How I manage the alignment between communication and marketing in a tourism project

I’ve come across tourism projects in which, at least on paper, nothing was missing. There were communication professionals, people dedicated to social media, a press office, a commercial manager and, in some cases, external agencies tasked with running advertising campaigns. Everyone did their job, produced materials, met deadlines, and presented results. And yet, looking at the project as a whole, a difficulty emerged: all these activities were not necessarily contributing to the same strategy.

This is a less unusual situation than you might think. The press office works on the destination’s awareness; the social media manager seeks to increase engagement; the commercial team needs bookings; the person managing advertising wants better conversions; and the owner, understandably, expects economic results. None of these goals is wrong, but they can become incompatible if there is no vision capable of connecting them.

Over the years I’ve learned that “the problem isn’t necessarily the quality of the work done by each individual, but the quality of the operational relationships between their activities. That’s why, when I work on a tourism project, I consider alignment between communication and marketing as an integral part of the strategy—not an organizational activity to tackle only when something stops working. I also consider it just as important that whoever commissions the project understands and supports the role of the person tasked with coordinating it.

The first thing I do is understand whether we’re truly working on the same project

Before discussing campaigns, content, or tools, I try to understand how the different stakeholders involved interpret the project. It may seem like an unnecessary check, especially when there is already a marketing plan, but often all it takes is listening to people to discover that each one assigns different priorities to the same objectives. For some, the main result is increasing awareness; for others, it’s bringing in new visitors; for others still, it’s selling experiences or improving reputation.

I don’t see these differences as something to eliminate. A tourism project needs different skills and points of view, but it must be clear how each contribution fits into the overall outcome. If we’re working on off-seasoning, for example, we can’t evaluate the success of communication solely by the visibility achieved during the summer months. Likewise, if we want to increase direct bookings, we can’t channel every investment into content that generates attention without checking what happens when people land on the website.

This is also why I insist on the importance of defining the strategy before starting to produce content. A editorial calendar can be organized perfectly and, at the same time, be completely disconnected from commercial goals. Before filling in the calendar slots, I want to understand what outcome we’re aiming for and what contribution we expect from each activity.

Communication and marketing are not the same thing, but they can’t ignore each other

One of the most frequent challenges arises from the overlap between communication and marketing. In some organizations, they’re treated as synonyms; in others, they’re two separate areas that only meet when it’s time to approve a campaign or organize an event. Neither of these setups convinces me much, because both risk hiding the relationship that should exist between the two functions.

Communication helps build identity, reputation, recognition, and relationships with different audiences. Marketing connects knowledge of the market and people to the organization’s goals, developing proposals, channels, and activities capable of generating results:. Boundaries aren’t always rigid, and especially in smaller projects, the same person may handle both areas. What matters is that decisions are consistent and that information flows.

If a press office is working to position a destination as the ideal place for slow tourism, while advertising campaigns focus exclusively on aggressive offers and low-price stays, we need to ask ourselves whether we’re telling two complementary aspects of the same proposal—or creating incompatible perceptions. The answer can’t come from someone managing only one of the two channels: it requires a shared assessment of positioning and objectives.

The sales team needs to be involved from the start—not brought in only when bookings are needed

In tourism, I consider the separation between those who communicate and those who sell particularly risky. It’s possible to create a very effective campaign from a creative standpoint, secure press coverage, and generate interest in a destination—only to then find out that operators don’t have suitable products, availability, or commercial conditions consistent with what we’ve communicated. In these cases, the problem isn’t the quality of the campaign, but the fact that communication was designed without a sufficient link to the offering.

When I work on a tourism project, then, I also want to understand commercial needs: which markets are of interest, which periods present the biggest challenges, which products have adequate margins, which experiences can truly be sold, and what requests are coming from customers. This doesn’t mean subordinating every editorial choice to immediate selling, but using this information to build communication that has a concrete relationship with the business.

The connection needs to work in the opposite direction too. If, through editorial activities, new interests emerge, recurring questions appear, or demand signals show up, the sales team should know about them. A guide dedicated to an itinerary may reveal interest in an experience that doesn’t yet exist in the offering; a campaign may highlight requests coming from a market we hadn’t considered a priority. When communication and sales share information, marketing can also help improve the product.

The promise must match the experience the tourist will live

For me, this is one of the most important points. In tourism, we’re not just selling a product that can be observed, compared, and taken home: we’re helping create expectations about something someone will experience later on. A photo, an article, a campaign, or a creator’s story can deeply influence those expectations. If the real experience doesn’t confirm them, the issue can’t be solved by better communication.

