The dialogue in Aqua Talks navigates the dynamic interplay between tourism, culture, and marketing, specifically through the lens of music tourism. Larry Aldrich and Mady Dudley lead a rich conversation with Matt Cooper, who shares his extensive experience in promoting travel experiences that are deeply rooted in local culture. The episode highlights the resurgence of interest in music tourism as a result of the pandemic, with travelers increasingly seeking out experiences that celebrate local music and arts. Matt discusses various initiatives he has championed, including the creation of music-based itineraries in Jamaica, which have successfully attracted visitors interested in the rich musical history of the island. The hosts and their guest underscore the essential role of cultural storytelling in marketing, advocating for a more profound integration of local music scenes into tourism strategies. This episode serves as a guide for marketers and tourism professionals to rethink their approach, emphasizing the need to evoke emotional responses through cultural engagement, ultimately enhancing the travel experience and building lasting connections with visitors.

In this Episode:

• 00:07 - Introduction to Aqua Talks
• 06:02 - The Influence of Music on Travel and Tourism
• 13:29 - The Evolution of the All-Inclusive Experience
• 18:14 - The Journey of a Career in Travel and Hospitality
• 25:10 - Cultural Strategies for Promoting Saint Martin
• 28:52 - Travel Marketing Innovations

Key Takeaways:

• The podcast emphasizes the transformative power of marketing in creating meaningful connections with audiences.
• Music tourism is identified as a significant trend influencing travel decisions and cultural engagement.
• Listeners are encouraged to leverage cultural elements in their marketing strategies to foster emotional connections.
• The importance of direct consumer engagement is highlighted as a means to optimize travel experiences and bookings.
• Incorporating local culture into marketing strategies is essential for attracting and retaining travelers to various destinations.
• The discussion includes insights on the evolution of tourism marketing, particularly in the Caribbean and Latin America.

RESOURCES:

Aqua Talks - Website

Larry Aldrich - LinkedIn

Mady Dudley - LinkedIn

Matt Cooper - LinkedIn

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Matt Cooper is a tourism marketing and business development strategist, promoting the travel and tourism experience in the Caribbean and Latin America for 30 years. He started Travel Culture Collab in 2019, to offer strategic counsel on various aspects of commercial strategy for hotels and destination marketing organizations, amplifying brand awareness and engaging with new consumer audiences to win over more travelers for his clients. Matt currently works with the Sint Maarten Tourism Bureau, Jamaica Tourist Board, Hyatt Inclusive Collection, Grupo Posadas and many independent hotels. He is the former CMO of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association where he created collaborative partnerships with JetBlue, Mastercard, STR and many others. As a media professional, Matt represented The New York Times, Conde Nast publications and Travel Agent Magazine. He began his career in public relations and marketing for Sandals and Beaches Resorts, and Allegro Resorts, where he was part of the launch team for Royal Hideaway in Playcar, Mexico. Matt lives in Miami (his hometown) with his wife Monica and children Alex (20) and Olivia (18).

ABOUT THE HOSTS: 

Meet Larry Aldrich, host of Aqua Talks. With a background in the U.S. Air Force and as the founder of BrennSys Technology LLC, a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business, Larry has decades of experience in the public and private sectors. In 2024, he acquired Aqua Marketing & Communications, merging the firms into a leader in destination marketing and public sector solutions. Join Larry for insightful, lively conversations and actionable marketing takeaways in each episode of Aqua Talks.

Meet Mady Dudley, a public relations expert skilled in crafting strategic campaigns that elevate brand awareness and generate buzz. With roles at Codeword, Red Rooster PR, and Paradise Advertising, she’s worked with top clients like JW Marriott Marco Island, The Dalí Museum, and Visit Indian River. Mady's achievements include amplifying earned media for Google and driving a 25% boost in referral traffic for a client within 90 days. Tune in to Aqua Talks, where the future of destination marketing takes flight.

Marketing podcast, Aqua Talks, travel marketing strategies, tourism trends, music tourism, Caribbean travel, South Florida tourism, destination marketing, cultural marketing, online travel marketing, audience engagement in tourism, tourism industry insights, travel culture collaboration, tourism and music, experiential travel, Caribbean culture, hotel marketing, tourism partnerships, travel consultancy, effective travel campaigns

Welcome to Aqua Talks, where marketing meets bold game changing ideas.

