Joe Martin announced as Marketing Chair for Global Food Tourism Association Board of Directors

Alexandra Busenitz
Nov 5 · 3 min read

Oct 28, 2019 (Orlando, FL) — Joe Martin has accepted a position with the Global Food Tourism Association Board of Directors to serve as the Marketing Chair. A new position to the association he will be responsible for helping to guide this budding industry towards effective marketing practices.

Challenges posed are the influence of Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) like TripAdvisor and GetYourGuide, who dominate search engine rankings and charge tours high premiums to be a part of their service. In some cases, charging up to 35% of a ticket cost. As marketing chair, Martin will help to direct the industry towards more effective practices. Aiming to keep premiums at a minimum for the tour operators, in turn keeping experience prices cost-effective for consumers.

With 18 years in the website and marketing industry, Martin got his start in food tours building a website for Chicago Food Planet over 9 years ago. Over the last 4 years he has been a speaker at the Global Food Tourism Conferences. His keynote at the 2018 conference promoted his ideas for how he believes food tours can help to change the world by creating more local visibility in communities around the world. He would go on to create a conversion-focused website solution as a Saas product, allowing tours to purchase a website for $199/mo — instead of thousands of dollars upfront.

Martin felt that “[I] kept meeting incredible people who poured their savings into launching a food tour business, and I hated the idea of them falling behind just because they didn’t have a website that was setup properly.”

Selling his creative agency in 2016 he put his savings into launching TourAndEventWebsites. At the time, one of two website solutions built specifically for tour operators. Six months after the launch of the platform it was acquired by the largest food & wine reservation system in North America.

Renamed EzSites, by acquiring company EzTix, Martin’s platform showed an average increase of 42% in revenue for over 20 different companies in its first year. Over the next 2.5 years, Martin and his team worked with EzTix to release a number of ground-breaking features; in addition to the redesign of the system’s checkout process and email communications.

In April 2019 Martin left EzTix to launch Food Tour Marketing, an international consulting agency. With a focus on using data & analytics to drive marketing decisions, he has already worked with 25 different food tours around the world to help them implement new marketing strategies that are focused on the customer, conversions, and communication.

Excited to take on new challenges, Martin commented that “there’s power in community. Amazing things can happen when a group of people come together with a common goal.” Accepting a co-chair position to head the Engagement committee, he’s looking to use marketing principles and ideas from his 6-Week Cycles book to drive new forms of interaction in the community.

In accepting the position Martin feels “I have an incredibly unique opportunity ahead of me. While the things I’ve done have helped me get here, it’s the things ahead that stand the opportunity to make the most change in the world.”

You can learn more about Joe Martin on his website at https://hijoemartin.com and find out more about his marketing services at https://foodtourmarketing.com. His book, 6-Week Cycles, is available on Amazon and his 2019 TedX Talk on time travel can be found on TED’s YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/zRtFOwofqsw.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade