A text arrives.  “Hi mate, I’ve just started working with a new client.  They’re a really exciting company in the travel space and they’re looking for someone to help them open up in Europe.  Interested?”

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Across my almost 15 years in travel I’d loved working within the tourism sector and here was an opportunity to do that within an organisation that was making definite waves.  I had an enjoyable conversation with Tiki’s CEO; Mark Mamber. We talked travel, parenting teenage boys, what we loved about the industry and then finally Tiki itself.  He was totally charged from recently taking the CEO role, as well as helping master the company rebrand.  It was pretty much impossible to resist his enthusiasm.

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“You’ve done what?” I thought.  “You’ve built a private exchange of over 200 travel sites for DMOs to access?”  I felt like this was something that I’d been asked about by travel and tourism clients for years.  Here it was - a multi-publisher, contextually relevant, brand safe environment for travel.

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I’m at a point in my career where people I know often turn up in the places where I work, like my  former colleague Rich Bryant, who had recently joined Tiki on the DMO Sales team in the US.  We talked; “I’ve found the fun one” he told me.  That was enough, I was in…

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My first week was spent at a tourism industry event in the UK, a prospect that would have been terrifying in the early part of my career, but now one that I relished.  A great chance to get in front of the industry and hone an elevator pitch in a real-life environment.  It also acted as a great reminder as to why I enjoy the destination space so much within travel.  In my eyes it remains the ultimate inspiration product.  They’re selling their ability to give the traveller the best experience they possibly can, more often than not with limited control of the distribution of that product.

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Straight away I feel the release of having a product that you can visually demonstrate in front of people.  The Envoy ad unit is a brilliant tool to showcase and encourage destinations to interact with.  It’s a welcome contrast to many years in the programmatic space which, whilst definitely an exciting sector, is hard to physically show a client what it is, especially if they are new to programmatic.  I can feel it’s a good product and that’s always been important for me. Frankly I’m not good enough to sell something that‘s not compelling.  But Envoy and its associated products are genuinely useful, market-leading solutions for destinations.

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I’m a remote employee for the first time in my career.  I’ve always shied away from this setup previously (unlike many, I did not enjoy that aspect of the pandemic), but the culture has made me feel I’m part of a tight team at Tiki, despite all my sales colleagues being US-based.  Whilst there will always be differences in market conditions (domestic US tourism budgets still blow my mind), we all face many of the same challenges.  It doesn’t take me long before I’m happy outlining challenges I have had to face or bouncing ideas off the team.

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After five rapid months, I’m pleased to say it’s been a uniformly positive experience talking to DMOs old and new about what Tiki are doing. It’s a different offering and mentality to much of what’s out there, but one that we position as complementary rather than wholly competitive to many other media solutions in the space. As my colleague Jamie recently wrote, the Tiki organisation stands alongside destinations in helping make tourism a force for good by helping make them better at what they do. I’m excited to be part of that mission.