Let’s think of a hospitality structure that promises peace and quiet, authenticity, and a privileged relationship with the local area. If the staff doesn’t know the local experiences, the photos don’t match the settings, or the service doesn’t reflect the promise, communication risks amplifying a gap that will eventually show up in reviews. The same can happen for a destination that promotes sustainable tourism without first verifying the actual accessibility of the experiences it offers.

That’s why I consider it necessary to involve not only those who handle communication, but also those who manage the product and day-to-day operations. I don’t expect everyone to take part in every meeting, but whoever builds communication must know what is actually being offered, and whoever manages the experience must understand what expectations we are creating. Marketing shouldn’t just make a promise desirable: it should help make it credible and sustainable.

My approach starts from shared goals and clearly recognizable responsibilities

Once the context is clear, I try to turn broad objectives into operational responsibilities. Phrases like “increase visibility”, “enhance the destination” or “improve your digital presence” can be useful for describing an intention, but they aren’t enough to coordinate the work of multiple people. We need to decide which audiences we’re targeting, what results we want to achieve, which activities are a priority, and how we’ll verify progress.

I don’t believe in complex strategic documents created only to prove that a strategy exists. I prefer clear, usable, and updatable tools, where each professional can recognize their contribution. A PR lead must know which messages and which audiences are the top priorities; whoever manages social media must know the campaigns and commercial initiatives; the sales team must be informed about the activities that could generate new requests.

One aspect I consider essential is deciding who makes the decisions. Sharing a strategy doesn’t mean that every choice needs to be approved by everyone, because an organization like that would constantly risk slowing down the work. Instead, it means distinguishing between those who set the objectives, those who lead the strategy, those who have specialist expertise, and those who have the final responsibility for approving certain decisions.

Coordinating doesn’t mean centralizing every decision

I have little trust in organizational models where every piece of content, every photo, every reply, and every initiative has to go through a long chain of approvals. Often it starts from a legitimate desire to maintain control, but it ends up reducing people’s autonomy, slowing down processes, and turning whoever coordinates into a bottleneck. When that happens, the project becomes dependent on a single person’s availability—even for matters that could be resolved directly by the professionals who are tasked with them.

My goal is different: to define a direction that’s clear enough for people to make many of the decisions that fall within their areas of responsibility on their own. If positioning, tone of voice, objectives, priorities, and boundaries are shared, there’s no need to start from scratch every time. Coordination should focus above all on the choices that affect multiple areas, change the strategy, or involve significant economic and reputational consequences.

This requires trust, but not blind trust. It requires recognizable expertise, defined responsibility, and tools that allow you to check the work. I don’t want to be involved in every decision: I want to be involved in the decisions that can change the direction of the project.

A shared calendar is useful only if it links activities and objectives

When multiple professionals work on the same project, the editorial calendar can become an important coordination tool. But I’m not interested in a calendar that simply shows when a post will be published, when a newsletter will go out, or when a press release will be sent. I want it to make the relationships between activities visible, and to allow you to spot potential overlaps, opportunities, or contradictions in advance.

If we’re preparing the launch of a new tourism experience, for example, the press office needs to know the campaign timeline and content; whoever manages the website must have all the information needed; and the sales team must be ready to respond to the requests. Social media can tell the story of the preparation, the people, and the territory, while the newsletter can reach contacts who have already shown a specific interest. These are different activities, but they must all contribute to the same path.

This doesn’t mean publishing the same message everywhere. A press release, an editorial article, an advertising campaign, and a social media post have different languages, target audiences, and functions. Alignment is about the coherence of the overall proposal and the complementarity of the actions—not about making the content identical.

PR shouldn’t be a parallel activity to marketing

Since I’ve also worked for a long time in publishing and media relations, I consider this aspect particularly important. The press office is sometimes only involved when there’s a news item to share, while the other marketing activities proceed independently. In this way, you lose part of the value that media relations can bring to the overall strategy.

An article published by an authoritative outlet can contribute to a destination’s reputation, help people discover a tourism product, or strengthen an organization’s credibility. But that result can be very short-lived if it isn’t properly leveraged through owned channels, sales work, and subsequent communication activities. Similarly, a campaign can generate interesting data and insights that help identify new themes to pitch to the media.

