Expertise in tourism marketing fuels growth for Travel Alliance Partnership

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Nicole Mahoney admits that saying goodbye to the Break the Ice Media name, an agency she launched in 2009, wasn’t easy to do.

After all, the firm was her creation, and the work she and her team had done over the years on marketing and public relations campaigns had made an impact for clients.

But not long after Mahoney acquired Travel Alliance Partners in 2021, a niche agency with deep roots in the travel and tourism industry, she needed to determine how best to move forward as one.

A brand consultant was hired and, after careful analysis, it was determined a merger with preservation of the Travel Alliance Partners name would best align the organizations for future growth.

“Travel Alliance Partners basically had the travel advisor audience, it had the tour operators, the products,” Mahoney said. “So we decided to merge the two and rebrand as Travel Alliance Partnership. (TAP)”

That was in 2024 and now, two years later, Travel Alliance Partnership is thriving, tapping into its expertise within the tourism marketplace to lead collaborative programs while bringing diverse partners together to drive travel.

The firm earned the top spot on the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce 2026 MWBE Awards. The list recognizes the fastest-growing, privately owned Minority and Women Owned Business Enterprise firms based on dollar and percentage revenue growth over a three-year period.

The award was presented on June 11. One day earlier, TAP was recognized with four PRism Awards for excellence in public relations marketing by the Rochester chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).

“That just feels really good and validating, when you have PR peers from another market judging your work,” said Mahoney, the firm’s CEO. “I feel so good for our team.”

The TAP team — which excels working as a fully remote staff — is comprised of 12 full-time employees. All have been with the firm at least two years, six have been there 10 years and two have been with Mahoney since the first days of Break the Ice Media.

They operate with the belief that collaboration leads to success, providing strategic planning, digital advertising and marketing, content development and more for clients that, as Mahoney says, span the tourism ecosystem.

That includes destination marketing organizations; the folks responsible for marketing a place. It also includes organizations that are part of the tourism industry such as museums, the arts, cultural organizations, wineries and breweries.

They also work with tour operators and firms that provide products to the tourism industry; “the products within a destination that make it a place people want to visit,” Mahoney said.

While Travel Alliance Partnership is the name people now know, Break the Ice Media remains the registered corporate name.

“I still have that as my personal nod to our history,” Mahoney said. “It took a little bit (to become accustomed to no more Break the Ice Media) but it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.

“We’ve been TAP for two full years now and, to be honest, it feels like we’ve been TAP for a decade.”

That’s because the team was already focusing on travel and tourism since around 2016, when Mahoney launched her podcast, Destination on the Left. She is closing in on 500 episodes, interviewing a variety of people working in various sectors of the travel and tourism industry.

“It exposes myself, my team and now my audience to people all over the world that are in this industry,” she said. “That was really the start of our growth trajectory. It allows you to develop an expertise in an area.”

That the Rochester area is the corporate home for TAP is fitting. This is the type of area they’re so good at marketing.

“Our focus is more on drive markets,” Mahoney said. “You think about Rochester, we’re a drive market, so we know really well how to get people to second- and third-tier markets, those off-the-beaten-path locations.

“That’s where we’re focusing our expertise, although we do understand the international traveler. We have a lot of expertise in understanding the Canadian traveler as well as other markets that come to the United States and are looking for experiences outside of the big cities. We understand how they plan, the second and third trips they might take, and how to market to them.”

The firm is in its fourth year of a contract with I Love New York, which pushes tourism across the state. People know New York City and Niagara Falls. The big goal is getting visitors to see the rest of the state.

“It’s thinking about everything in-between,” Mahoney said. “Part of the I Love New York goal is to get a big percentage of those New York City visitors to explore more of Upstate.

“That’s where collaboration comes in. You want to be able to work with different partners throughout the entire state. You can’t do it on your own, and that’s really where we hang our hat, is knowing how to make those collaborations work and how to find those collaborative partners.”

They’re also adding to their portfolio. In late 2024, TAP purchased a collaborative brand, Haunted History Trail of New York State (hauntedhistorytrail.com). More than 30 counties are participating, with more than 80 locations on the trail.

TAP will expand the program into Michigan and the long-range goal is to create a national brand.

“It’s another example of how we’re growing creatively through acquisitions and still serving the same industry through different programs,” Mahoney said. “There’s a huge market for haunted tourism. People travel from all over the world for these experiences.”

While Being No. 1 on the Chamber’s MWBE list was an honor for TAP, it wasn’t an end-all, be-all destination.

“I tell my team this all the time, we never arrive, we’re never done,” Mahoney said. “ ‘Oh, we did that, now we can sit back and relax.’ It doesn’t work that way. There’s always another journey to be had.”

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