Join your hosts, Larry Aldrich and Maddie Dudley as they explore the art and science of cutting through the noise, capturing attention and fostering meaningful connections with your audience.

Whether you're a destination marketer, government contractor, or simply passionate about the transformative power of marketing, aqu, Aqua Talks offers engaging discussions, fresh insights and actionable strategies designed to inspire and inform.

Hi and welcome back to Aqua Talks, the marketing podcast.

Whether you're just getting started out or you're a pro in marketing, I'm Maddie Dudley.

I am the PR director for Aqua marketing and communications.

Our podcast today is sponsored by Brensys Technology and I am joined by my co host, Larry Aldrich.

Hello, I'm Larry Aldridge, President and CEO of Brensys and Aqua Marketing and Communications.

Today we're talking about travel and tourism in South Florida and the Caribbean and beyond with travel culture collabs, Matt Cooper.

Thank you.

Hi Matt.

Great to be here.

Matt Cooper brings over 30 years of travel tourism, business development strategy and promoting tourism in South Florida, the Caribbean and Latin America.

Thanks, Matt.

So today we're going to be doing a segment talking about trends in the tourism and travel industry.

And we wanted to pull you into the conversation first before we started getting to our Q and A.

So a recent trend that we have been tracking as a result.

I'm a Swiftie.

I love Taylor Swift.

I was sort of a secret Swifty for a long time because there can be a reputation that come.

Well, that's punny because her album's called Reputation.

No pun intended.

Yes, that reputation that comes with being a Swiftie.

But now I'm just proud about it.

And especially after the Arrows tour, there's been so much talk about music tourism.

Larry, have you heard about music tourism or are you a music tourist?

I listen to music when I tour.

I mean, I do.

I listen to music all the time.

Music is my emotions.

I have different gym playlists.

I travel, I listen to music.

I sit on the plane and I have a playlist.

I listen to a lot of Sade when I'm sitting on those long flights.

Love Sade.

Matt, how about you?

What about music tourism for you?

I mean, music is my first love.

So you hit the nail on the head and wanted to talk about this topic with me.

It can go endless and we'll respect the time.

But I will say that my Spotify is quite activ.

I walk around with a whole library of music and it's constantly growing.

Everywhere I go, I seek music out.

I seek Live music opportunities out when I travel and at home as well.

Yeah, music is a huge part of my life, a constant companion.

I love that.

Before the pod, we were talking a little bit how.

And we'll get into this more later too about Jamaica and how you were part of developing sort of music tourism within that destination.

Can you get into that a little bit?

Sure.

It's a bold statement for me to say I've been involved with their music tourism.

I mean we really created a music based itinerary and that's something that we are reigniting now.

Started right before COVID So when the world sort of world of travel shut down, certainly international travel took a turn.

We.

It kind of fell asleep.

But it's, it's reawakened now and it's really, it's.

It's a way for folks to learn about the history of Jamaican music.

You know, even before and after Bob Marley.

But of course Bob is a huge part of that.

Just.

Just an essential sort of part of that fabric of that DNA that is Jamaica and, and is a huge part of their culture.

So we, we set out to.

Of from.

Well, there's a.

There's an exhibit at the Institute of Jamaica, which is a big museum in Kingston.

It's called From Taino to Dance Hall.

And that was really the goal to talk about, you know, where it came from and why it is what it is today.

And there are tons of landmarks, especially in Kingston.

You can go in South Kingston, you can go to the back of Ricky's Records, which is a record shop.

And there you will find the original recording studio where Bob and the Whalers recorded with.

With Lee Scratch Perry.

The original recording equipment still back there from the early 60s.

A lot of people don't realize it goes back that far, but yeah, Scott and the ska music before that was, you know, like Toots and the Maytal and the Abyssinians and all these names that came out of Trench Town, which is really just a really rundown part of town, is very, very.

This really probably the poorest area in Kingston.

But you can go to Trenchtown now and see where Bob lived when he moved to Kingston in a one room house.

