29SAYI-DERGI

Röportaj / Interview
en iyisi olduğu bilinenler arasından
seçim yapıyorlar ancak hep şikayet
ediyorlardı. İki büyük şikayet sebebi
vardı; birincisi turizmcinin dilinden
ve derdinden anlamayan iletişimciler
olduklarını belirtmeleri ve ikincisi de
birkaç ayda bir PR Ajansının müşteri
temsilcisi değiştiriyor olmasıydı. Medya
iletişim sektöründeki bu sirkülasyon
nedeniyle tam markamızı öğrettik alışıyor
artık dedikleri noktada, yeni bir
müşteri temsilcisini karşısında gören
Turizm şirketlerinden o dönemlerde
bana yoğun bir talep gelmeye başladı.
Sonunda, hem turizmci olmam, hem de
marka yönetimi-medya iletişim alanındaki
bu değerli tecrübelerimi, Turizm
sektörüne hak ettiği hizmeti verebilmek
adına değerlendirmek istedim.
2015 Eylül’ünde önce Only Travel Marketing’i
kurdum. 2017 Ocak ayında ise
“Turizm Sektörünün PR Ajansı” olarak
konumlandırdığım Travel PR markasını
faaliyete geçirdim.
What is the story of Travel PR?
➧
Tourism industry didn’t invest
enough to marketing professionals,
corporate communication and
marketing departments for many
years. Tour Operators departments
consisted Sales Managers, Operation
Managers, Ticketing Managers,
Incoming and Local Managers and
even Visa Managers, but they didn’t
have employees which would contribute
to the Marketing title. Brand
management concept was always
in the background and the mindset
was selling something that day and
selling even more on the other day!
Tour operator owners and managers
preferred the “let me give an ad
and our phone will ring right away”
perspective. Media communication
would contribute to the company in
the long term, and that’s why they
didn’t want to invest in this area.
When I started PR operations in tourism,
many agencies, airlines and big
hotels didn’t have a PR agency. Ali
Onaran was one of the most visionary
bosses I had and even in that
time, he saw the future and engaged
a high-cost employee like me to work
on these areas. It was a successful decision
because even the people who
though Prontotour was a polishing
company started to say “of course
Prontotour is the only company to go
abroad” after 3 years of work! And of
course, the company also became the
sales leader of the industry. At this
point, I should also give credit to the
operation, sales, visa and customer
relations departments which perfectly
completed everything we reflected
in our communication strategy. In a
very short time, this strategy which
was on newspapers, magazines, TVs
and even radios received the attention
of tourism professionals and staring
from 2007-2008, more PR agencies
slowly started to provide services for
the industry. I was almost about to be
happy for this visionary actions, but
I saw this: tourism company owners
and managers are working with PR
agencies and they even pay a lot and
select from the best of the best, however
they always complained. There
were two reasons of that; agencies
didn’t understand the language and
the problems of tourism industry
and they were changing customer
representatives in every couple of
months. Tourism companies were
seeing a different customer representative
when they already almost
got used to the other one and this was
because of the circulation within the
media/communications industry. After
that, tourism companies started
to demand a lot of things from me. At
last, I decided to work with my brand
management-media communications
experiences and since I was also
a tourism professional, I wanted to
do right by the tourism industry. On
September 2015, I founded Only Travel
Marketing and on January 2017, I
founded Travel PR brand which is the
“PR Agency of Tourism Industry”.
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