How to Organise Successful Press Trips and Measure the Results

Digital travel PR is one of the best strategies for tourism companies because almost half of people worldwide are still influenced by newspaper and magazine articles when it comes to making travel decisions, according to reports.

Therefore, getting mentioned in high-quality publications is a great way to engage your target audience, as well as build a strong backlink portfolio and boost organic visibility.

And one of the best ways to get well-respected PR coverage is through press trips.

However, this PR strategy is often overlooked by travel companies as it typically requires more investment than other approaches. You might baulk at the suggestion of offering a trip or experience for free, but we think it’s 100% worth it.

So, in this article, we’re going to break down exactly what press trips are and give examples to prove why you’ll want to incorporate them into your digital marketing strategy.

What is a press trip?

A press trip, also known as a familiarisation (FAM), is when a hotel, tour operator or destination tourism board offers a journalist to experience what they offer in exchange for media coverage.

Typically, journalists will be offered free accommodation and activities as well as, in many cases, paid-for travel expenses to and from the experience.

The expectation of the press trip is that the journalist will write then an article or produce other content about the experience, depending on what you have outlined pre-trip.  

Press trips generally fall into one of two categories: individual trips and organised group trips. 

Group trips typically comprise anywhere between two to 20 journalists, and an individual trip is, well, what it says on the tin – one journalist having the travel experience. 

The right approach to press trips completely depends on your travel brand’s PR budget and needs. Below are some of the pros and cons of both types of trips.

Group FAM Trips 

Pros

• Group trips can be cheaper if you plan/want to host multiple journalists.
• They provide social interaction with others from similar backgrounds, and journalists get the opportunity to network with one another and potentially spend time with people they already know.

Cons

• Finding one date that suits all of your preferred journalists can be very difficult!
• Activities need to suit all journalists and their audiences (family, adventure, etc) or you will need to plan multiple itineraries, which can be time-consuming.

Individual FAM Trips

Pros

• It is much easier to get preferred journalists as you can work according to their schedule.
• You can tailor the itinerary to the specific journalist and their audience, meaning it is easier to push the narrative you want the coverage to have. 

Cons

• It requires more time management if hosting multiple across different dates (but that’s what we help with!)
• A solo trip typically yields just one piece of coverage whereas the cost per head is typically less when journalists travel together.

If you want to chat further about which type of press trip approach would work best for you and your company, reach out to us and we’ll be happy to chat through what might be best for your travel brand! 

Who can offer FAM trips?

Anyone in the travel industry can offer a press trip in exchange for coverage.

But it’s much easier for some travel companies to offer press trips than others.

For example, hotels can use journalists to fill rooms that might otherwise be empty, and this has a minimal cost attached to it. But for tour operators, who don’t actually run/own the trips themselves, FAM trips can feel like a big expense that is difficult to justify. 

A solution for brands in a similar position is to team up with your suppliers or DMCs and secure joint coverage to reduce costs. Other strategies include inviting locally-based, freelance journalists who write for publications where you want coverage and your audience reads. 

For example, Travel+Leisure and Forbes are American publications but journalists writing for them can be based all over the world.

We know press trips are an investment and we know that it might feel hard to justify it. That’s why working with a PR agency is a great solution, as we have all the tips and tricks to ensure that you’re getting the most for your money.

What are the benefits of a press trip?

“The life cycle of a single press trip investment could be endless.” – Stacey Leasca, a freelance journalist who regularly writes for Travel + Leisure.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Now, let’s dive into the benefits of offering press trips to journalists.

We’ve even included more insight from Stacey throughout, so you know what we’re saying is true! 😉

#1 Better, long-form coverage 

Depending on the type of approach you’re taking, your standard PR coverage is likely to be coming in the format of an inclusion in a round-up of recommended ‘things’ (villas, itineraries, companies, etc) or a story that includes your brand as some part of the narrative (sharing tips, commentary, etc).

It’s rarely a lengthy piece all about your brand and why you’re great. 

So if this is something you’re yearning for, then press trips are the best way to go.

FAM trips provide the opportunity to secure in-depth coverage of your travel brand and the experience that people can have while travelling with you. Unless you really upset your journalist on the trip, they’re likely to write an article or segment that shines a very flattering light on your business. 

Make people go…

#2 Get in front of the right audience 

Press trips are a great way to get in front of the right audience for your travel brand, or even new ones.

For example, when the Island Shangri-La opened in Hong Kong, they were trying to promote themselves as a super family-friendly hotel. 

A press trip, inviting a well-respected, Bangkok-based travel journalist along with his 6-year-old son, allowed them to do just that. 

Chris wrote how his child is a bona fide hotel brat, tagging along on his assignments as a travel journalist. 

However, he describes how his son’s eyes lit up as they stepped out of the elevator and spotted the model steam train chugging over tracks suspended from the ceiling, and wooden forest and marine creatures dancing along the hallways. 

If I were a parent looking to take my child to a bustling Asian city, I’d be convinced. You can see the coverage here.