I’m not saying that PR should turn into a direct commercial tool. The relationship with journalists requires autonomy, credibility, and respect for editorial logic. I do believe, however, that digital PR in travel and food can create greater value when integrated into a strategy that connects reputation, content, visibility, and the organization’s objectives.

When there are disagreements, I try to bring the discussion back to the objectives

I don’t see disagreement as a sign that things aren’t working. In a team made up of professionals with different skills, it’s normal for different interpretations to emerge—and sometimes it’s precisely those differences that help identify problems that would otherwise remain hidden. What concerns me much more are groups where everyone always seems to agree during meetings, and then they go off and work independently in different directions.

The problem arises when a professional divergence turns into a constant reworking of decisions, without new information or sufficient motivation. If we’ve agreed on a strategy and we change it every week based on the latest instinct, it becomes impossible to understand which activities are working and which need to be corrected. The project continues to produce content, campaigns, and initiatives, but gradually loses its ability to learn from its results.

In these situations, I try to bring the discussion back to verifiable elements: what objective we’re pursuing, what information we have, what results we’ve achieved, and what consequences the proposed change would have. Not all instincts are wrong, and I don’t consider a strategy untouchable just because it was approved. But changing direction should be a conscious decision, not an automatic reaction to the latest urgency.

The client should drive the business—not continuously replace the specialists

This is a delicate topic, especially when working as external consultants. Whoever invests in a project has the right and the responsibility to set business objectives, define financial constraints, understand risks, and participate in the most important decisions. So the issue isn’t the presence of ownership or management in strategic choices, but the lack of a clear distinction between entrepreneurial responsibilities and professional responsibilities.

When a consultancy is requested and then systematically bypassed in day-to-day operational decisions, it creates a difficult situation to manage. The consultant can continue to be asked to answer for the results, while the choices that determine those results are changed without adequate discussion. This isn’t about professional pride—it’s about consistency between the mandate, autonomy, and responsibility.

That’s why I prefer to clarify from the beginning which decisions belong to the client, which to strategic coordination, and which to individual specialists. I don’t ask for blank approval, and I don’t believe a client should accept every proposal without discussing it. I ask that decisions be clearly identifiable, and that whoever is responsible for a result also has the opportunity to influence the choices needed to achieve it.

The consultant should be supported—not left alone to defend every decision

There’s an aspect of alignment that I consider fundamental, and that directly concerns the relationship between the consultant and the client. When I’m entrusted with the strategic coordination of a project, I don’t expect every proposal to be accepted without discussion, nor do I assume I’ll have the final say on every decision. What I do expect is that my role is recognized and supported by the people who chose to entrust me with that assignment. Otherwise, coordination risks becoming a purely formal exercise.

A consultant can build a strategy, identify priorities, organize the work, and bring different professionals into alignment—but they can’t do it effectively if their function is continuously being overridden or questioned in front of the group. If the client gives a mandate and then intervenes in every operational decision, sends conflicting instructions to collaborators, or changes priorities without discussion, the problem is no longer only about how the project is managed. It becomes a credibility issue for the coordination itself.

This dynamic can put even a team of excellent professionals in difficulty. When team members receive different instructions, who should they refer to? What strategy should they follow when the agreed decisions are constantly overtaken by new requests? And above all, how can the consultant take responsibility for the results if they don’t have the necessary autonomy to steer the process?

That’s why I believe that the client must concretely support the role of the consultant they chose, even in relation to the other people involved. Supporting doesn’t mean defending wrong decisions or giving up discussion. It means respecting the responsibilities assigned, discussing any disagreements in the appropriate forums, and preventing every disagreement from turning into a contradictory operational directive.

Naturally, support must be mutual. The consultant has a duty to listen, motivate their choices, make the strategy understandable, and take business needs into account. But they must also be able to say when a request is incompatible with the agreed objectives, when a change risks jeopardizing the work already done, or when expectations aren’t realistic. A consultancy that doesn’t allow for this ends up reducing itself to simply carrying out instructions.

I’ve learned to see this balance as an essential condition for accepting and taking a project forward. I don’t need to be accommodated—I need to be listened to. I’m not asking for carte blanche, but for a clear mandate that is respected. If every strategic decision has to be constantly renegotiated, if the consultant is overwhelmed by interference rather than supported in managing the work, then the conditions no longer exist to offer truly useful consulting. And continuing to produce activity in those circumstances doesn’t necessarily mean continuing to do marketing.

