It's all about... PR in the tourism industry

Why use PR for the tourism and hotel industry? In advertising, a tour operator or hotel can publish its perfect scores on customer service or 95% occupancy rates year over year, but these messages are taken by customers these days with a proverbial grain of salt, because they know that in advertising, the hotel’s messaging is censored . PR generates stories written by trusted, third parties. Customers are more likely to trust a journalist’s integrity because they must remain unbiased.

Think about it this way: you could spend a couple of thousand euro’s for an advertisement in a newspaper or you could use PR to generate a FREE article in that same newspaper that consumers are much more likely to read, believe and act upon. Seems much better for your return on investment?

Done properly, public relations is a highly effective tool for generating awareness and visibility for a tour operator, hotel chain or brand. It can deliver a message of credibility that no advertising program comes close to. Public relations is so much more than the distribution of press releases: it’s about telling a story, an appealing story, that will generate interest and enter into the consciousness of potential customers. It’s about gaining recognition and mitigating negative attention. It’s about defining who and what a tour operator or hotel is and delivering that message to the public. Compared with advertising, PR can be a lot less expensive. Whether you choose to do PR in-house or hire a specialist agency, the cost of PR can be much lower than a traditional advertisement campaign.

Building a solid public relations strategy is important. Unlike marketing or advertising, PR is not as resource-intensive; there are no media buys or direct mail blitzes associated with it. But effective PR requires the ability to tell great stories, that come from the best aspects of a tour operator or hotel’s operations, as well as creative and strategic thinking from people who understand the tourism market and who also understand media’s needs.

Five important PR rules:
• Be newsworthy and think big
• Emphasize your best assets
• Know your audience
• No comment is no answer at all
• Understand PR and manage your expectations

To be sure, PR is labor-intensive and is not automated process like sending out a mass email to a customer database. There is a lot of writing, a lot of strategizing, a lot of communicating and a lot of relationship-building with hundreds of media outlets. But these outputs can result in great outcomes if you put in the time and effort, which can continue to grow and expand over time. And in time, media will be calling you for comment, instead of you calling to pitch stories.