Jonathan Mountford, Managing Director of made Tourism Marketing, talks about what the company does, working with the travel trade and how agents can participate in familiarisation trips in London and New York City.
What do you do?
My company, made Tourism Marketing has been around for 15 years. We are a tourism PR company and specialise in promoting cultural activities both to consumers and the travel trade. We represent a lot of museums, galleries, attractions, sightseeing and live entertainment – some of the largest shows in the world.
For people who have been to London before, if they’ve experienced all the key iconic things to do, then they can do things such as visit The Postal Museum or new attractions such as the iFLY indoor skydiving experience at the O2, Lightroom or The Friends Experience.
They can also experience exclusive and different neighbourhoods of London, such as the Docklands, East End and the redeveloped Kings Cross area. These are areas one would say are ‘off the beaten track’ but aren’t because, especially with the Elizabeth line, they’re completely accessible. Cable cars are a means of transport as well, to cross the Thames.
We promote new shows but also want to make sure that longer-running shows – such as The Lion King, Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera and Mamma Mia! – are at the forefront of tourists’ minds. Disney’s The Lion King is now in its 25th triumphant year at the Lyceum Theatre.
The shows we work on appeal to a wide demographic, from families to seniors to young people as well. There’s a comfort in people going to a West End show that they’re familiar with, that they might have seen an animated movie or a movie made on the show – in the case of Mamma Mia!
How do you work with the travel trade?
Our role as an agency is to advise the travel trade in its widest sense how they can make money, add value for their clients and enhance the overall visitor experience. So it’s not just about booking transfers and accommodation when it comes to London.
All the products that we work on have trade rates. They have tour operator rates that are either net or commissionable and are easily available to retail travel agents or tour operators.
People can package them with transportation, accommodation and additional add-ons, either by working directly with our clients. We also work with a lot of wholesalers and intermediaries. It adds value to their packages and itineraries for their clients.
The tour operators we have are approximately 30% cheaper than if the clients go direct. We also work with wholesalers such as Do Something Different.
Travel professionals can find all the resources they need to make tickets available to their clients and promote shows from Disney Tickets, Ticmate, todaytixgroup.com, ti
How can travel agents find out more about you?
We offer fam trips to travel agents all the time. We work very closely with Visit Britain, Visit London and also Visit England. The way that we communicate fam trips is via trade publications or social media. We also work with all the consortiums like Avantage.
Travel agents who want to be added to our familiarisation trips can contact me directly by email, at jonathan@made.travel, to be added to our list. We also work with independent and home-based agents that might belong to a large consortium. The only criteria would be that they’re actively selling London as a destination.
Do you work with destinations elsewhere?
We also work with New York City. We always say, ‘if you go to London or to New York and you don’t go and see a theatre show it’s like going to Paris and not seeing the Eiffel Tower.’ Wrapped around that is a whole day’s worth of itineraries.
There’s a variety of ways of booking tickets for both sides of the Atlantic and the shows almost mirror each other. We’ve got The Lion King on Broadway and in London. Disney Productions also have Aladdin on Broadway and this year they will have Hercules in West End, which will be their newest opening.
We’ve got The Museum of Broadway, which is an incredible new museum which tells the whole history of Broadway theatre going back to beyond Vaudeville – from the very early days of New York as a city – right way through to the 80s and 90s, when Cameron Mackintosh and Andrew Lloyd Webber arrived on Broadway, through to mega-hits like Mamma Mia!
