Day in the life of
Marketing and Sales Director – Thomas Danielsen
I am the Marketing & Sales Director of DMC Baltic, an incoming travel agency in the Baltic States and Poland. We are in our 17th year now.
Working in the travel industry in a small company is anything but predictable. Each day is different. As a small agency founder, I must wear multiple hats during the day. Therefore, my day-to-day is usually split between 1) planning sales and marketing activities towards new and existing customers and 2) planning and executing customer conferences, team buildings, incentives, and events.
Marketing and sales activities mean anything from creating blog content, video content, writing newsletters, or booking sales calls with travel and event agencies and planners around the world.
Our biggest sales and marketing-related activities are participating in the various travel trade fairs around Europe throughout the year. In my case, this means traveling to Norway, Sweden, Germany, and Spain at least a few times a year.
Another important sales-related activity we do is to arrange FAM trips (Familiarization trips) to the destinations we cover. This basically means we invite and arrange free trips for travel and event planners to our various destinations, where we all try out the various restaurants and visit many hotels. But it also means trying out the various fun incentive-style activities we offer, like 4×4 driving, Kalashnikov shooting, and more low-key activities food tasting tours, or backstage visits to the Opera.
Pros
The pros of my job are that I get to travel a lot, I get to eat a lot of amazing food, I get to stay in amazing hotels, do a lot of fun activities, and last but not least I meet so many amazing people from all over the world. All this while getting paid to do so…
The travel industry is a super social industry with an incredible amount of positivity and enthusiasm.
Cons
The cons of my job are that I have to work weekends and high season when people with regular jobs are off…
The pros and cons of my job are often a double-edged sword. From one side I get to travel and see a lot, but the flip side of this is that I need to be away from home a lot too.
Another one is that I am working when other friends and family are off duty. In general, this means I cannot travel during the high season. The flip side of this is that I get to travel for my own leisure in the off-season, meaning lower prices (and sometimes for free too).
