Conferences, Webinars & Workshops
National, state & regional
Linda Tillman is a regular presenter at national, state and regional tourism conferences and regularly presents webinars on regional tourism and events for national and regional organisations.
Linda's presentations are supported by her holistic experience across all facets of the tourism industry, including serving on the frontlines of hospitality, delivering regional festivals, running a small business as an entrepreneur, supporting local government with strategic planning, and being CEO of a regional tourism organisation.
Recent conference presentations
WA Tourism Conference
Local Government NSW Destination and Visitor Economy Conference
Destination Pilbara Warlu Way Tourism Conference
Australian Festivals Industry Conference
Australian Regional Tourism Convention
LGNSW Tourism Conference
Mildura Regenerative Communities Forum
The Business of Events
South Australian Tourism Conference
Australian Events Symposium
Recent webinars
Economic Development Australia
Australian Regional Tourism
Rural Aid
Destination Sydney Surrounds South
Townsville Enterprise
Association of Agricultural Field Days of Australasia
Recent topics
Agritourism development to drive regional visitor economies
Inspiring agritourism case studies
How regional events create impact
Delivering exceptional visitor experiences
How rural communities can maximise benefits from tourism
How to elevate homegrown events
How communities can create a shared story to attract visitors
The symbiotic relationship between tourism and events
Maximising social and economic outcomes from events
Strategic marketing
Effective tourism grant and award submission writing
Trends in visitor servicing
Customer journey mapping
Testimonials
“Linda, that was one of the most jam packed, resourceful, tactical, generous presentations I’ve ever seen. You’ve sparked some commentary in the chat section!”
Lydnsey Douglas, Presenter of Rural Aid's Community Builders Webinar Series
“The speakers that the Mildura Regenerative Communities Forum brought were fantastic. I especially enjoyed Linda Tillman’s talk. Having her fresh perspective on what Murrayville could offer in the future was inspiring. I am taking all her ideas and seeing if we can make even one of them work.”
Attendee
“Linda really gets it, the rural community thing. She is articulate and inspiring in the most humble and relatable way. Linda brings so much curiosity, passion and genuine care to her work, a wealth of knowledge and innate ability to not only see potential but to motivate others to manifest into reality.”
Rachel Kendrigan, Community Planning Officer, Mildura Rural City Council
“Linda has featured in the program for the Australian Regional Tourism Convention over a number of years and is a valued contributor to our regional visitor economy webinar series. A true professional, Linda’s grounded approach guarantees her presentations are highly engaging and always very well informed. Linda loves, lives and breathes regional tourism and events, ensuring her presentations are topical and without exception popular with convention delegates.”
Lauren Douglass, Executive Officer, Australian Regional Tourism
Referee
Lauren Douglass
Executive Officer
Australian Regional Tourism
0407 436 965
eo@regionaltourism.com.au
www.regionaltourism.com.au
Business Development Coaching
Experience Gold Coast
Experience Gold Coast
Experience Gold Coast (previously called Destination Gold Coast) is the regional tourism organisation for Queensland’s famous Gold Coast and its hinterland. The Gold Coast attracts almost 5 million overnight visitors per year, including over 600,000 international visitors.
Project purpose
To enable more Gold Coast tourism operators to become Best of Queensland Experiences, Experience Gold Coast contracted Jayne Jennings of JJ Strategic Consulting supported by Linda Tillman and Kushla Gale of Tilma Group to deliver free business coaching to its members on Tourism & Events Queensland’s Best of Queensland Experiences Program.
The Best of Queensland Experiences Program assesses Queensland tourism businesses on their ability deliver exceptional experiences, and create positive word of mouth recommendations for Queensland.
