Episode 6: The 5 Most Important Trends in the Travel Industry, with Nicole Mahoney

Nicole Mahoney started Break The Ice Media in 2009 in response to the evolving needs of small- to medium-sized businesses, in particular, the rise of social media. Break The Ice Media is a boutique marketing and communications firm with a focus on travel, tourism, food, wine, and hospitality. As CEO, Nicole is responsible for working with clients to understand their marketing needs, develop strategic marketing plans and execute those plans. She is also responsible for building a team that can deliver.

Break The Ice Media specializes in collaborations that leverage resources of multiple partners for the creation of successful marketing programs within the travel and hospitality industry. Break The Ice Media views these programs as “coop-etition” where partners cooperate with their competition to create a program that is larger than one they can execute alone. Building these programs requires a leader who is level-headed, an effective listener, with an ability to move a group towards consensus in order to move forward.

Nicole received a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Rochester Institute of Technology and a Master of Arts in Communications from The College at Brockport, SUNY.

Nicole loves the Finger Lakes region of New York State where she was born and raised. She is raising 4 daughters with her husband, John.

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

• What Nicole learned at the Marketing Outlook Forum
• The emerging international travel trends
• Why Mexico will surpass Canada as the #1 source for arrivals by the end of 2016
• Why China will surpass the UK as the #1 source for overseas arrivals by 2020
• Why India will be the second largest market for consuming class households by 2025
• How the US domestic leisure market will continue to grow in 2017 by the same rate as 2016
• The research that shows that people are starting to see travel as a better use of money than material things
• Adventure vs. relaxation: what travelers want their vacations to feel like
• Why people are wanting more and more to be travelers, not tourists
• The rise of peer-to-peer lodging and what travelers that use these alternatives are like
• The World Food Travel Association’s study The 2016 Food Travel Monitor
• How food and beverage influences leisure travelers to seek out a destination
• Why a positive food or beverage experience will motivate travelers to return
• The rise of peer-to-peer dining and psycho-culinary profile research
• Project Time Off: the initiative to get Americans to use their vacation days
• The unlimited vacation policy at Break The Ice Media
• The economic impact of Americans using their vacation time

Resources:

• Nicole's blog