Strategic Activation
Turning plans into action to drive real impact in regional and rural communities
At Tilma, we don’t just write strategies—we bring them to life. Our strategic activation services are designed to support regional and remote councils and tourism organisations in implementing the tourism development plans, frameworks, and ideas they’ve worked hard to develop.
We take a hands-on, pragmatic approach to ensure tourism strategies are not left sitting on a shelf. With a focus on delivering measurable outcomes, we help you move from planning to doing—connecting the dots between strategic goals, community priorities, funding opportunities, and tourism industry outcomes.
Our work spans a wide range of strategic activation needs, including:
Implementing tourism strategies to ensure long-term growth and resilience in regional areas
Identifying and applying for grant funding to support new initiatives and help deliver on strategic objectives
Reviewing and refining award submissions to help destinations and operators showcase their excellence in tourism awards
Supporting the pursuit of sustainability accreditation to future-proof destinations and align with responsible travel trends
With a strong track record across regional tourism development, destination management, and community engagement, we understand the unique challenges of delivering strategy in rural areas—and know how to turn great ideas into tangible results.
What we offer
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Whilst we appreciate that tourism and destination strategies sometimes fail to be implemented for a range of reasons, we work extremely hard to ensure our strategies do not gather dust.
Our approach is to coach and support your team to deliver its existing strategy, such as by developing a practical 12-month activation plan to support a strategy’s implementation or facilitating cross-departmental implementation.
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In recent years we have helped clients win over $5.6 million in funding from over a dozen different tourism-related grant programs, ranging from $20,000 up to $3.9 million.
We have a high success rate, working with clients to develop grant applications together, applying our expertise to strategic alignment, and demonstrating project delivery on grant objectives.
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We apply our 15 years of experience in writing, judging, reviewing and winning tourism awards, to enabling our clients to strengthen their submissions.
Three clients for whom we wrote submissions achieved the ultimate award: Gold at the Australian Tourism Awards.
While we no longer write submissions for clients, our detailed feedback includes many suggestions on how to improve a submission’s chances of winning.
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We support businesses to apply for their choice of sustainable accreditation through coaching and accountability (as time is often the limiting factor!)
This often involves the development of foundational business documentation which supports best business practice and viability.
Case studies
Client outcomes
These projects are feel-good wins – delivering tourism development projects, securing a grant, winning an award, and being recognised for efforts to be sustainable. We love helping our clients achieve these wins as much as our clients love winning!
“Thanks so much for all your help on the award submissions. It’s been a pleasure working with you. As a result of your knowledge, approach, and working closely with us we’ve produced fantastic submissions. We’ve put our best foot forward. Kushla’s knowledge and guidance in pulling together award submissions is second to none. Kushla was so easy to work with, and her experience in this area was invaluable.”
“I recently worked with Kushla on a submission for funding and she was great at helping me understand the question and what resources I needed to refer to. We worked together on the same document and it just helped so much. I was so happy with the finished document and I think we worked really well together.”
Connect with us
Book a discovery call to discuss your challenges and project needs.
City of Warrnambool