The program assesses businesses on:
Consistent delivery of an exceptional experience based on positive customer reviews
Having a website with secure booking platform
An active and engaging social media presence
Regional tourism organisation membership
Accreditation
Project overview
For six months we provide coaching on these criteria, and where additional time was available, coaching also covered
Website, accessibility and sustainability improvements
Experience enhancements
Project outcomes
JJ Strategic Consulting and Tilma Group mentored 70 businesses, as diverse as a jet boat experience, a whale watching cruise, apartment hotels, events, jet ski-ing, axe throwing, camper hire, a surf school, surf clubs, a golf club, a wildlife park, and many others. Each was provided with a tailored action plan to support becoming or maintaining their status as a Best of Queensland Experience in 2025. They were also provided with other resources, such as best practice websites, social media accounts and review response examples, and relevant funding programs available.
We also delivered a webinar on the program including tips and best practice examples. This was recorded for Experience Gold Coast to share with its members along with a tip sheet and case studies of businesses that demonstrate good practice on the Best of Queensland Experiences Program criteria.
Referee
Judy Quodling
Industry Development Officer
Experience Gold Coast
07 5584 6223
judy.quodling@destinationgoldcoast.com
or
Ashleigh Barnes
Partnership & Membership Officer
Experience Gold Coast
07 5584 6243
ashleigh.barnes@destinationgoldcoast.com
Agritourism Development Program
Cootamundra-Gundagai Regional Council
Cootamundra-Gundagai
Cootamundra-Gundagai Regional Council near Wagga Wagga in NSW’s food bowl, the Riverina region, is one of Australia’s leading Councils for proactively developing agritourism.
The region’s agriculture ranges from broadacre cropping and cattle in the north around Cootamundra to smaller landholdings, wineries and sheep in the south around Gundagai, and rich Wiradjuri agricultural history across the region.
Project purpose
In 2018, Council developed a Rural Land Issues Paper on the opportunities of agricultural tourism.
Based on the Paper’s findings, in 2020, Council secured a grant to create an Agritourism Development Plan to guide Council’s activities to grow agritourism offerings and visitation to the region.
Project overview
To develop the Agritourism Development Plan we began by developing an audit of existing, past, and potential agritourism experiences to help Council understand what kinds of experiences are already on offer, and be able to connect with the farmers delivering them.
The Plan identified a need for an ongoing agritourism development program to build the capacity of farmers to develop new, or grow existing, agritourism experiences - to elevate and expand agritourism offerings in the region.
In 2022, Council secured further funding and in 2023, hired Tilma Group to develop and deliver an agritourism development program.
We researched thoroughly what content should be included to help farmers understand the opportunities of agritourism, understand the tourism industry’s key players and what support they provide, and how to develop a new agritourism experience.
Project outcomes - several Australian firsts
To our knowledge, this project was an innovative first in Australia; we know of no other
Council that secured funding for, planned, and delivered such a comprehensive, multi-faceted local capacity building and agritourism development project.
‘One stop shop’ for farmers, particularly NSW farmers, to find all the information they needed in one place to support the development of an agritourism offering on their farm (There were none at the time the project was begun.)
Agritourism mentoring program that has been so comprehensive and generous, with up to twelve hours of one-on-one personalised mentoring by a regional tourism development expert.
Agritourism mentoring program where the skills of Council staff to support agritourism development were improved simultaneously with agritourism operators and farmers.
Agritourism mentoring program delivered remotely as this was using video conference technology.
The project could be considered best practice though its use of
Comprehensive research to inform inclusions, such as Service NSW for Business’ report on the pain points of farmers in developing agritourism and types of farmers who offer agritourism experiences, and statistics on agritourism visitors available, such as through Tourism Australia and Destination NSW (and much more!).
Consultation of local agritourism operators and farmers in the development of the inclusions of the Program.
The agritourism development guides include
How to develop a business case (including a business case template)
Risk management (including a risk management plan template)
Marketing (including a marketing plan template)
With agritourism being a rapidly growing sector, and new support being made available regularly, these graphic-designed guides were designed as Word documents so Council could update them as new resources for agritourism development become available. In fact, during the course of delivering this project, new resources became available from Destination NSW.
