David Zapata took the long way to a global career

David Zapata gave rejection letters a second career as wallpaper. During his senior year at Gettysburg College, he lined the walls of his room in Ice House with replies from nongovernmental organizations that had declined to hire him. He studied political science and history, wanted to work internationally, and had identified what seemed a sensible route. The organizations had other staffing plans.

There is something pleasingly practical about keeping the letters on display. A disappointment becomes a decorating scheme. The ambition survived, too. After graduating in 1994, Zapata followed a career that took him through Washington, New York and Chicago. The international work arrived by a less direct route: public relations for places people wanted to visit.

Today, he is founder, CEO and partner at Zapwater Communications. He also chairs Travel Lifestyle Network, an alliance of independent agencies. The student who struggled to find a place in an international organization now helps bring such organizations together. The itinerary needed revising. The destination held.

A hotel room with a plot

Zapata founded Zapwater in 2005. Its territory became lifestyle communications: hotels, destinations, consumer products, design and the businesses through which people spend their leisure time. This is work that rewards an eye for the difference between a service and a story. A hotel has rooms. A campaign needs a reason for someone to care about them.

One early example was Hotel Sax Chicago. The agency created celebrity-inspired packages that let ordinary guests borrow a little of the experience associated with famous visitors. The campaign’s title, “Turning Regular Joe’s into J-Lo’s,” did some of the work before anyone reached the booking page. It was an invitation with a joke tucked inside.

In a 2017 interview, Zapata named it among his favorite projects. The appeal is easy to understand. It takes an existing hospitality product and supplies a small, comprehensible fantasy. The guest can imagine the stay; the publicist has something more interesting to discuss than the thread count. Even a very good pillow benefits from a plot.

The pleasure of a smaller pitch list

By September 2022, Zapata could describe a business argument for being choosy. His agency was pitching fewer opportunities and concentrating on work that excited the team. He put its close rate near 70 percent for that year. His explanation linked enthusiasm to better pitches, then to better work once the account arrived.

He had a shorthand for evaluating prospects: profit, prestige and passion. All three mattered; passion received particular emphasis. That is a useful admission from someone whose business depends on winning assignments. A signed contract also creates a daily obligation. Somebody has to remain interested after the introductory presentation has been filed away.

The number belongs to 2022, rather than serving as a permanent promise. The thinking is more durable. Every proposal absorbs time that could go toward existing clients, creative work or another opportunity. Choosing where to compete becomes part of the work itself. Zapata’s version gives the people doing the assignment a place in that decision.

“We don’t make headlines, our clients do.”

David Zapata, 2017 interview

Friday has an afternoon off

His ideas about office life get more interesting when they leave the language of culture and enter the calendar. A 2023 workplace profile described year-round half-day Fridays, a bank of work-from-home days and an additional week of paid leave after a year of employment for volunteering. These are arrangements people can actually use.

There were snacks and social occasions, too. Zapata emphasized that the initiatives came from employees. An office can order refreshments without asking many difficult questions. Giving people a say in how they spend time together requires listening, and giving them time away requires making room in the schedule.

Travel also formed part of that working life. Staff accompanied journalists and influencers to client locations. The privilege comes with an unusually direct test of collegiality: people have to function together beyond the conference room. In his 2022 discussion with Doug Simon, Zapata compared the team to a Thanksgiving gathering, where affection and disagreement can coexist. Anyone who has organized a family meal will appreciate the managerial ambition.

Buying local knowledge

As the agency expanded, Zapata looked for people who already understood the places it wanted to serve. In January 2017, Zapwater announced an agreement to acquire The Barry Group, the Los Angeles boutique founded by Jennifer Barry. Barry would lead the Los Angeles office, and all of her employees would continue with Zapwater.

The arrangement strengthened an existing West Coast operation. Barry brought expertise in travel, hospitality, luxury home and design, along with knowledge of the Los Angeles market. Zapata’s explanation stressed the agencies’ shared outlook. In a business built on relationships, buying a company means inheriting its habits as well as its accounts.

Miami followed through the 2019 acquisition of Cheryl Andrews Marketing Communications. Andrews joined as executive vice president; Holly Zawyer became managing director of the Florida office. The acquisition added Caribbean and Latin American experience and brought headcount to 30 across Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami at the time. Each deal added a particular body of knowledge, with named people responsible for carrying it forward.

A pretty picture has a job to do

Zapata’s career has also crossed a change in the machinery of publicity. When Zapwater began, the social platforms that now shape travel planning were either young or still to come. An agency selling a destination eventually had to understand the creator whose video might become someone else’s itinerary.

In 2023, he described embracing influencer marketing with conversion in mind. His attention was on what people did after seeing the material. The distinction matters in travel: a beautiful image is enjoyable in its own right, while a client is paying for a connection to future visitors.

There is continuity with the Hotel Sax idea. Both give an audience a way to imagine participating. The channel changes; the commercial question remains. Can the person looking at this picture, package or recommendation see a reason to take the next step? Zapata’s account of the work keeps returning to that movement from curiosity to action.

More than one kind of suitcase

The agency’s portfolio has broadened beyond destinations and hotels. Its 2024 new business included Ace Hardware, Bosch and Thermador alongside hospitality assignments. Travel still accounted for roughly 60 percent of revenue in a 2025 assessment. Home and housewares had become a meaningful companion business.

That same assessment reported fees rising from about $3.2 million in 2021 to more than $6.6 million in 2024, with 26 percent growth during 2024. Those are agency figures, measuring the company Zapata leads. They describe a substantial change in the scale of the operation over three years.

Chispa, the bilingual division launched in 2023, added another form of breadth. Bertha Diaz became its head in July 2025, leading work for clients across Latin America while maintaining key Miami relationships. Cultural fluency became an explicit part of the service. The old desire to work internationally had acquired the everyday requirements of staffing, language and local judgment.

Independence, with company

In June 2025, Zapata became executive chair of Travel Lifestyle Network’s board. His stated priorities included recruiting compatible independent agencies, increasing collaboration across regions and expanding services. The board included representatives from Asia-Pacific, the Americas and Europe, with founder Hanna Kleber remaining honorary chair.

There is a practical appeal to this arrangement for a founder. An independent agency can retain its own business while collaborating with people who know another market. International reach then depends partly on the quality of those working relationships. An introduction is useful; a partner who understands the assignment is considerably more useful.

His writing for the network reveals a less corporate reference point. A lifelong hockey fan, he reached for the story of the 1980 US Olympic team when reflecting on a meeting in Montréal. He also wrote about travel changing people’s assumptions and creating encounters across cultures. Beneath the language of clients and campaigns sits the traveler’s familiar hope of coming home with a different view.

The next introduction

The network’s expansion continued into October 2026, when Australia’s Linkd Tourism joined, taking membership to 25 agencies. Zapata welcomed its local knowledge and collaborative approach. Meanwhile, Zapwater’s recent work included an August appointment by the Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau, with responsibilities covering domestic PR, influencers, travel trade media and meetings marketing.

There is a civic thread as well. ENLACE lists Zapata on its board, and he received the Publicity Club of Chicago’s inaugural Member of the Year award in 2019. International connections and professional community have both become part of his working life.

The rejection letters make a good opening because they preserve an earlier, narrower idea of how that life might happen. Zapata wanted work that crossed borders. He found it through an agency, colleagues, clients and other founders. Along the way, he learned to choose some opportunities and decline others. Having once decorated a room with other people’s decisions, he now gets to make a few of his own.