Meetings are for discussion and for making decisions, but they need to be

I don’t like meetings that are organized just because a project has to include regular meetings. When they’re too many, too long, or without a clear goal, they risk taking time away from the work without really improving coordination. But I’ve also encountered the opposite—just as serious—problem: projects where meetings are not organized at all, where discussion is practically nonexistent, and everyone simply proceeds on their own, assuming the others know what they’re doing.

A lack of discussion can even be more damaging than a low-productivity meeting. Information stays in the hands of a few people, difficulties are not addressed promptly, and decisions that affect the entire project are made without involving those who will later have to deal with the consequences. Work continues—often a lot of it—but without having an up-to-date view of what’s happening in other areas. And when problems come to light, you realize that it would have been enough to talk about them earlier.

So, in a tourism project, I consider it essential to plan moments of discussion, distinguishing between strategic ones—where you evaluate objectives, results, and priorities—and operational ones, which are needed to coordinate activities, deadlines, and responsibilities. Not everyone has to participate in every meeting, but each person should have the opportunity to share information, flag critical issues, and understand the decisions that influence their work. An effective meeting should end with clear decisions, assigned responsibilities, and—if there are still open issues—the topics to revisit through further discussion.

This is especially true when coordination is entrusted to an external consultant. You can’t ask someone to lead the strategy and then exclude them from the moments when important decisions are made, or inform them only after those decisions have already been put into action. Discussion with the client and with the people involved isn’t a favor to the consultant—it’s a necessary condition so they can carry out their assignment. If there isn’t consistent communication, coordination exists only on paper

Of course, not everything requires a meeting. Many pieces of information can be shared through shared tools, written updates, and direct communication—avoiding the need to call the entire team for issues that can be resolved quickly. But tools can’t replace discussion when it’s necessary to evaluate alternatives, address disagreements, or make decisions that involve multiple people. The issue isn’t how many meetings we hold, but whether we discuss enough to genuinely be able to work in the same direction.

Measuring results means preventing each department from defending only its own numbers

Another fundamental element is measurement. If each professional figure is evaluated exclusively through the metrics of their own channel, it’s understandable that they will end up optimizing their work based on those metrics. The social media manager will seek more interactions, the person handling SEO will look for more traffic, the press office will aim for more coverage/outlets, and sales will pursue more sales. But improving a single indicator doesn’t automatically guarantee an improvement in the overall project.

That’s why I try to distinguish between indicators specific to individual activities and overall results. Operational metrics remain essential because they help you understand what’s working across the different channels. But they need to be interpreted in light of shared objectives: reaching new markets, improving the quality of requests, increasing direct bookings, distributing tourist flows more effectively, or strengthening reputation.

I also addressed this topic in the article dedicated to how to evaluate a tourism marketing plan. A good measurement system shouldn’t be limited to proving that every department has worked. It should help you understand whether the overall work is bringing the organization closer to the results it set out to achieve.

When something isn’t working, I don’t immediately look for someone to blame

In complex projects, mistakes are inevitable. A campaign may produce results that are below expectations, a piece of content may fail to reach the intended audience, a collaboration may turn out to be less effective than expected, and a commercial choice may suddenly change priorities. What interests me is understanding whether the organization has the tools to recognize the problem and correct it—without turning every difficulty into a search for a culprit.

For example, if a campaign generates a lot of visits but few bookings, the problem could be in the quality of the traffic, the landing page, the price, availability, the commercial offer, or the booking process. Automatically attributing responsibility to whoever manages advertising would be a premature conclusion. You need to reconstruct the journey and identify the point where interest fails to turn into the desired action.

The same applies when an initiative gets good media coverage but doesn’t produce immediate commercial effects. It may have been designed to strengthen reputation, or the connection with subsequent activities may have been missing. These are two very different situations, requiring different evaluations.

In smaller projects, alignment is even more important

You don’t need a large team to run into these kinds of problems. In fact, in small hospitality businesses, in territorial projects, and in organizations with limited resources, overlapping roles can make coordination even more delicate. The same person may handle communication, bookings, relationships with operators, and event organization—while some activities are assigned to external consultants or agencies.

In these cases, I would never propose an organization designed for a large tourism destination. The method should be proportionate to the size of the organization and the resources available, but the essential elements remain the same: understandable objectives, clearly defined responsibilities, shared information, and a moment to check what’s happening. Even a small project can work very well when people know what decisions to make and when to involve others.

Coordination shouldn’t become a disproportionate organizational cost. It should reduce duplicated work, prevent mistakes, and allow you to use available resources more effectively. If, to manage three people, we have to build an administrative machine that takes up half of their time, then we’ve probably got the wrong method.

