Adventures of a Balloon Girl

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by Despina Karatzias

A book written to share and celebrate the fundamental lessons learnt over the last decade managing a successful Victorian hot air balloon tourism business.

Driving Success in Ballooning and Beyond

Like ballooning, the tourism industry shines with unique experiences delivered by passionate individuals. Challenges such as cost, time and relevance however can dissuade small business participation in professional and business development activity.

This book is about thriving in business delivering the nuts and bolts of day-to-day business practices through simple tools that can be applied to any small business operation.

You can find Adventures of a Balloon Girl at any Victorian Target store or selected book stores around Australia.

Despina has been instrumental in the development of new marketing strategies, establishing strong agent based relationships, implementing carbon offset initiatives, a positive working culture, putting into effect key performance indicators to track growth in her team and driving sales in her role as Business Manager with Global Ballooning.

A Journey of Learning and Excellence in the Tourism Industry

Her direct initiatives and input in the company has contributed a clear understanding of Global Ballooning’s vision, targeted objectives and the sales results derived from the company’s activity in the market place. An avid learner, throughout her career to date Despina has become an ICF accredited coach and NLP practitioner, was the 2008 Len Taylor Award for Excellence winner, awarded the 2011 Lynette Bergin Fellowship and has proven to be an incredibly valuable asset to the businesses and industry she serves.