ELAINE PATTON

Lead trade engagement and marketing activities to position the USA as a preferred outbound destination in New Zealand

• Develop and execute comprehensive marketing plans for travel trade and tourism partners
• Design, develop and implement high-impact destination marketing campaigns, and drive tourism product development that initiates growth and awareness for the USA
• Maximize relationships with a complex network of key stakeholders to leverage opportunities for Brand USA
• Build trust and rapport with travel trade and destination partners, by effectively communicating progress, challenges, and opportunities
• Offer partners and industry meaningful insights and context about the market and U.S. visitation
• Coordinate and execute various aspects of event planning for Brand USA’s trade and consumer events and activations across Australia and New Zealand markets from initial concept to post-event evaluation
• Coordinate sales missions and famil trips to the USA
• Create and deliver training programs, incentives, and engagement strategies for the New Zealand travel trade
  

• Represented Linkd Tourism’s New Zealand client portfolio (Alamo, Aqua Aston, Visit Seattle, New York State Tourism) in New Zealand
• Designed and delivered creative training programs and incentives to engage the travel trade and increase destination knowledge
• Represented partners at industry events and secured opportunities to grow market visibility and awareness
• Acted as a liaison between clients and key New Zealand industry stakeholders, building strong and enduring relationships
• Developed reports with actionable insights, clearly communicating progress, challenges, and opportunities using data-driven metrics to measure success

• Support the creation and development of the event calendar, including webinars, workshops, conferences, and summits
• Oversee contract negotiations with key stakeholders and suppliers and deliver events within budget scope
• Maintain effective relationships with sponsors and exhibitors, ensure high enquiry to booking conversion to meet sales revenue
• Responsible for management and delivery of events and workshops as per annual event plan
• Work with the team and stakeholders to manage the event delivery process to ensure a seamless delivery of events with a point of difference
• Ensure all events are sustainably run with minimal environmental impact

• Develop and execute comprehensive sales strategy and channel engagement to grow revenue
• Plan, manage and execute signature American Airlines events in New Zealand to grow brand awareness
• Manage event budget for New Zealand in line with strategic objectives
• Develop communication plan to include pre and post event activity to ensure high level of engagement
• Responsible for contractual account management aspect of the American business in New Zealand while building strong relationships with customers and internal and external stakeholders
• Conduct regular growth and revenue analysis to ensure balance of revenue from New Zealand point of sale while protecting yield for North America market
• Develop a new business pipeline of target accounts, including inbound and outbound opportunities which are outside of existing scope, winning them to grow American Airlines share
• Prepare comprehensive project plan in preparation for new destinations launched to New Zealand

• Drive sales revenue from a portfolio of customers across different travel industry segments including retail, corporate and government
• Maintain strong commercial relationships across all levels of the portfolio with travel agents, brand managers, Managing Directors and CEO’s and provide outstanding customer service
• Develop and roll out of several training projects and e learning initiatives to upskill agency community
• Conduct regular training and call cycle with travel agents to drive Air NZ incentives and campaigns to the trade and capture key information in CRM
• Develop and roll out train the trainer courses for Flight Centre APMs and managers to train their staff
• Manage revenue in line with group targets and KPI’s and generate internal and external reporting
• Complete call plans and follow up sales calls that has a call objective associated to a business strategy.
• Represent Air New Zealand at Expo’s, roadshows, promotional events, and industry functions
• Drive incentive plan to target performance of top agents in each brand, and host incentive fam trips with retail, corporate, and government client portfolio