And you can go to Nine Mile, which is way up in the hill on the way between Montego Bay and Ocho Rios, way up in the country where his grandparents were farmers and he, he was born up there and now he's laid to rest there.

You can go to that museum and mausoleum and walk around in that valley below where he used to walk through Every day to go visit his grandparents.

So there's a lot of culture and history there.

They've got a reggae sunfest every summer.

It's a huge reggae festival.

People come from all around, but really a lot of local representation too, so.

So it's just so much to talk about.

Speaking of music, tourism and marketing.

Tourism, how important is music in your campaigns when you're speaking with the DMOs?

Well, I try to bring it up every chance I get because, I mean, for me, it's a passion play.

For me, it's, you know, to market a travel experience is to evoke emotions if you're doing it effectively, right?

If you really want to hit that heartstring to the extent that somebody is going to actually make, you know, action that and book travel.

So, you know, it's just such an indelible part of any culture.

And that's something that I really believe in, I'm emphatic about with my clients, is that we infuse cultural messaging and inspire travel through culture, through the lens of culture.

And music is just a huge part of that, right?

I mean, alongside art and food and all those things that you can touch on that live in culture.

But music, I think, is.

Is this.

There's such a universality to it, and it points to where that culture's from, right?

Like what derives that culture.

Where did the clave come from?

And salsa music, right?

Where did the bongos and the.

Where.

Where did those drums come from?

The answer is Africa, by the way.

So in a lot of cases, right?

And then when you look at Cuban music, like salsa and.

And Dominican music, merengue, especially in salsa and early recordings of song and dan song and these kinds of music and cha cha cha and mambo and these things, there's this convergence of culture that represent.

That's in that creation of that music and playing the music and the collaboration that has to happen for that music to really stand out the way that it does and its uniqueness.

So there's a convergence of European influences, right, with the orchestra, orchestral instruments, and the brass and the woodwinds and those kinds of things.

And then this, you know, push from Africa that gives it that beat, right?

Like, you can't have that music without the beat, right?

It's all about the drum.

So telling that story is just, for me is.

Is a dream come true.

I just.

I just want to talk about it all day.

Yeah.

So speaking of culture, I would love to learn a little bit more about travel, culture, collab.

Well, thanks for that.

It was, it was, I was really kind of pressed into service, to be honest.

I mean, I was at the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism association for four and a half years.

It, what I'm doing now has kind of been focal to the rest of my career, which is really all always been about building partnership and collaboration.

Even when I worked for media companies and whatnot, it was beyond the sale of the actual advertising or media.

You know, there was a partnership involved, always a partnership, always a collaboration between me and my client and that media company to make sure that we got, you know, we optimized that moment to have maximum reach and be able to sort of leverage all the points that we had together to, to accomplish that level of engagement.

So when I was at the association, I would build strategic partnerships for companies like MasterCard and JetBlue and STR and others and also seek sponsorship for our conferences and, and get companies to, to pay for things.

Right.

So I was, I was always approached by all these different companies to try to help me or get me to help them grow their business in the Caribbean.

I was approached by a couple of different partners, friends of mine that I'd known for, for a long time while I was at the association and they asked me to, to do some business development for them and they were willing to pay me for the privilege.

So I had at that point pretty much decided that I didn't want to be an association manager anymore full time.

So it was a great opportunity for me to just set out and do it.

And then today I still do business development for folks for a company like Flip 2, which is truly an innovator in the space.

I mean they focus, they built a tech stack that's really dedicated to driving more direct bookings through hotel websites and E commerce.

And we're doing so at the destination level as well.

So I mean, true, I feel blessed, fortunate to be surrounded by innovators in the space, by people who are not afraid to come up with something new, to really think about where those gaps are in the journey of marketing and selling travel and how we can help our clients do that better.

So it's really an inspiration for me to, to, to work in this way.

What's changed from the rest of my career to these chapters now is, is, I mean in essence kind of everything right in this course of the journey.

I started my career before the Internet was everything, right before the Internet was really a big thing, to be honest.

So I guess I date myself a little bit.

But so that's changed.

So how you go to market and how you engage with people, because they're walking around with a computer in their pocket all the time, right?

I mean, and their phone is everything.

You have to be mobile first, right?

