Profession: Tourism Marketing

Experience: 25 years

Location: Germany, Bochum

 

I am the owner of a boutique size destination marketing agency representing destination Canada, visit Finland, visit Estonia and Tourism Toronto (PR). We are a very varied team consisting of tourism experts, media and PR-pros, as well as digital natives.

Why? gut feeling was yesterday. Content-based on data is today. PR and content marketing is our home. Content amplification is our passion! Under one roof we develop Content in the text, photo, audio and video, as well as PR and Social Media strategies.

I grew up in tourism. Started out as a travel agent, worked for a tour operator and an airline. After university, I started as manager Travel Trade with destination Canada and then switched over to PR just two years short of the Olympic games. Since then -focusing on content and influencer marketing. How many years does that make?

 

What inspired you to start your own Destination marketing agency?

My self-employment started by coincidence. I used to work with an employee with Destination Canada.

Afer the Olympics in 2010, they closed their Offices in Sydney, Paris and Düsseldorf (Germany). I re-applied for my old Job as a self-employed Person.

 

The Hard part i feel about this profession as per my experience till now :

There is only one thing that is for sure. And that is that nothing is for sure! That is particularly true when you are self-employed but also change is an everlasting theme for everybody now. Change is not hard but takes time. Other than that?

For Germany, credibility, fake news and independency are currently regarded as the biggest media challenges – robot journalism is the latest item on the list.Media have to produce more, faster – and in different versions: e.g. for mobile, shareable content for social media etc. They have to work stronger from a visual perspective and have to write shorter texts. Journalistic content, therefore, needs to be produced so that it is shareable.

 

Things I find interesting or feel “happy” about this profession are : 

I love the industry, the people and their stories. It is truly open, tolerant, international and exciting. And I love working with my colleagues. We are a small team which makes the lines of communication easy. Additionally, we complement each other – so we continuously need to talk and learn from each other all the time. Curiosity, innovation, learning and sharing are the best words to describe our culture.

I have no con. I love what I do and will remain in this industry in one or the other form. Working in tourism is addictive.

Due to the Olympics, FIFA and other world cups, visit of Will and Kate we have had the great pleasure to work with with a huge variety of media and influencers covering a wide variety to topics which go well beyond travel.

For Canada, we have been awarded as the ONLY long distance destination for the best PR-services for the past seven years – voted by media. We were also very early with influencer marketing and combining influencers with brands. That helped. I have been lucky.

 

What is your ideology about ‘experience’ in general and How experience makes a difference if anyone is a newbie to any profession?

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt.

Don’t let the expectations and opinions of other people affect your decisions. It’s your life, not theirs. Do what matters most to you; do what makes you feel alive and happy. Don’t let the expectations and ideas of others limit who you are. If you let others tell you who you are, you are living their reality — not yours. There is more to life than pleasing people. There is much more to life than following others’ prescribed path.

There is so much more to life than what you experience right now. You need to decide who you are for yourself. Become a whole being. Adventure. And: You learn from failure – not from success.

 

Any suggestions you would like to give to the youngsters who are willing to make career in the tourism?

This is the perfect Timing for you being a  Youngster. All tourism companies are looking for staff who grew up with digitalization and are actually living this lifestyle.

I love the idea of this experience blog by proworkk.com and the variety of great introductions about different professions. And I hope and believe it can be a great Inspiration for people thinking about what they will do after University.

 

Visit My Website :

http://www.destination-office.com/