From Crisis to Catalyst: How Solutionz Turned Disruption into the Future of Growth

NATIONWIDE - OCTOBER 2025 - (USAnews.com) When the world ground to a halt during the pandemic, industries everywhere faced an existential crisis. Travel and events, the twin pillars of Solutionz, a Tampa-based technology company, were particularly hard hit. 

For most, this might have been the end of the story. But for Solutionz, it became the beginning of a new one.

Rather than pivot away from their core, they expanded their reach.

Before the pandemic, Solutionz focused exclusively on trip planning, helping businesses integrate travel into the everyday tools their customers already used, like CRMs, calendars, contact managers, and event systems. 

The flagship TravelingToGIVE™ tool was born from crisis as well, when founder Chicke Fitzgerald’s 15-year-old niece had an ATV accident and was airlifted from Wyoming to Montana. Out of that near tragedy, thehotelsnearbyhospitals was born.  But Fitzgerald didn’t stop there.

When the world began to find its new normal, the global landscape shifted and it became clear that companies needed something broader;  a way to engage customers digitally with purpose and impact.

Once again, a crisis had spurred insight, which became the seeds of innovation.

What began with the TravelingToGIVE™ brand evolved into the SMARTtools™ suite,  a family of products built on the Triple Win Formula™, an operating system that drives growth for businesses, engagement for customers, and giving for the world around them.

Turning crisis into a catalyst

The pandemic didn’t just reshape how businesses operated; it redefined what value looked like. Organizations that thrived weren’t just digitizing, they were humanizing. They sought ways to foster loyalty through empathy, relevance, and exceptional service.  

We all found out that online meetings were NOT a substitute for being there. Face-to-face still matters.  

SMARTtools emerged as the Swiss-Army knife for that new reality. From SMARTbranding to SMARTsnapshot to SMARTcalendar, every component was designed to create connected ecosystems,  linking people, causes, and commerce in ways that multiply impact and profitability.

While others scrambled to stay visible, Solutionz made visibility meaningful.

Each SMARTtool became a channel for the Triple Win:

• WIN for the business - by generating new revenue streams from existing relationships.
  
  

• WIN for the customer - by creating convenience, connection, and value in every interaction.
  
  

• WIN for the community -  by embedding giving directly into everyday engagement.

This wasn’t about surviving crises. It was about re-engineering the engine of growth itself.

The whole point of a Swiss-Army knife

The genius of a Swiss-Army knife isn’t in any single blade — it’s in the integration and accessibility. Every function works together, ready when you need it. 

That’s the SMARTtools approach to business growth: simple, elegant, and expandable.

Why manage five disconnected systems for marketing, events, giving, analytics, and loyalty when one integrated set of tools can do it all — and do it with heart?

Smart meets Heart

In a digital world increasingly driven by automation, SMARTtools puts humanity back at the center. It turns ordinary transactions into meaningful touchpoints — opportunities not just to sell, but to serve.

The result is a growth engine that aligns purpose with profit. It’s what happens when innovation is guided not just by need, but by values.

From crisis came clarity. 

From clarity came innovation. 

And from innovation came a model for the future — the Triple Win Formula™ — proving that when growth, engagement, and giving are built into the same system, everybody wins.

That is the epitome of SMARTmeetsHEART.

The Triple Win Formula is available on Amazon.  

SMARTtools™ by Solutionz: where SMARTmeetsHEART.