“(Press trips) allow writers of diverse backgrounds to come and discover destinations and tell stories of varying perspectives for unique audiences — aka the solo traveller, the family traveller, the adventure traveller, the female traveller, and on and on and on.” – Stacey Leasca

As Stacey explains, you can shape the narrative around your travel brand by carefully selecting the journalist(s) that you invite – whether that be to further cement yourself with your current audience or to try to break into a new market.

For example, Islands Shangri-La also hosted luxury-focused journalists based in the city to attract locals to their ‘urban spa’, and food and drink journalists to review their one-Michelin-star restaurants and appeal to foodies.

#3 Good relationship with journalists = more likely to see coverage

We all know that saying, ‘moments come and go, but memories last a lifetime’.

Press trips are the epitome of this.

How? Well, when we started working with a client last year we noticed that all of their historical coverage in high-quality publications was written by one journalist. 

Stacey Leasca explains: “Writers who visit on a press trip often first write features about destinations, then as time goes on, remember these spots for future stories, listicles, and even personal recommendations.

“That is the value of inviting writers over social media content creators to stay — the life cycle of a single press trip investment could be endless.” 

It’s all about relationship building and there is no better way to cement a good one with a journalist than allowing them to experience what you offer first-hand.

And then when the journalist is back from the press trip, be sure to keep them in the loop with updates about your travel brand that might be of interest, such as new destinations and itineraries. 

Done effectively, coverage can be endless. 

Tips for Organising a Successful Press Trip

Based on the above, these are our top tips for organising a successful press trip.

• Don’t stick to just one type of media industry. Think about all of the different audiences interested in your travel offering and ensure you will be engaging as many of them as you can with your press trips – whether it be through inviting multiple journalists or choosing publications that span multiple target audiences.

• Be clever with planning. We know that press trips feel like a big investment but you can be strategic. If you want to host a FAM trip in Italy but have a US audience, invite journalists who write for American publications but live in Europe to keep costs lower.

• Continue to nurture the relationship post-event. Keeping in contact with your press trip guests will ensure that you stay front of mind for future opportunities and doing this will ensure a better ROI of the PR strategy. 

Press Trip Case Study

Listen, we can talk and talk about the benefits of press trips until the cows come home, but we know there is nothing more persuasive than seeing results first-hand…

That’s why we’re sharing a case study of a FAM trip we organised a couple of years ago and the benefits for our client. 

Grand Prix Grand Tours reached out to us to say they had a space available for the Abu Dhabi GP and wanted to invite a journalist.

So we reached out to a few journalists that we thought might be interested and secured an adventure-sports writer with a column on Forbes. Bingo!

We spent a couple of weeks going backwards and forwards between the journalist and the travel brand, outlining what the deliverables and output from both parties would be. The trip was locked down and the journalist flew to Abu Dhabi to enjoy the glitz and glamour of the F1 event.

When he returned home, he wrote and published an article within a couple of weeks. You can see the coverage here.

The article was syndicated across Forbes’ international publications.

The story was also syndicated on the ‘Circuit of the Americas’ official website as well.

Which has a domain authority of 71 and an average monthly traffic volume of around 72,000 users. It’s also a website that is super relevant and readers are the client’s target audience.

And what has the impact of this been, you might be asking?

Press Trip Results

Well, let’s get into it.

N.B. The coverage included links to five itinerary pages, but we’ve selected one that has not undergone any other SEO or link-building work, so we can confidently say that the results have been considerably impacted by this press trip coverage.

This was what the client’s keyword rankings looked like after six months – ranking on page #2 for some key phrases with big search volumes like this one…

And looking at the long-term benefits, almost two years after the initial coverage?

The client has continued to see great keyword ranking improvements for phrases with big search volumes. This is what it’s looking like today in the US, compared to before coverage went live.

And in the UK too.

Organic traffic is on the rise as well, and we’ve seen year-over-year increases in both clicks and impressions (which are up 29% and 50% respectively over the past six months alone too!)

Not bad for just ‘sending someone to watch the Grand Prix’, hey!

Interested?

Basically, press trips offer loads of benefits for travel companies looking to improve organic visibility, increase brand awareness and engage target audiences. 

More than anything, they result in long-form, in-depth coverage that will help shape the narrative you want around your brand, and also foster long-term relationships with journalists that will likely lead to coverage in the future too!

Of course, we know that it can be overwhelming to know to start with hosting press trips and we know that a lot of travel companies wonder whether they can justify the cost.

Hosting strategically planned trips – whether for groups or individuals – is a great way to maximise the ROI of your marketing budget. 

If you want more information about whether press trips would work for you, get in touch with us at hello@north9.agency. 

About The Author...

Amelia Selby

PR | Impact | Partnerships

Amelia leads our PR activity – gaining links to top publications through creative campaigns, press releases, PR stunts, social media, newsjacking, and more. The country that has her heart is India – diverse scenery, incredible people and the food is to die for!