How I Carry On: Authenticity, Success and Finding Joy

For Universal Orlando Resort Senior Marketing Director Sonya Ballentine, working in travel isn’t just a job — it’s a calling.

The Miami native’s 14-year career in the travel industry has spanned both land and sea, but started with revenue management at Carnival Cruise Line, a role that tapped into the expertise she achieved earning her MBA.

Though she could have pursued a career in financial services, “Ultimately, the travel industry was that space that really spoke to my heart,” Ballentine says,

An art and a science

By the time she left Carnival seven years later, Ballentine was spearheading promotions and pricing for cruises, and had become adept at using analytics and performance measures to help better understand customers and hit company revenue targets.

“The thing that the cruise industry really sparked for me was this amazing merge of understanding both user and consumer behavior as well as the craft and artisanship [of marketing],” she says. “Carnival really kind of opened my eyes to that space.”

There are distinct differences between cruising and theme parks — for example, cruise ships seek to operate at full capacity for every sailing, while theme parks have more opportunities to recoup lost revenue from slow days, explains Ballentine.

Still, when she transitioned to Universal Orlando in 2013, Ballentine brought key learnings from her time at Carnival to the resort’s content strategy, building and bundling vacation packages, and, most recently, digital production.

Today, Ballentine manages a team that fine-tunes messaging around vacation products to make sure they resonate with users and, on an ongoing basis, assesses the quality of digital content marketing distributed across Universal’s mobile apps, email campaigns and websites.

“We are testing out different messages as a way to understand the users and make sure that [behind] the art of what we do — the marketing side — there’s the science in the background,” Ballentine says.

Spark joy

Another constant since her days at Carnival: Ballentine is all about showing up to her work as her most authentic self and “not being afraid to use my voice” — a lesson she picked up from her early mentors in the cruising world that she seeks to pass on to her own team.

“That [advice] really helped me transition over to Universal and go into that space being authentic in everything that I do,” says Ballentine, who grounds herself with meditation and movement before logging on to Microsoft Teams every morning. “As a leader, I am encouraging team members to bring their full selves. Be good at what you do. Be excellent, and when you come to work, bring your best self.”

Ballentine offers similar advice to travel advisors seeking to differentiate themselves in today’s competitive market, which has undergone various sea changes since she entered the industry more than a decade ago.

“Word-of-mouth is still key, but that’s happening in the digital space,” says Ballentine, who previously led content strategy at Universal. “There are a number of [travel] agencies out there. What is the thing that differentiates you? It’s you. It is the care that you give to your clients. The best agents are those who understand what motivates their clients and gets to their hearts.”

Connecting increasingly diverse and social media-savvy vacationers with packages that meet their unique needs is part of what drives Ballentine — and why she believes so much in the bundled theme park packages she markets.

“We know that there’s not a one-size-fits-all [vacation] that everybody’s looking for,” she says. “A package really is just an opportunity where you can buy what you need to make your vacation go as smoothly as possible and give you experiences that you and your family are looking to do.”

For Ballentine, following her calling to create joy for others has also brought more joy into her own life.

“There is nothing better than being able to walk outside my office — back when we were in the office — and hear people yell on a roller coaster. How can you not smile when you hear that pure joy?” says Ballentine. “I feel like so much of my progress, my journey, is all connected to what I deem a calling. This industry gives me the opportunity to feel like I’m connected to something bigger.”

Originally appeared in the fall 2021 issue of The Compass Magazine.