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It happens, after a familiarization tour, a trade show, or a B2B campaign, that a question naturally arises in our meetings: “How many sales have we generated?”

The question is legitimate. It, however, deserves to be complemented by others.

Because behind the diversity of our actions – trade marketing, commercial representation, strategic partnerships – there are in fact three professions, three horizons, and three value-creation logics.

Distinguishing them, without pitting them against each other, seems to me a condition for the calm with which we steward our investments.

Trade marketing builds brand preference among distribution networks. It is about making a destination, an airline, or a receptive partner known, and embedding in distributors’ minds a durable, fair, and memorable image.

The tools are familiar: webinars, trainings, presence at trade shows, newsletters, familiarization tours, roadshows, educational content. Success is read in awareness, engagement, quality of conversations, and memorability of the offer.

When I support the promotion of a destination on the French market in particular, it is precisely this work that occupies the largest share: to create among travel agents a refined and desirable knowledge of the country, which they can mobilize when the client raises their hand. The sale does not trigger at the moment of the webinar. It germinates.

Commercial representation pursues a different, more immediately transactional goal: to open accounts, negotiate agreements, sign contracts, accompany the first sales.

The tools can resemble one another: a lunch, a meeting at a trade show, but the objectives are different. What I do for one client by working on listing and contracting with agency networks, or what I can deliver for an airline developing its TO portfolio, falls under this logic: to convert existing preference into concrete revenue.

Finally, there is a third level, less visible and yet often decisive: strategic partnerships. Identify the right allies, structure the alliances, build a coherent annual plan, align trade, marketing, and sales around a common vision.

This is the least documented work and, in my view, one of the most decisive. It is what I had the opportunity to build at Worldia, and what my experience with territorial authorities and tourist offices taught me to observe on the institutional side.

These three professions sometimes use the same tools. They do not measure the same effects, do not operate on the same horizons, and do not produce the same proofs of success.

This distinction of temporalities is not merely a practitioner’s intuition. It is widely documented by marketing effectiveness research.

Binet and Peter Field, in their landmark study The Long and the Short of It, analyzed nearly a thousand cases spanning thirty years of data.

Their main observation deserves thoughtful reflection: short-term activation tactics yield immediate effects but fade quickly, whereas brand-building investments yield both long-term and short-term effects. The reverse is not true.

That does not mean short-term activation is useless, far from it. It means that the two logics are complementary, and neglecting one or the other weakens overall growth.

Binet and Field propose a now-classic benchmark: roughly 60% of investment toward brand-building and 40% toward activation; a balance to adjust to contexts but whose logic remains universal.

Also read: Why do some tourism brands stay in memory… while others disappear immediately?

Our sector being predominantly B2B, an additional perspective deserves attention: the 95-5 rule, formulated by the researcher John Dawes.

Companies change supplier or service provider on average once every five years, which means that about 5% of B2B buyers are “in the market” in any given quarter, and 95% are not.

Applied to tourism, a TO product manager, a MICE buyer, a travel agency director does not renew their reference partners each quarter.

When a familiarization tour brings together twenty-five professionals, most are not in an immediate purchasing position, but they may be in eighteen months, in two years, in five years.

Dawes’ teaching is valuable: advertising, or more broadly visibility activity, works mainly by building a mnemonic link for the brand, a link that will activate when the need arises.

It is, I believe, a liberating framework. It allows us to evaluate each action by its real contribution, and not by a calendar that is not the buyer’s.

Trade marketing, commercial representation, strategic partnerships: these three levers do not oppose each other. They answer different questions, on different time horizons, and together contribute to the sustainable growth of a tourism brand.

The first builds memory. The second converts opportunity into revenue. The third creates the conditions for this to endure over time.

Perhaps the challenge for our executive committees is not so much choosing between these three levers as orchestrating their complementarity, by equipping themselves to evaluate each according to what it can truly produce.

And you, how do you articulate these three phases in your strategy? I would be curious to read your feedback.

A tourism professional for nearly 20 years, Adeline Musset-Sullivan has worked in institutional, private, and SEM environments, at the crossroads of business development, strategic partnerships, and institutional relations, driven by a strong belief: well-thought collaborations are today one of the most effective growth levers in the sector.

She is recognized for her expertise in business development and public relations within the tourism sector.

Her professional approach, summed up by her motto “kindness and win-win collaboration,” is widely praised in her field.

Her career has taken her from business travel (AMEX GBT, international accounts) to territorial strategy and international promotion, before joining Worldia, where she built and led the Trade & International Partnerships division.

This trajectory has enabled her to develop a 360-degree view of the challenges facing tour operators, destinations, hoteliers, DMCs, brands, and institutions.

She founded WinWin Alliances Consulting, a firm dedicated to supporting travel players—private as well as institutional—in structuring their partnerships, gaining visibility, reaching the right decision-makers, and turning actions into measurable results (conversion, cash-in, impact).

Her approach is collaborative, pragmatic, and ground-oriented. She also works as a trainer and speaker (ESTHUA, ESCAET, INNTO France), convinced that sharing experience is a key driver to advance the sector.

Also read: Tourism: Adeline Musset-Sullivan launches WinWin Alliances Consulting