Selected work
Research in practice
What Tour Operators Are Really Saying About Your Destination
Most destinations measure performance through arrivals data and visitor surveys. Neither tells you how you're actually being sold. We analyzed 239 international tour operator pages to map how The Gambia was packaged in global markets — and found a destination being sold in one narrow frame, with its most compelling stories completely absent from the catalogs.
The Gambia
Read more →Destination IntelligenceClimate Risk Is Only Half the Problem
Working with GGGI on Sri Lanka's tourism climate resilience, we conducted a structured vulnerability assessment across the country's main tourism regions and value chains — mapping exposure to climate hazards, sensitivity of tourism assets, and — critically — the institutional capacity to respond. The finding that shaped everything: the biggest constraint wasn't identifying the right adaptation measures. It was whether the institutions responsible for carrying them out had the capacity to do so.
Sri Lanka
Read more →Destination IntelligenceGood Research Shouldn't End Up in a Folder
Research without implementation is just documentation. We took two completed assessments of The Gambia's tourism and creative economy — 84 businesses scored, 239 operator pages analyzed — and turned them into a 12-month national digital strategy with sector-specific plans, embedded training, and a monitoring system the sector could own without ongoing external support.
The Gambia
Read more →Destination IntelligenceYour Reviews Are Already Telling You What to Fix
Every destination has hundreds to thousands of visitor reviews available to them. Very few take advantage. We applied structured sentiment analysis to The Gambia's review data across accommodation, activities, and transport — and found that the complaints operators needed to fix, and the stories they should have been selling, were both hiding in plain sight.
The Gambia
Read more →Destination IntelligenceDesigning for a Context You Can't Control
A tourism development project in Dawei, Myanmar was interrupted by a coup d'état partway through delivery. In-person workshop delivery became impossible. The response was to redesign the entire output architecture: away from facilitated sessions that required external presence, toward self-sustaining resource packages — in both English and Myanmar language — that local stakeholders could use independently, whenever circumstances allowed.
Dawei, Myanmar
Read more →Destination IntelligenceA Tourism Authority That Can't Monitor Its Own Performance Can't Improve It
Eswatini Tourism Authority had no systematic view of how the destination was performing in digital search, how it compared against competitors, or what its target markets were actually looking for online. This project built the analysis framework, set up the monitoring tools, and trained both public and private sector stakeholders to run an ongoing intelligence operation they could own and sustain without external support.
Eswatini
Read more →Operator IntelligenceBefore the Brand, the Research
Miombo Safaris is a new tour operator in northwest Uganda's West Nile region — a part of the country largely absent from mainstream safari itineraries, with a distinctive natural and cultural identity that needed to be understood before it could be represented. The brand identity came second. The cultural and market research came first.
Uganda
Read more →Operator IntelligenceTravelers Don't Search the Way Operators Describe
Kikooko Africa Safaris had nine years of local expertise and zero organic search presence. The issue wasn't a lack of content — it was a mismatch between how the operator described itself and how travelers were actually researching East Africa safari decisions. A six-month search intelligence and content strategy revealed the gap, and built around it.
Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania
Read more →Destination IntelligenceA National Tourism Policy Built on What Visitors Actually Said
Working with UNDP on Sri Lanka's National Tourism Policy, we processed hundreds of thousands of TripAdvisor reviews using text analysis software to map visitor perceptions across the country's regions, accommodation, restaurants, and attractions — then used that evidence base to structure and validate a two-phase stakeholder engagement process. The result was a policy grounded in visitor reality, not just sector assumption.
Sri Lanka
Read more →Destination IntelligenceUganda Has World-Class Coffee. That's the Easy Part.
Following Uganda's national Coffee Road Map initiative, this research assessed whether the country had the prerequisites for coffee tourism — not just the product, but the value chain integration, stakeholder networks, and tourism linkages that determine whether a sector opportunity translates into economic reality for farming communities.
Uganda
Read more →Market AccessInternational Buyers, Without the Trade Show Budget
Two virtual pitch sessions in Eswatini, run with the Eswatini Tourism Authority and ITC under an EU-funded program, put local operators in front of international buyers from eight countries — at a fraction of the cost of a physical trade fair. The program built the full pipeline: community product development, six standardized trade tools, pitch coaching, facilitated one-on-one meetings, and a follow-up framework. Each iteration refined the model into something replicable.
Eswatini
Read more →Operator IntelligenceThe Evidence for a Price Increase Was Already in the Reviews
A Mombasa tour guide with fifteen years of local expertise was relying on walk-up tourists at Fort Jesus and random word-of-mouth. The problem wasn't the product — it was the absence of any system for turning satisfied visitors into evidence of market-leading quality. When that evidence was built and made visible, it unlocked a 50% price increase on sustained booking volume.
Mombasa, Kenya
Read more →Destination IntelligenceHow Do Your Tourism Businesses Actually Look Online?
Most digital assessments end up in a government inbox. The businesses being assessed never see the data. We audited 84 tourism and creative industry businesses across The Gambia — tour operators, craft sellers, festival organisers, cultural heritage sites — and delivered two outputs from the same dataset: a national evidence base for policy, and an individual scorecard for every business that showed them exactly where they stood and what to fix first.
The Gambia
Read more →Destination IntelligenceNot All Visitors Are Worth Chasing Equally
Tonga receives visitors from markets with very different spending patterns, stay lengths, and alignment with responsible tourism goals. We used SPTO exit survey data and an adapted BCG Matrix to map every major visitor segment by volume, value, and sustainability fit — and give the Tonga Tourism Authority a clear, defensible answer to where to focus.
Tonga
Read more →Destination IntelligenceTwo Websites, Half the Visibility
Tonga had a digital presence problem hiding inside a digital performance problem. Commissioned through PACER Plus, this assessment mapped every layer of Tonga's online visibility — two competing official tourism sites splitting search authority, a website failing core performance benchmarks, broken mobile navigation despite mobile-majority traffic, and sentiment data from thousands of visitor reviews revealing where the product was strongest and where it wasn't. The output was a phased roadmap the Tourism Authority could act on without external support.
Tonga
Read more →Operator IntelligenceTrade Shows Are Conversion Windows, Not Lead Funnels
A Uganda-based luxury safari operator was attending FESPO Zurich and similar European travel fairs — collecting leads, following up weeks later, and watching conversions disappear. The insight that changed the approach: trade shows are not a lead generation exercise. They're a decision window. Closing rates depend on how quickly complete information reaches qualified prospects while the show momentum is still live.
Uganda / Switzerland
Read more →Operator IntelligenceWhat 217 Bookings Revealed About Running Tour Marketing
Rogue Expeditions, a running tour operator, sat down with their booking records and asked a question most operators don't: does our marketing calendar match when our customers actually decide to buy? The analysis of 217 bookings revealed a customer who books much further in advance than industry convention assumes, comes mostly through direct and referral channels, and returns at a rate that makes retention more valuable than acquisition. It changed the marketing calendar, the budget allocation, and the inventory strategy.
Global
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