Coordination needs to continue even when the project moves into a routine

A good start doesn’t guarantee that alignment will remain stable. People change, new collaborators join, the market evolves, some activities come to an end and other ones become priorities. In tourism projects, seasonality also comes into play, along with events, changes in demand, and external conditions that may require quick decisions.

That’s why I find it useful to plan periodic moments to look at the project as a whole again. Not just to check whether activities have been completed, but to understand whether priorities are still correct, whether information is flowing properly, and whether people need tools or decisions that haven’t arrived yet. Sometimes it’s enough to adjust an operational step to improve the work of several different figures at the same time.

In the end, coordination isn’t an activity that ends with the initial meeting. It’s a responsibility that accompanies the project, but it should become progressively less intrusive as the group gains autonomy and a better understanding of shared goals.

What I’ve learned: a tourism project needs direction, not people all doing the same thing

Over time, I’ve learned to see alignment between communication and marketing as one of the elements that distinguishes a set of activities from a truly organized project. It’s not enough that each professional is prepared, and it’s not enough that each channel produces results. What’s needed is direction capable of connecting skills, information, responsibilities, and decisions—while maintaining a consistent relationship with the product and with commercial goals.

This doesn’t mean eliminating differences, requiring everyone to share every choice, or building increasingly complex procedures. It means creating the conditions so that skills can be applied without losing sight of the overall result. PR professionals should be able to do great PR, those managing campaigns should have autonomy in their technical choices, and those who know the product should contribute to building a credible promise.

When these conditions exist, coordination becomes much less exhausting, and meetings stop being the place where problems are discovered that should have been addressed weeks earlier. When they’re missing, even a group of prepared professionals can end up working a lot without building a result proportional to the effort.

A tourism project doesn’t need everyone to do the same thing. It needs each person to know why they’re doing their part, how their work connects to the work of others, and what result we’re trying to achieve together.
This is where I start when I take on a new project: before multiplying activities, I try to build the conditions so they truly have direction. And among those conditions, I consider it essential to have the support of the client: because a consultant can lead a strategy only when the mandate they’ve been given is truly recognized. If you’re developing a tourism project and want to define a strategy capable of connecting communication, marketing, and commercial objectives, you can explore my approach to communication and marketing consulting or request a first free consultation.

Frequently asked questions about coordination between communication and tourism marketing

Why is it important to align communication and marketing in a tourism project?

Because the different activities must contribute to shared objectives and build a consistent perception of the destination or the tourism business. Without coordination, even initiatives that are effective on their own can produce contradictory messages, duplicate efforts, and results that are hard to connect to commercial goals.

Who should coordinate communication and marketing?

It depends on the size and structure of the project. Coordination can be assigned to an internal lead, a project manager, or a strategic consultant—so long as they have a clear mandate, understand the objectives, and can communicate with the various professional roles and with the client.

How do you prevent conflicts between the PR team, the social media manager, and sales?

By defining shared objectives, clearly recognizable responsibilities, a common calendar, and clear ways to make decisions. Professional differences shouldn’t be eliminated, but addressed based on the strategy, the information available, and the consequences of the different choices.

Why must the client support the consultant appointed to coordinate?

Because the consultant can effectively guide the project only when their mandate is recognized by the other stakeholders as well. The client’s support does not mean unconditional approval of their proposals, but requires respect for the assigned responsibilities, discussion of disagreements, and consistency in operational guidance.

What happens when the client continuously interferes with the consultant’s work?

Interference can undermine clarity in responsibilities, slow down decisions, and create contradictory guidance for the team. When the consultant is expected to be accountable for results without being able to influence the decisions that determine them, a key condition for effective consulting is lost.

Is it necessary to hold many meetings to keep the team aligned?

No. A few meetings with clear objectives are more useful, supported by shared tools for updates, deadlines, and responsibilities. Meetings should primarily be used to make decisions, address issues, and verify priorities.

How do you measure the effectiveness of coordination?

Through operational indicators, such as meeting deadlines, reducing duplication, and the quality of the information flow—but above all by checking whether the activities contribute to the project’s overall objectives, such as reputation, qualified requests, bookings, and commercial results.

How do you coordinate communication and marketing when the tourism project is small?

Using an approach proportionate to the available resources: a few priority goals, clear roles, a shared calendar, and periodic check-in moments. Even when the same person handles multiple functions, it’s important to distinguish responsibilities and maintain an overall view of the project.