Three months inside Asia's oldest travel association

Why this internship mattered

Almost everyone who works in tourism marketing learns it from the outside, at an agency, guessing at how the industry runs. PATA is the industry. Sitting inside an association means watching how destinations, operators, and boards actually talk to each other, what they care about, and what language moves them.

I was the only candidate selected from north India that cycle. That fact matters less than what it bought me, which was access to how a global travel body plans and publishes.

What I worked on

• Content strategy across the association's channels, planned rather than reactive
• Channel level execution, writing and scheduling the work rather than only advising on it
• Audience research on what members and the wider trade actually engaged with
• Support on event and industry communications

The Delhi event

During my time there I met CEO Noor Ahmad Hamid at an industry event in Delhi. He later posted publicly about our conversation. I mention it because it is verifiable and because it happened, not because it is an endorsement of my work. It was a conversation at an event, and I am careful about the difference.

What I took away

Association audiences are not consumers. They are professionals who can smell marketing language from a distance and who reward specificity. Writing for them broke a lot of habits I had picked up reading consumer travel content, and it is the reason my work for associations reads the way it does now.

Read the longer version on Notion →