Whether you’re a brand, a journalist or a consumer, our desire to travel is driven by a passion to experience the world and how different destinations and cultures make us feel. Press trips are therefore a pretty obvious way to engage people with new routes, destinations, hotels and activities and have been a tactic engaged by all sectors of the travel industry since the dawn of time.
The PR landscape though is ever-changing, and the scrutiny being put on budgets and the ability to showcase ROI leaves many brands wondering if offering press trips will deliver meaningful media coverage.
The ugly truth
Risking stating the obvious, a press trip – also known as a FAM trip – is a hosted media experience where brands invite journalists and content creators to uncover something new in exchange for publicity. The design of each trip can vary greatly, from group activities to self-led holidays, with brand’s catering to a journalist’s every need, free of charge.
It’s a common PR tactic used for visibility but it’s not necessarily the main driver of coverage. At Hatch, we take a channel agnostic approach and select the right tactic based on objective, so as with any campaign, before deciding that hosting a press trip is the right route to take, it’s important to define the end goal.
If you’re looking to generate awareness, create richer storytelling, or build stronger journalist relationships, then it offers value. However, if your stakeholders are asking for audience growth, sales conversions or improved search ranking, it’s not entirely black and white in being able to demonstrate ROI.
To maximise the success of your press trips and guarantee coverage, it’s a balancing act, and navigating brand expectations alongside journalist need, isn’t always easy. So, how exactly do brands make press trips worth it?
Turning flights into features
Beyond the experience, identify what makes the story relevant and newsworthy. Build the trip around a strong narrative and home in on a specialist angle for each journalist – they will inevitably be required to craft one! Build unique itineraries around this, and don’t overload it. It’s that balance of immersive experiences and “free time” that increases the potential for high-quality feature content.
Timing is everything
Think about timing, for both the newsworthiness of the trip – why now? – and for maximising the quality of your attendees. Most publications require journalists to attend press trips on their own time; this means using their annual leave and maximising weekends. To secure your desired writers, try to organise trips three to six months in advance and host over weekends, bank holidays or school holidays. Now, the brand commercial team isn’t going to favour this as its peak time for demand – but this is what we mean by balance, so think quality over quantity.
Media matching
It’s sometimes easy to think “it’s a free holiday, why wouldn’t they want to come”, but just like the PR landscape, the media landscape is changing at pace. Tighter editorial budgets mean fewer staff writers, and the fluctuating guidance on whether freelancers must pay tax on gifted PR trips, means that securing media for hosted trips is becoming increasingly difficult. Plus, many publication houses are imposing stricter guidelines to uphold the quality of their content – for example, The Times do not accept group press trips and will only accept exclusive content.
To create an enviable crowd of journalists, draw on pre-existing relationships and do your research on new ones you’d like to develop. Consider relevant verticals that best reach your audience, who can reach your benchmarks for coverage ROIs and timelines for delivery. Then consider whether a group trip or an individual trip where writers can bring their family or a plus-one is your best option, and offer them assets, exclusivity or unique angles to match. This is how long-term relationship value is built.
Stand out from the crowd
Press trip reviews are often the foundation of inspirational long form feature content seen in weekend papers and monthly magazines, so demand for inclusion is high and editors are often spoiled for choice when it comes to the offer of press trips.
You should immediately communicate what makes your experience different from anything else they’re being pitched. Do you have specialists available for each element of the trip, for example. Offer one-to-one interviews, behind-the-scenes access, and trust journalists with editorial independence. Combine this with a robust follow up strategy and you’re on the road to increasing your media coverage.
So, are press trips a PR goldmine or an expensive gamble? The honest answer is that it depends. The value doesn’t lie in guaranteed coverage. They’re a relationship and storytelling tool, that leads to media coverage.
Press trips don’t fail to deliver because they don’t work – they fail because they’re misunderstood.
To see an example of when press trips work well, drop us a line a hello@hatch.group.
