Travel industry veteran takes “black sheep” approach to help brands navigate COVID landscape

Travel industry veteran takes “black sheep” approach to help brands navigate COVID landscape
By Alexandra Coulton


Industry veteran Trish Shepherd has launched a brand-new company to help brands in the travel, tourism and hospitality sectors navigate the COVID landscape.

Black Sheep Tourism promises to create business solutions for brands by creating unique products and services designed to support the three sectors.

With four decades of industry experience under her belt, Shepherd said the launch comes at a critical time for the travel, tourism and hospitality industries, which have been heavily impacted by the global pandemic.

“Now more than ever, businesses need to know their customers, be flexible, swift and equipped – to be ahead of the game,” she said.

“Black Sheep is built on offering better solutions across tourism, travel and hospitality by doing things differently.”

According to Shepherd, client databases will be at the core of Black Sheep Tourism’s approach by helping brands that collect their client data segment their customers and provide personalised, targeted marketing.

Using client data, she said brands can ensure they send the “right message, to the right clients, at the right time, in the right way”.

“As we recover from COVID, the funds supporting the big marketing campaigns will not be there,” Shepherd said.

“Black Sheep works with global brands and our company provides local solutions.

“The team at Black Sheep is committed to supporting the travel, tourism and hospitality industry in managing their data more efficiently and nurturing customer relationships.

“Regardless of what format your information is in, be it PDF, Excel or specialist systems, your data will be returned to you clean, merged, analysed and segmented ready for you to hit the ground running.

“We know what works because we’ve been working in travel for decades, and I know one of the tough parts of travel is identifying that point of difference that sets you apart from everyone else. We are delighted to launch our products and services, which have been purposely designed to suit the specific needs of our complex industry.

“I’ve always loved being a black sheep, managed things differently and I want to help businesses stand out. We look at travel from every angle to understand what both suppliers and the travel consumer now want the most.

“We support travel, differently.”

Shepherd was the vice president and general manager of Ensemble Travel Group for almost five years and is now a board member of the Travel Industry Mentor Experience (TIME).

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