So that's, that's a huge paradigm shift right there.

The, the invention of the iPhone, right, by itself just kind of turned everything on its ear and changed the way that we engage and that we, we go to market.

But some of the things are constant, right?

Some of the, some of the things haven't changed, which is the need to engage with a critical mass of consumers, the right audience, right?

To the extent that you're convincing them to buy your travel experience, right?

So that hasn't changed at all, right?

That's still the same, the same mission, but how you get there has changed.

And likewise, the tourism experience in the Caribbean and Latin America and pretty much everywhere has changed.

Specifically, I can talk to the all inclusive resort industry, which is, you know, where I, where I got my start and, and how I sort of built my experience and how it kind of, everything else led from that, right?

Just sort of followed suit all the relationships I built.

I'm still friends with folks at Sandals to this day and a lot of others who have left and gone and worked at other resorts are now sort of running the show, so to speak.

There wasn't a lot of competition at that time, so it was Sandals and Super Clubs, which was another Jamaican entity, and Club Med.

And that was kind of about it, right?

So today there are, I don't know how many different all inclusive companies.

And I, I believe that Butch Stewart and the folks at Sandals really created their own competition, right?

They, so they showed the travel in the hotel industry how to commoditize an all inclusive experience, right?

And now you see the result is that Hyatt just bought amr, right?

So, so now we have Hyatt inclusive.

Marriott's got into business with Blue diamond and Sun Wing.

So now we've got all inclusive Marriotts.

Hilton's in the game.

Hilton's been in there for a long time, in and out, right?

Wyndham has Viva and also partnering with a company called Palladium out of Spain.

So it's really just, it's been an incredible evolution that I've been a part of and really feel blessed about it.

Speaking of change, and I know you've touched on a few points there between South Florida and Caribbean, what are some of the new changes that stick out the most to you?

I know there's phones Phones have been a while carrying around the information, being able to communicate 24, 7.

But what are some of the new changes or new developments in tourism or marketing destinations that you would speak to a DMO about?

Some of the strategies that we touch on with DMOs and our hotel clients, of course, beyond being mobile friendly, mobile first in your marketing and your go to market approach is really a strategy for them to become better sellers and marketers of themselves, right?

That's something that's really key, a key point in, in this point in my career, really trying to drive hoteliers to be better sellers and marketers of themselves.

What do I mean by that?

The Caribbean and Latin America, Caribbean and Mexico in particular are two of the most third dependent on third party intermediary sales, expedia booking and the like.

Right there.

What we try to encourage as a strategy is, is for our clients to build their own audience, right.

And really engage with them in a different way, optimize their website traffic.

To the extent that you're creating next level engagement, you're telling a better story about the local culture and the travel experience along the way.

Building first party data, building your own audience, which allows you to strengthen your CRM strategy and also cut down on the amount of money that you're committing to Google and Facebook and all these other places.

That's really just a reacquisition of the same audience, right?

It's almost like a tax that our partners pay.

And the message is that that's not the end all be all right.

We're certainly not trying to eradicate any part of that strategy.

That's an audience build in and of itself.

But once you reach that audience and they engage with you, what are you going to do with them?

That's going to make it sticky, right?

Like it's going to make it something that they really want to engage with to the extent that they buy your travel experience.

And so that's really how we focus on consumer direct behavior and consumer direct bookings.

You've been in the business in Latin America as well as the Caribbean for like 30 years.

What really drew you to this region and how did you first start working with them?

Opportunity is what is in a word, right?

I was recruited, right.

I studied journalism in college.

The more I worked in it, the more I knew I didn't want to work in it, had to find something else to do.

A friend of the family was a professor of public relations at University of Miami and he said, you'd be great at pr.

Why don't you Try this.

I have a friend opening an agency.

I went and worked for her.

Her name is C.L.

conroy.

She's still around.

And she gave me a shot, right.

So I started, you know, making pitch calls from her living room couch because she didn't have an office at the time.

Helped her move into an office.

Her clients included Sandals Resorts and then and Air Jamaica when it got privatized and Miami Film Festival.

She had some great accounts and lots of fun right away.

And then Sandals hired me to work for them in house and I worked for them.

