The Real Story on Press Trips for Travel Writers

"I had one question about press trips, which I thought you might be able to address on the blog or in the newsletter, if you think it makes sense. I'm wondering which markets accept press trips. As a follow-up, does a writer typically secure the assignment first, or the trip first (there seems to be a chicken-or-egg thing happening there)? Hope you'll be able to address these questions on the site —thanks!"

This was an e-mail from a beginning writer who read Travel Writing 2.0 and then it has come up many times since in my online travel writing course. After all, with the sucky pay and lack of security that often come with being a travel freelancer or blogger in the early stages, the travel perks are one of the main incentives to keep doing it.

press trips for travel writers

I pay for my own travel a good bit because my income can justify it and I do lots of travel hacking for points and miles, but at least half the time I don't. Someone else is footing the bill to get me to come write about Kyrgystan, Panama, Riviera Nayarit, the Czech Republic, Flagstaff, Baja, Nepal, or some other spot on the globe I've gotten invited to the past few years.

So here's the skinny on press trips (sometimes call "fam trips" or "fams" from the word "familiarization").

How press trips for travel writers or bloggers work

A destination, hotel chain, tour company or other interested party will invite writers to come experience what they offer in order to get more publicity and (sometimes) social media attention for that place or business. With traditional press trips, writers are invited as a group, anywhere from 4 to 40 people showing up from various dots on a map to one central place.

The general objective for the organization is to show off the place, tour, or service so the invited writers will publicize it and post photos or video. The objective for the writers is to create content for one or more publications or in the case of videographers, shoot footage to use in videos and gather info for the narration. The writers, it is hoped, will enjoy the trip and want to talk about it.

Depending on how it's organized, those writers will either have every waking minute monopolized with a set itinerary for all, or there will be several interest tracks and/or some individual wandering time. Often this involves being carted from place to place on a van or bus, though at a beach/ski resort or on something like a safari you may stay in one place most of the time.

winery tours

Most or all of your expenses will be covered, including meals—sometimes too many meals that take up a lot of time. Often booze will be covered if it's allowed by the hosting organization. (Some are government entities and can't pay for that, though a participating sponsor like a winery can). They want you to enjoy yourself and feel positive about the experience.

The schedules for these trips can be either relatively laid-back, especially for something like a cruise, or they can be "Up at 6:00, in bed at midnight" affairs that can leave no time to even answer your piling-up e-mails, much less write anything down.

In some cases, especially for a tour company, you may be responsible for your own airfare or driving, then the rest is taken care of when you join up with the group. There may be a mix of writers and general public customers. Ask about tipping if you're joining regular paying customers on a scheduled tour because that can add up to hundreds of dollars in expectations.

There's also something called individual hosting where you come in by yourself and experience what you need to for a specific article slant. Obviously this is much more desirable in the pursuit of a good narrative story and you don't waste as much time on irrelevant stops, but for both budget and logistics reasons, this is often not possible.

I often employ a hybrid approach where I've already planned to go somewhere on my own, but I'll reach out to the tourism bureau to see if they want to get involved with lodging, attractions, or local tours. If they do, I create more content. If they tell me nicely to go F myself, as Switzerland Tourism recently did, then I write next to nothing about the destination. I meet any obligations related to what any private sector business supplied, like a hotel stay or tour, and then I just have a good time as a traveler otherwise, with no expected deliverables.

Who gets invited on press trips?

Somebody is paying for all this: usually a whole combination of organizations. That's often why the schedule is so packed—everyone who chipped in is on the itinerary in some form. This is, at heart, a business transaction. They spend marketing money with the hope you'll provide a good return on investment. Add up airfare, hotel, meals, and transportation and they could be spending thousands of dollars per press person.

So they invite the people who will get them the most impact: high-circulation magazines, high-traffic websites, TV shows, or influential blogs with a niche that aligns well with their desired demographics. In some cases, they believe social media is going to make a big difference so they bring in Instagram "influencers" who will get lots of likes on flattering photos and stories/reels. Or people who have a lot of followers on Tik-tok. Next year it will likely be another flavor of the day.

Are YOU worth it?

Assuming each person invited is costing the organization three or four thousand dollars in coverage, the organization needs to show a return on investment on that amount. So what you can deliver needs to be worth it for them to invite you on that press trip.

For editors of magazines, major website editors, and bloggers that get millions of readers, it's a no-brainer. Of course you're worth inviting if you're one of those. If the subject matter of the publication is a good match for what they're promoting, easy decision. The next tier is freelancers with a good track record or a set assignment. This is more risky now in the age of declining and disappearing print outlets, so you may need to provide an assignment letter from a publication. (More on that in a minute.)

If you're a writer without a good portfolio of placed articles, or your blog doesn't have a strong or highly engaged readership you can substantiate, you're a riskier bet. This doesn't mean you can't get invited, but you have to make a very strong case that what you deliver will be worthwhile. It's a good idea to have a media kit page or hard stats on the About Me page of your blog or website. Or get that info and have it ready if you're writing for someone else's site. Ideally this shows traffic, social media followers, e-mail newsletter subscribers, or anything else (like awards won or media mentions) that gives you credibility.

