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Behind Rustiq.
We're Zack and Marcel, the people behind Rustiq Media. What started as two people figuring things out has turned into a shared obsession with travel, destinations, and telling the kind of stories that make someone want to go somewhere.
See Our Work →Great places deserve better than generic marketing.
Too much hospitality marketing starts and ends with the property.
A room. A lobby. A list of amenities.
But that’s rarely why someone takes the trip.
People travel for the lake. The mountains. The golf. The food. The event. The weekend. The feeling of being somewhere different.
We built Rustiq around marketing that entire experience.
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They book reasons to go.
Start with the experience.
We go there.
When the project calls for it, we get on location.
We walk the property. Explore the destination. Find the places guests should know about.
Capture the content ourselves. Talk to the people who know the area.
Figure out what actually makes the trip worth taking.
Because the best way to market an experience is to understand it.
We call this experience-led destination marketing — guest-perspective content that shows people what a stay actually feels like, not just what it looks like. Check in, shoot the room and the views, grab dinner nearby, find the trail or overlook worth knowing about, then turn all of it into photos and short-form video that help someone picture taking the same trip.
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Our Story
We didn't start with a plan.
Rustiq didn't begin with a clear niche. We started out exploring different opportunities and trying different approaches to building a business, the way most people do when they're figuring things out. Finding our direction wasn't instant — it took experimenting, learning what worked, and paying attention to where our interests and strengths actually lined up.
Somewhere in that process, we realized how much we both cared about travel, destinations, and experiences — and how much we enjoyed helping businesses show what actually makes a place worth visiting.
That realization is what pulled Rustiq toward experience-led hospitality and destination marketing. Not because we had it all figured out from day one, but because it's the work that made the most sense to keep doing.
Zack's Story
A creative mind. A curious spirit.
I started my career in web design and development — building sites, solving problems, figuring out how something should actually work. Somewhere along the way I realized I wanted to do more than build websites: I wanted to create things that told a real story. That instinct is what I bring to Rustiq's creative direction today.
I've always enjoyed traveling, exploring new places, discovering local businesses, and spending time outdoors. I want to experience the places we're promoting myself — find what actually makes them memorable — and turn that into content that makes someone else want to go.
Marcel's Role
The person shaping how we're found.
Marcel is the Co-Founder & Marketing Director behind Rustiq — the one thinking through how our work actually reaches the people we're trying to reach.
He's been part of Rustiq's direction from early on, helping shape the marketing strategy behind the agency as much as the work we put out for clients. Like the rest of Rustiq, that role is still evolving — built the same way everything else here was: by doing the work and figuring it out.
Small by design.
Rustiq isn’t built around layers of account managers. The people you talk to are the people doing the work.
Strategy, creative direction, content, campaigns, websites, and growth stay close together so ideas can move quickly and the marketing stays connected.
Today, I lead Rustiq's creative direction alongside Marcel, our Co-Founder & Marketing Director.
More hands-on.
What We Believe
We don't just want to show people where they can stay. We want to show them why they'd want to go.
We're drawn to the character of a place — the things that make it different from anywhere else — and we want to turn that into content people actually want to look at: the kind that makes someone picture themselves there.
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We’re based in Ohio.
Our work doesn’t have to be.
Rustiq works with independent hospitality brands and destinations wherever there’s a story worth telling.
Lake towns. Mountain stays. Golf weekends. Cabins in the woods. Beach properties. Boutique hotels. Places people haven’t discovered yet.
If there’s a reason people should go, we’re interested.
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Cobblestone Hotel & Suites
See how Rustiq is combining destination strategy, original content, social media, and paid advertising into experience-driven campaigns that market an Indian Lake stay.
View The Case Study →Read The Journal →Have a place worth visiting?
Let’s make people want to go.
Tell us about the property, the destination, and what you’re trying to build.