It wasn't a very long time that I worked there, but it was a very impactful moment in my career and like I touched on before, I mean it sort of all the rest of it kind of came from there and future jobs and opportunities.

And Sandals became my client when I sold media.

They were a strategic partner of mine at the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association.

We hosted our most important conference of the year there.

So.

So really it started there, right?

And I learned, I, I was a kid, I didn't know what I was doing, to be honest with you, and I didn't know what I had, to be honest.

I think there was some of that took for granted.

But while we were there, we launched a family resort called Beaches.

So I was part of that team.

It was kind of a clever move from, from a place like Sandals, which is couples only giving folks that really began their journey at Sandals through a wedding or a honeymoon and giving them a place to go once they start having kids.

So we, we launched Beaches in the Grill.

That was awesome.

And then I worked for Allegro Resorts, which is now owned by Barcelona.

And I was part of a launch team for a brand called Royal Hideaway, which today still exists.

It's 200 room luxury all inclusive in Flat Car, Mexico.

So that's how I got my start.

You know, that's.

And really kind of inspired about it from the beginning and always wanted to find a way to make sure that I stayed engaged and involved with the industry.

You have a very impressive 30 year career, let's be real.

Thank you.

We're envious.

I mean, your job is to go to the beach and bring people to the beach to enjoy the beach with you and enjoy beautiful Caribbean music and food.

But what are some of your highs and lows in your career?

Wow.

Lots of both, right?

There's lots of both if we're being honest and certainly a little bit humble.

But those two that I touched on really being part of a launch of a new resort brand like Beaches.

That's still just knocking it out of the park every day.

And Royal Hideaway were big ones for me.

The lows in that point in my career what kind of came from not knowing what I really wanted to do, right.

Like I just, I was just kind of feeling it, you know, making it up as I went along, grabbing opportunities that were coming my way and kind of that volatility of shaping my career and really wanting to what am I going to do when I grow up kind of mentality was a little bit.

Felt a little unsettling, right.

So that was kind of strange one.

Another low point is when I walked away from Caribbean Travel, so to speak.

I went and worked for a local publisher in Palm beach county for about 15 minutes and I, it was really an eye opener for me instantly to see just how much my relationships at that time meant to my business.

Right.

So working for a local publisher, of course it was hyperlocal reach and that's who my clients were.

And I didn't know anybody, right.

So I got an opportunity to jump back into the game when a friend of mine, Peter Zuckerman from Z Media called me to work for Conde Nast Travelers.

And so I started working with him.

And that got me right back into it, right.

And I worked with him for a little over a year.

Then New York Times hired me.

That was a high point for me as well.

I worked for them for seven years and then I went back to Conde Nast and I represented Brides, Brides, Conde Nast Traveler, Bon appetit.

Some great brands from a proud moment there was was we.

We created the first ever live stream wedding on Facebook with my clients at Sandals Resorts.

They were my number one client at Brides, one of my top clients at the New York Times.

So yeah, we created that.

We had a wedding happen on Facebook.

We gamified it, gave it away.

It was the first ever, I think nationally streamed live wedding on Facebook.

So that was a big deal.

Wow.

I love how you married those.

Being really punny this episode.

I guess you married those relationships with the Caribbean and worked working with Brides.

What was your title working with these publications?

Oh, I was, I was a travel director of a.

Of.

Of Z Media, which is a.

An outside representation from.

Represents Conde Nast publications in the Southeast and the Caribbean.

And because I got there, because I, I worked with them, they were able to have that sort of reach in the Caribbean.

They weren't really representing the Caribbean before that.

And I was just, I was an account manager at the New York Times.

But I covered the Caribbean and I oversaw a team in Latin America that we had.

We had a series of representation companies in different countries.

So I was able to really work in Mexico too, for that reason, which was incredible for me.

I mean, I can't say enough about Mexico.

I love that you have all this knowledge in the south and it's.

But you really.

You live in Miami, right?

Yes, I do.

I was born and raised in Miami.

Yeah.

So you have a lot of experience working locally with industry players there.

You do serve as the HSMAI membership director for South Florida, working with five counties.

Can you tell us a little bit about your role there and how you facilitate working with five counties?

Well, it's a challenge, as you can imagine.

