What Llama Actually Does (And Why We Need to Be Clearer About It)
We've had some feedback recently that people don't fully understand what we do. Fair point. When you're deep in your own world, it's easy to assume everyone gets it. So let's fix that.
The Simple Version
Llama is a collective of senior travel marketing professionals who help travel brands get their marketing strategy right. We're not an agency that executes campaigns. We're not consultants who disappear after delivering a PowerPoint. We're strategic advisors who work alongside marketing leaders to solve their biggest challenges.
Think of us as your marketing leadership team's external brain trust.
The Problem We Solve
Here's what we see constantly: Travel brands with talented marketing teams who are working incredibly hard but not getting the results they should. They're busy, they're executing, but something's missing. Usually, it's one of three things:
No clear strategy - They have a marketing plan (a list of activities) but no strategic direction. They're busy doing stuff without a clear sense of where they're heading.
Strategy that doesn't fit reality - They have a strategy, but it was built in a boardroom rather than being grounded in customer insight and market reality.
Good strategy, poor execution - They know what they should be doing, but internal politics, resource constraints, or capability gaps are getting in the way.
How We Actually Help
We work in three main ways:
Strategic Reset
This is our bread and butter. A travel brand brings us in because their marketing isn't delivering the growth they need. We spend time understanding their business, their customers, their market position, and their internal capabilities. Then we help them build (or rebuild) a marketing strategy that actually works in their reality.
Recent example: A tour operator had spent two years and significant budget on a rebrand that wasn't translating into bookings. We helped them understand why their new brand wasn't connecting and rebuilt their go-to-market approach from the ground up.
Strategic Advisory
Sometimes marketing leaders just need someone senior to talk things through with. Someone who's been there, done that, and isn't emotionally invested in internal politics. We become their sounding board, helping them navigate challenges, make decisions, and build internal buy-in for strategic changes.
This might be a quarterly check-in, or it might be weekly calls during critical periods like budget planning or restructures.
Strategic Problem-Solving
These are the specific, thorny challenges that need deep expertise to solve. International expansion. First-time TV advertising. Customer segmentation that actually drives action. Digital transformation. Post-acquisition integration.
We've done all of this before, multiple times, for different types of travel brands. We know what works and what doesn't.
Why Travel Brands Choose Us Over Traditional Consultancies
We've actually done the job - Our collective brings together senior travel marketers who've held leadership positions across the industry - from CMOs and Marketing Directors to Subject Leads in areas like Social Media, Sustainability, and Digital Strategy. We're not management consultants who've studied travel from the outside. We've sat in the hot seat.
We understand travel's unique challenges - Seasonality, long booking cycles, emotional purchase decisions, complex distribution channels, regulatory changes. Travel marketing isn't like FMCG or financial services. The rules are different.
We work alongside you, not above you - We're not coming in to tell you what to do then disappear. We're working with your team to make sure changes actually stick.
We're commercially focused - Everything we recommend needs to drive business results. We're not here to win creative awards or build pretty brand pyramids. We're here to help you grow profitably.
We specialise - We recognise that it may be just a specific area of marketing that you feel needs a strategic development or resetting. We have subject matter experts, all from travel backgrounds who can support businesses build strength and capability in new marketing disciplines - from social media strategy to customer experience optimisation.
The Reality Check
We're not right for everyone. If you're looking for someone to execute your campaigns, you need an agency. If you want someone to rubber-stamp decisions you've already made, we're probably not your people.
But if you're a marketing leader who knows something needs to change but isn't sure what, or how, or how to make it happen - that's exactly what we do.
What Happens Next
Most relationships start with a conversation. Sometimes that's a formal marketing health check (two days where we dive deep into your current approach and identify opportunities). Sometimes it's just a coffee where we talk through your challenges.
The point isn't to sell you something. It's to understand whether we can actually help you solve the problems that are keeping you awake at night.
Because that's what we do. We help travel marketing leaders sleep better by giving them confidence that their strategy is right, their team is aligned, and they're focusing on the things that will actually drive growth.
Want a professional assessment of your marketing strategy? Our 2-Day Marketing Health Check provides a comprehensive diagnosis and actionable roadmap for strategic improvement. Learn more about our health check process or take our free marketing quiz for a quick strategic assessment.
