agency, what implies an even bigger challenge: go deep in a different strategy than the one already in practice but without damaging the goals already achieved.

Jamaica is a very interesting destination, with a huge potential, many Tourist products for our outbound markets and an international visibility of its brand as a destination like no many countries have. However, it is quite unknown to the Spanish and Portuguese tourist, unawareness that feeds on the lack of direct flights between our two markets and the island. Nonetheless, the Spanish investment in the country, especially regarding the tourist sector, is of more than a billion dollars and approximately 10% of the hotel rooms are owned by Spanish companies. Paradoxically, the number of Spanish visitors to the destination has declined with the crisis, also due to the the closure of several tour operators who bet on their day on this destination; however, investment in hotel infrastructure has increased significantly. Five Spanish hotel chains with 14 resorts are already present on the island, the last to be present are Melia with Melia Braco Village located in Rio Bueno, and the new Riu Reggae de Montego Bay.

With this information in hand, Interface Tourism Spain’s main objective is to improve air connectivity, achieving a direct flight from Spain. Logically, this change will be essential to improve the numbers of new itineraries in the tour operator and, consequently, the image of the destination in the industry and the consumer, adding to it the resulting promotion activities.

And, how to get it? Prioritize the examination of the steps taken so far. The current situation of the client and its track record: arrivals, flight connections, hotel rooms, tourism offer in destination and previous campaigns, appearances in the media, studying its direct and indirect competition and analyzing the destination in regard to the consumer trends in our market is essential to set the direction to follow. Likewise, examining together with the major players in the tourism industry the positioning of this destination, its potential and its weaknesses and shortcomings, studying travel catalogs of the leading tour operators and probing the “influencers” on its image will help us to establish a more effective strategy.

As important as previous research is the synchrony with the client, a two-way communication in which the client feels heard and the agency understands what their real needs are and internalizes its philosophy and “know-how”. At this time, it is very important that the agency collects from the client all material needed, soaks up from their style books and brand manual, knows its offer by heart and is the main ambassador of that destination or tourism brand. Become an integrated part of the company itself it is what any customer asks for a communications and marketing agency.

From here on, the creativity of the agency becomes extremely important, as well as its industry experience and know-how. Analyzing and planning the best actions to reach the targets, keep abreast of the latest developments and trends in all sectors that can help get to them (whether they are the latest technology applied or the trendy social network) and be very, very proactive regardless of budgets set by the client; if the agency thinks big, the customer will achieve great successes.

And these great successes are easier to reach if you know that the agency you trust with your image knows the world in which you move. Specialization is a plus, but much more so when working, as mentioned at the beginning of the post, with something as changing and intimate as the consumer’s desires to see the world. Tourism is an exciting field that allows you to shape dreams, but also highly variable and even fragile, able to boost economic development and the R & D of a country and weak at the same time, as it can be affected by numerous external agents of all kinds and totally independent from the tourism sector. In Interface Tourism Spain, and through all our global network of agencies, Travel Consul, we’ve been working for over 20 years in the travel and tourism sector, making the industry grow, positioning destinations, tourism companies and modelling people’s desire to see the world.

Por Mónica Bonilla

@MonicaInterface