I think ideally the HSMAI South Florida chapter would have chapters within it.

Right?

So I think it would.

Ideally it would have, you know, one for Miami Dade county, one for Broward county, one for Palm beach county, and on to, you know, to the west side of the state.

But really South Florida, the South Florida chapter is sort of the catch all for that.

And I've really been impressed by how many people are willing to cross county to attend our events, which is really great.

I mean, I guess, I guess something compelling that's happening there.

But we have people come in through Naples and Marco Island, Fort Myers that will drive across the alley to come meet with us.

We have some folks come in from as far afield as New York sometimes for some events and certainly Central Florida.

So, yeah, my, my job within that sort of committee is to retain membership, really, to, to make sure that people stick around and when their membership is about to lapse, I give them a call.

And when we have events, I really kind of try to focus on the folks that live in that county first to call them first.

So, so it's really, it's.

It's outreach like I do for everything else.

Right.

It's it's just, this is a, this is like a volunteer activation.

But, but I really, it means a lot.

Like, I think, I think the power to convene in the way that associations do that, especially in the hospitality industry, is essential to keep and build and maintain community.

Right.

It's a great place for people to get together, try to do business together, find jobs.

I mean, you know, learn things.

Right.

So we, we do seminars on web revenue management and marketing and we have a general managers panel every once a year.

We bring the DMOs in once a year so that we have a separate event and really kind of tips ahead of to that side of the industry.

So we do a lot.

We do a lot.

And when we've got a great.

We've got a great team, we've got a great chapter, we just won an award at the national level for our membership as well.

So very proud to be part of that.

Congratulations on that.

We spoke the other week.

You mentioned that you were in St.

Martin, and if you were speaking with some of the DMOs, can you briefly touch on some strategy points that you feel you would discuss with a DMO that would resonate with travelers?

Well, specifically in St.

Martin, I'm part of a collective that's their public relations agency of record, Diamond PR and a travel trade agency called True Marketing.

My friend Gabby Ribeiro is in charge of bringing in new travel agents and tour operators to the mix.

I'm in the middle of that.

And really what I'm charged with in St Martin by the tourism Bureau is to speak more about culture, right?

Is to really kind of hone in on a strategy and messaging about.

About the local culture and what makes, what.

What are the.

The aspects of the culture that make it uniquely Saint Martin, Right.

I mean, it said it's a binational island.

So that's a pretty easy thing to point to right away.

It's half French, half Dutch, two completely different governments.

The infrastructure is different, the food is different, the travel experience, the hotels are different from one side to the other.

So really, what we emphasize there is again, a focus on the culture and different aspects of the culture.

So beyond sort of paid media and beyond paid social and those kinds of things, what organically are we talking about in conversation and story and building stories about that attract people to St.

Martin for their culture.

And the food is the first thing that we really point to, really, because there's not just that Dutch and French dichotomy, but.

But also the cuisine of where the Dutch has.

Has ever settled, right?

So there's Indonesian cuisine, there's Middle Eastern cuisine.

There's, you know, there's food from other parts of the Caribbean.

So really focusing on their strengths culturally, there is something that we're, we're working on an ongoing basis.

Also Saint Martin, if you look at geography, look at it geographically, it's a hub in the neighborhood, right?

It's in the northeastern Caribbean, east of, of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, but not far from there, even closer to places like Anguilla, Saint Bart, Saba, Saint Eustatius, even Antigua is not far.

So from that neighborhood, a great point of promotion is to talk about that being a Hub in the neighborhood.

Right.

So not only can you go to St.

Martin, but it's very, very viable and easy to island hop.

Right.

So island hopping becomes part of that messaging.

Maritime tourism is huge there too, as you can imagine.

There are marinas on every side of the island.

There's all kinds of options, right?

To, to rent a boat, to captain it yourself, to hire a crew, to, you know, having a multi day island hop experience where you're purveying every bit of food and drink that you're going to consume while you're there and you've got a crew that runs the whole thing and all you got to do is kick back and, and go from one island to the other.

You know, those are the things that we're really focusing on there at, at.

Aqua, we work with a lot of demos and travel tourism professionals in South Florida and Florida altogether, actually, even the Panhandle and with Brensys, we do a lot of work with the federal agencies, the va, the Small Business Administration, what have you.

