While the controversy continues over the best metrics to apply when measuring the ROI of travel media coverage, one indisputable fact remains – first-person feature coverage of your destination and events reap exponentially greater benefits than paid advertising.
Call it the credibility factor – discriminating travelers aren’t going to buy into your tagline, no matter how authentic and unique it is, without proof. What better way to support your brand promise than with personal anecdotes and insider tips on attractions, restaurants, hotels and retail hot spots strategically placed in travel guides, travel blogs and print/digital media in your destination feeder markets?
Herein lies the power of the media FAM, or familiarization tour. An important component of your annual PR and marketing plan, a carefully crafted tour of your destination’s most unique assets, offered to a select group of travel journalists, is a sensible investment and integral to your public relations efforts.
Take these steps to maximize the benefit of your media FAM investment:
- Identify writers influencing your destination’s primary audience – boomers, meetings & convention groups, motorcoach tours, Gen Xers. Create an itinerary to showcase your assets in that market.
- For instance, include unique event venues for writers covering the meeting & convention business and visit attractions that offer group experiences and pricing for journalists covering the group tour market.
- Experiential tours make the most compelling and enthusiastic coverage of your destination.
- Offer experiences available to the writer’s target audience. FAM participants won’t want to cover venues and experiences that their audience can’t experience as well.
- Offer opportunities for each partner to showcase their venue and experience. In exchange for this face time with journalists, partners should be willing to cover associated costs.
- Only include reliable destination partners that offer consistently high customer service and ones that value the partnership with their destination management organization.
- Make media coverage easy for the journalists by coordinating pre-arrival communications and post-FAM follow-up through your destination management organization.
- Identify a handful of local destination experts to accompany the tour, then enlist their support in managing your social media channels.
- Know your writers and match experiences, venues and physical requirements of the tour to the demographics of your FAM.
- Switch up your guides throughout each day to keep the information and experience fresh. Make sure everyone on your FAM team stays friendly & flexible.
- Transportation is key. The best itinerary can be ruined with late arrivals, traffic back-ups, travel routes through the “bad” part of town and a too hot/too cold shuttle.
- Keep the schedule light on arrival & departure day.
- Schedule down time. Ultimately, you want writers to experience your destination as you would like your visitor to experience it. An itinerary crammed with too many tour stops and too much food may deliver quantity, but it won’t result in a glowing travel blog.
Attention to the details will build long-lasting relationships with travel journalists. What strategies have you used to garner feature coverage for your destination?