We then delivered a 10-week mentoring program. Nine participants from eight farms worked on a wide variety of offerings:
New agritourism events, including seasonal local produce lunches, farm open days, and potentially a sunflower festival
New farm stay short term accommodations
Marketing tactics to deliver business objectives such as attract a new market (midweek visitors and weddings), increase occupancy, or launch a new experience
A new farm tour and art workshops
A new night wildlife spotting tour with astrology and storytelling.
A new self-guided Wiradjuri tour
A new plant nursery with coffee
The different needs of the established agritourism operators and new-to-agritourism farmers, as well as the differences in the products being developed, required a flexible, tailored approach to delivering the business coaching.
Each mentee ended the program with an action plan, and other support, depending on their needs, such as a marketing plan or a risk management plan.
At the end of the mentoring, Tilma Group delivered a series of webinars of inspiring case studies, with guest presenters showcasing different best-practice agritourism offerings, with learnings for farmers developing or growing an agritourism offering.
The recorded webinars were added to Council’s online agritourism development portal.
Referee
Linda Wiles
Manager Business
Cootamundra-Gundagai Regional Council
1300 459 689
linda.wiles@cgrc.nsw.gov.au
Online Industry Development Toolkit
Townsville Enterprise
Townsville enterprise
For anyone who loves to explore tropical islands, wetlands, the Great Barrier Reef, rainforests and a glorious beachfront in warm tropical weather, Townsville region offers a diverse range of sustainable, historic, military, outback, island, active and tranquil experiences.
Project purpose
The regional tourism organisation, Townsville Enterprise, wanted to support local tourism businesses to exceed customer expectations and enhance their capacity.
They wanted to have a self-guided and practical tourism development toolkit for local operators, with information and templates that operators could access to use at any time to enhance their experience and business practices.
Project overview
Based on anecdotal evidence of local need, Townsville Enterprise identified industry development topics to include in the toolkit, including
To avoid duplication, Tilma Group sourced mainly existing resources from the state and beyond that provided practical information on each topic.
Tilma Group also developed a number of case studies on local and other operators who demonstrate the value of best practice.
Project outcomes
The toolkit is live, and operators attended two webinars on the toolkit’s topics at the launch of the new toolkit. These were recorded and also form part of the toolkit.
Already 500 local operators have accessed the toolkit.
Referee
Megan Hawke
Tourism Executive
Townsville Enterprise Limited
0400 093 838
megan.hawke@tel.com.au
www.tel.com.au
www.townsvillenorthqueensland.com.au
Experience Development Program
Brisbane Economic Development Agency
Brisbane Economic Development Agency
Brisbane Economic Development Agency (BEDA) is the regional tourism organisation for the Brisbane Region which includes the urban areas of Brisbane, Ipswich, and City of Logan, the coastal areas of Moreton Bay Region, and Redlands Coast, and the rural Scenic Rim and Somerset.
Project overview and purpose
Tourism & Events Queensland’s Best of Queensland Experiences (BOQE) guides operators on how to develop and deliver exceptional transformational experiences, and also provides operators with an annual report based on consumer reviews. Those experiences rated ‘best’ are included in TEQ’s database accessed by staff when planning marketing and activity, as well as other benefits.
The 2021 BOQE results for Brisbane Region identified an opportunity to increase the number of tourism products in the region becoming eligible for TEQ’s initiatives.
BEDA wanted a program developed to increase the number of BOQE products across the region, as part of BEDA’s global readiness program; a capability pathway to develop skills, grow businesses, and align to the destination’s brand pillars. The goal was to develop more exceptional and transformational experiences across the region.
Project outcomes
With JJ Strategic Consulting, Tilma Group developed a tailored and innovative Best of Brisbane Region Experience support program for operators of the Brisbane region.
A handbook and 13 self-paced online modules were developed to increase conversion of eligible tourism experiences into TEQ’s BOQE program. A business’ annual BoQE report helps the business owner identify modules to focus on.
Referee
Cathie Johnston
Experience Development & Partnerships Manager
Brisbane Economic Development Agency
0406 314 454
cjohnston@brisbane-eda.com.au
www.brisbane-eda.com.au
www.visitbrisbane.com.au