We can keep going on with that and we have lots of case studies that we'll be talking about over the course of the year through our podcasts and through our marketing efforts.

But Travel Culture Collab.

Is there a case study that you.

Want to touch on that I want to touch on something that we've worked on?

Sure, yeah.

Something you'd like to discuss?

Yeah.

Or just any campaign that you like?

Any campaign that you like that you're interested in.

Something that makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning and skip coffee.

Something inspired you?

Well, one, I'm, I'm really proud of the integration that we've created with Posadas.

It's a really largest hotel group in Mexico, a collaboration that I've created with them and a company called Flip 2 that I touched on before.

And really in a matter of course, in the matter of course of that partnership, what we're doing is helping Posadas sort of transform the way they handle their audiences.

Driving more direct bookings to each of their hotels and then having a data structure, data infrastructure on the back of it like no other.

Right.

So we're able to show them where their traffic is coming from and what it's doing, and how to then optimize their paid media, their CRM strategy and those kinds of things.

And it's in Mexico.

Right.

Mostly that hotel company is in Mexico, in every corner of Mexico.

And so also as part of that platform, what we're throwing into the mix and further up the funnel of buying or shopping for travel is the cultural experience.

Right.

So we're populating experiential content once we have intended dates of stay in that particular city.

Well, now we're offering in a very visual, easy to sort of navigate way all these cultural experiences that are available on and off property during those dates of stay.

So we're really kind of affecting even the decision on dates of stay based on certain events like we touched on at the top of the hour.

Like if there is a concert event over here on Sunday and we were thinking about leaving on Saturday, well, maybe we're going to extend our stay.

So it's a really.

I know I touched on a lot of points there, but it is one platform that's doing all that and now we've integrated the data infrastructure anyway across the whole group.

So, so very proud of that.

A campaign that sticks out in my mind I had nothing to do with, but it's from my original alma mater of Sandals Resorts is this brand new campaign that they've come out, they've really come out the gate swinging with again, a very culture forward message.

Right.

I think the tagline is made from Caribbean and this is a hotel company that is emphatically so.

Right.

This, they.

There isn't another one that I can point to that, that just wears it on their shoulder everywhere you go.

That it's, it's a Caribbean based company so you got to check it out.

The visuals are incredible.

The story is great.

This is kind of just the beginning.

They just, they hired Leo Burnett to get it all done.

So it's a, it's a, it's a beautiful, it's such a well done campaign and I'm very proud to know those guys.

Well, I'm going to take a look for sure.

If I didn't already want to go to the Caribbean or Saint Martin now I definitely will.

I'm sure after looking at all of Sandals new campaigns.

I just, I want a vacation already just listening to you to Latin America or South Florida.

I'm ready to go back to St.

Martin and hope to see you when I get there.

Yes, let me know.

I'll be there the end of March.

Perfect.

We're having our, our annual, their annual tourism showcase is happening.

It's called Smart.

It's at the end of March and it not only does that highlight, not only is there participation from the French and the Dutch side but, but from those neighboring islands that we talked about.

So we'll see our friends from Anguilla and St.

Bart and Saba and St.

Eustatius there and it's all tied together for through a regional carrier called Win Air.

So that Win Air is a big sponsor of the whole thing too.

Well, thank you Matt.

Thank you.

This is this, this conversation has been fantastic.

Looking forward to many more conversations with you and and working with you and travel culture collab to collab together since Maddie's been talking about puns through this whole episode.

Thank you so much for joining us, Matt.

We really appreciate having you on the pod.

Well, thank you for having me.

Really.

It's a blessing.

Thank you.

So if you're interested in learning more about Matt Cooper or Aquatox, Please go to aquatacs.com we are also on social, so follow us there.

Please also like and review our podcast and subscribe if you haven't already.

You've been listening to Aqua Talks, where marketing innovation takes center stage with bold ideas and actionable insights.

Ready to take your strategies to the next level?

Visit aquataks.com to book your free consultation and explore resources that empower you to thrive in today's fast paced marketing world.

Until next time, stay bold, stay inspired, stay imaginative.