Crafting great content is essential for selling travel today. But if you’re not a marketing genius, how do you figure out the first step?

Ursula Petula Barzey knows exactly where you should start. A tourism marketer who has worked with dozens of organizations in the travel space, she has developed a roadmap for content creation that consistently gets results. She joins this episode of the podcast to share what a winning content strategy looks like and give you easy advice on how to get started or level up your content game.

Ursula explains how you can deliver content that helps customers on every part of the buying journey, as well as some rules of thumb to help you allocate marketing time and resources. Plus, we have news about the world’s largest cruise ship, a Road Tip managing your itinerary on the go; and a Hot Minute about mistakes your probably making at group meals.

On creating a content plan:

“That’s something you really have to spend time and do. Because life gets busy, the busy season comes, but you still need to be pushing out content almost every single day…. If you don’t plan ahead of time, you’re going to be left frazzled.

“Once you get organized, you start to get momentum, and it’s easier to keep up with it.”

On the ideal content mix:

“You should ideally be following the 80%-20% rule. So 80% of the content you’re pushing out is the soft sell. And 20% is where you go hard on your tours and offers…. Because too much hard selling turns people off. Keep in mind that most often, when people see your content, you’re interrupting their day. So you want it to be pleasant.

“It’s a privilege to be in their feed. If you want to maintain being in their feed, you need to do the soft sell more often.”

On social media effectiveness:

“While it’s tempting to be on all social media platforms, you don’t need to be. Based on your resources, pick one or two and get started. And then as you scale those and see success, you can move on to some of the other platforms. It’s ok to only have 1,000 followers…. It all goes back to being consistent and posting content that appeals to that audience, because they will help you go viral.”

On how much time you should invest in content:

“If you are a one-person operation, at least a day of the week should be dedicated to marketing the business. If you’re spending three or four days out there doing tours, you need to make sure that once those tours are done, you have a follow-up strategy to get feedback, reviews and testimonials.“

Learn more about Ursula Petula Barzey’s company Moxee Marketing at on moxeemarketing.com.

Read about Ursula’s adventures in the Caribbean at caribbeanandco.com.

1:02 — Travel News: The world’s largest cruise ship is about to set sail.

2:18 — Road Tip: Calling ahead to confirm group reservations

14:08 — How Usula Petula Barzey escaped corporate hell to find heaven in tourism

19:40 — Why is content strategy so difficult for tourism businesses?

21:06 — Creating an effective content roadmap

25:12 — What should your company emails say?

32:05 — Solving the mystery of social media

34:58 — How much time should you be spending on content?

38:43 — Tech tools for improving your content game

49:51 — Hot Minute: Is it time to rethink your group meals on the road?

Gather and Go with Brian Jewell is a tourism industry podcast that helps group travel leaders plan, promote and lead better trips. There are also tips and insights for destination marketers and others who support the tourism trade. Each episode reaches thousands of professional tour operators, travel agents and the volunteer group leaders they serve. The audience also includes destination museum leaders, church travel leaders and other tourism enthusiasts around the world. Each show includes an interview with a smart travel pro or an insightful person from outside tourism who’s expertise can help make travel businesses better. You’ll also hear travel news, road tips and more. New episodes are released about twice monthly.

You can find Gather and Go wherever your listen to podcasts or subscribe by email.

Have questions, comments or ideas for the show? Send them to us at podcast@grouptravelleader.com.

Thanks for listening!