Meet your fun and passionate crew
Tourism Tribe is a genuine peer to peer community of tourism operators, industry and digital experts in a supported learning environment.
Tourism Tribe is relentlessly committed to helping tourism businesses stay up-to-date with transformative technology and business opportunities brought by the new traveller. We aim to help businesses to leverage these new opportunities in the most time and cost-effective manner.
The Tourism Tribe platform is built leveraging interconnected free cloud platforms available to anyone, from anywhere, to deliver cost-effective training and the ability for any business, independently of their location, to share best practices without reinventing the wheel.
Our team in action
Back in July 2021, we celebrated our sixth year anniversary with a six-month recap of coaching sessions, events, industry workshops, news updates and more!
We are so thankful to everyone who has been part of this journey and all the amazing businesses we have met and had the pleasure of working alongside these past six years. We hope to celebrate another six years helping small tourism businesses navigate the digital world.
Liz Ward
Founder & CEO
Liz is a committed advocate for innovation in marketing and distribution and recognised expert in strategy with more than 20 years experience specialising in travel and tourism.
Liz has pioneered many first-time digital transformation initiatives that have had lasting impacts including starting up the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW) and being its CEO for over ten years.
Fabienne Wintle
Founder & CIO
Fabienne (Fabie) is a digital strategist who excels in her field of empowering tourism professionals to make the most of digital technology in their business ventures.
She is an advocate for digital self-sufficiency within businesses and her hands-on approach has enabled thousands of small and large business owners with the tools and knowledge to make a living from Tourism.
Fabienne’s special blend of digital know-how, tourism knowledge, her training and coaching skills, ability to think outside the box and a natural gift for communication make her a sought after consultant, workshop facilitator and speaker in her field.
Claire McCollum
Digital Engagement Health Check™ Manager & Coach
Claire is Tourism Tribe’s Coach and Digital Strategist. She has extensive experience in the tourism industry working for tour and accommodation operators in guiding and marketing roles and now provides confidence and capability building to tourism operators through training and coaching.
A major part of Claire’s role is to work with clients to develop content marketing strategies, blog updates and social media plans.
Claire worked as a tour guide both in Kakadu (8 day tours) and in the Kimberleys for two years. She has also previously worked for 8 years as the marketing and business manager for a regional holiday letting business where she transformed that business to a fully self-sufficient, online tourism offering. Claire migrated the entire operational systems and marketing to digital and cloud-based platforms, driving efficiencies and sales and making the business systems available remotely at any time.
Claire is very well-travelled, both overseas and in Australia and has lived in every state except for South Australia and Tasmania!
Julia Retson
Digital Solutions Manager
Julia works on the technical side of Tourism Tribe, building the website and our automated marketing system to ensure that customers have a seamless user experience while enjoying what we have to offer.
With her previous experience working in visual effects on major feature films, Julia is no stranger to complicated digital tools and has had many an opportunity to hone her skills in explaining how to use these tools in simple and easily understood English. Julia's also has extensive experience with online learning platforms as she has been both a creator of content, while using progressive teaching methods as a high school teacher, and as a user while completing her online diploma.
Julia has a degree in Aerospace Engineering as well as a graduate diploma in Secondary Education (Mathematics & Physics) and a diploma of Graphic Design.
Originally from Canada, she has travelled extensively throughout Australia, New Zealand, and many other places around the world. She has just recently returned from a year travelling Australia in a caravan with her young family.
Molly Dobbins
Program Coordinator & Customer Service Advocate
Molly is Tourism Tribe’s Programs Coordinator and Customer Service Advocate.
Her passion for the industry started back in 2018 when in high school she realised that the tourism industry was calling her. From working in various positions in both the hospitality and tourism sector, Molly has a strong focus on delivering excellent customer service. She strives to go above and beyond expectations to ensure operators are getting the most out of their programs.
Molly is passionate and determined to assist all tourism operators to take full advantage of making the most of their Tourism Tribe journey. She’s also studying a Bachelor’s dual degree in Business Management and International Tourism Management.
Sam Ward
Business Coach
Sam is part of the Tourism Tribe coaching crew. He is passionate about developing and growing products and processes – start-ups and small businesses.
Through his mentoring approach he elicits business creativity using lean canvas processes to flesh out the economic value of a goal and helping others thrive through coaching and achieving milestones.
Despina Karatzias
Business Coach
Despina brings incredible business expertise to the Tourism Tribe team and our clients. She has started up and managed multiple businesses and brings unsurpassed experience in all aspects of running and growing a tourism business.
As a lover of all things tourism and the small ‘passionate’ business community Despina loves to work with the small to medium business owner or manager who struggles to figure out cost effective ways to maximise and grow their business through digital, social media, distribution and partnership marketing.
When Despi isn't managing, mentoring, hosting a webinar or creating irresistible social media content for clients, she can be found with her family. Despina met her hubby over 20 years ago (two days after she turned eighteen) and their greatest gifts in life have been their three children. She has two daughters and a gorgeous little man.
Despina's love for travel and the Australian tourism industry is her other passion. She loves everything about travel and tourism. Everything! Long haul. Weekend. Overnight. Accommodation. Tours. Attractions. Wineries. You name it. She loves helping these businesses and when she am not helping them she is either planning (or dreaming) about her next holiday.
Emily Barry
Business Coach
Emily's degree in Business (Marketing) and years of work experience in hospitality and tourism has given her the skills and resources to coach small tourism businesses across Australia. Emily project and team manages the development of digital assets for our clients as well as the course content, social media channels and marketing campaigns for Tourism Tribe.
Emily has a passion for travelling and aims to visit every continent before she turns 30.
Mandy Murray
Business Coach
In her life before joining the Tourism Tribe team, Mandy built her career as an accomplished Organisational and Leadership Development consultant in the technology sector. Customers are at the core of Mandy's coaching philosophy - she knows that acquiring and maintaining loyal customers is key to the success of businesses at any size or stage in their development. Having spearheaded a successful skincare brand, Mandy has firsthand experience of building a brands digital presence from the ground up and knows what it takes to get your business and product seen by your target customer. Mandy's passion for supporting people, building community and unleashing their business potential is entirely contagious - she leaves coaching clients feeling empowered and inspired.
Clem Lallement
Business Coach
Clem is passionate about helping businesses grow and evolve in today’s digital world. She loves to see people and businesses succeed and enjoy the journey! Over the last 10 years, she has supported businesses locally and internationally, helping them to make the most of the digital tools available to them to boost productivity and profitability. Her optimism and motivation are contagious and you’ll end the coaching session with a smile!
Kerrin Wallace
Business Coach
Kerrin is the founder of Left Bank Design, a Melbourne-based design studio specialising in web design and digital marketing. She has over 25 years of marketing experience in Australia and the UK, working for world-famous brands such as Sony Music & Estee Lauder. Kerrin has spent the last decade helping a wide range of Australian businesses (from tourism to retail) reach their full potential by creating and implementing marketing strategies that ignite real business results.