Tequila tourism

Can you contact a destination or company and ask to be hosted?

Yes, by all means be proactive and reach out to PR people that are a good match, assuming you've got a good pitch backed up with stats and you can clearly explain why you want to visit this place. It's common practice to contact the PR representative and ask if it's possible to get on a press trip or arrange individual hosting.

If you can get yourself there without a flight—another reason to report on your local region—they'll be much more receptive. Or can you use frequent flier mileage? (One credit card sign-up bonus can get you free flight tickets to almost anywhere in the world round-trip.)

Can you tack this onto a vacation? Can you get there overland from somewhere else you're going? If so, mention that and your odds go up substantially. The hosts get many things for free or discounted because of local relationships, but these days flights almost always require a hit to the budget. Sometimes that hit can be more than $1,000.

If you get a no, don't push it. Ask when it would be okay to try again, as in the next budget cycle. Some PR people keep a folder of forms filled out by writers who have expressed an interest. They pull it out when a the next press trip gets planned. If it's a "please don't ever call us again," move on to somewhere else. They don't think your angle/publication can be justified. Try again when you have a bigger audience or better outlets. Or just write about a neighbor that's more receptive or more media-savvy.

Understand that some of these people get bugged to death by bloggers/writers who should not even have the nerve to ask in the first place. Some PR people have told me they get a hundred requests a month from mommy bloggers that don't seem to have any readers besides their immediate family. One famous Mexican resort area gets a hundred every week.

Make the point person's job easy by showing real influence and specifically saying what you'll do for them. Don't make it too long in the initial pitch. The clearer the message, the better chance of success. You can negotiate specifics later if there's a positive response.

Who will accept stories from hosted trips?

If you're a blogger, you're likely mixing hosted and independent trips in content and it doesn't really matter. But for a few old-school outlets, there's at least a pretense of separation between editorial and advertising, even though the line is much thinner everywhere than it used to be.

Whether contributors could accept hosted travel used to be a big issue, with many magazines saying they wouldn't publish an article that came out of a press trip. These days, however, a better question is, who won't? This is becoming a shorter list every year as some formerly nose-in-the-air newspapers and magazines have had to lower or cut expenses for freelancers. Without paying expenses, they don't have the right to tell writers they can't accept hosting.

Even the National Geographic organization has relented, saying they just need to make sure you're not promising anything and that you're transparent about who paid for everything. Right up until National Geographic Traveler print magazine went under, however, the former editor was staunchly saying they would never ever allow articles from hosted trips. After they went out of business, the remaining online division changed course because they had to. And guess what? Nobody noticed because the content didn't change a bit.

Some still have the balls to do it anyway, the New York Times being a prime example. Any assignment from there is guaranteed to lose money for the writer, but people do it anyway because of the prestige factor. (As a result, most travel articles in the NYT sound like they were written by the rich and privileged, the people who can afford to still write for them.)

Most publications have gotten more sensible as they've noticed it doesn't make one bit of difference anyway in the articles: a good writer is going to tell the truth whether the expenses are paid by the publisher or by the industry; either way it's not coming out of the writer's pocket. The influence of advertisers is much stronger anyway, including what even gets published to start with. There's a good reason that magazines do an entire issue about Hawaii or the Caribbean: it's a chance to round up more advertisers who then magically get featured in articles.

Some of the few newspapers that still have a travel section prohibit stories that came from hosted trips. Maybe a half dozen travel magazines still have this policy in some form. I don't know of any popular independent website or blog that would prohibit it since almost none of them pay expenses, but you may occasionally run into this. Most just want you to let them know up front as you are discussing the assignment.

Do I need a firm assignment as a freelancer?

Here's where the question of whether the chicken or the egg came first is the issue. If you're a freelancer only, usually you need a set assignment or a regular column to be approved. Unlike all the bloggers out there, you don't have editorial control, so you are a risk. Nearly every PR person has gotten burned at some point by someone who went on a trip and then never published a story.

Even if the freelancer had an assignment, things can go wrong. Maybe the the assigning editor getting laid off or the magazine went out of business. But the best, most reliable writers always have a plan B. Going all the way back to the 1990s when I was just a freelancer, I've never gone on a press trip that hasn't resulted in at least one article being published. Usually I produce several no matter what. Now the fact that I run several popular blogs and a couple of online magazine means I get twice as many invites as I can accept. I'm a sure thing.

If you are not as experienced and don't have editorial control anywhere, you will need to get an assignment first. That's even harder than getting on the trip, especially since if it's a trip with a big group, multiple other writers will be sending out queries on the same place/subject. Plus most editors, including me at Perceptive Travel, are very reluctant to assign something to someone who is visiting a place for the first time. The angle is usually too nebulous. There are too many things that can send a planned story in a totally different direction.

When I attended an editors panel discussion at a NATJA convention, one of the editors from a major, well-known publication said, "If the destination is asking you for an assignment letter up front, that shows they don't really know how this business works. You might not want to work with someone like that."

It's a Catch-22 and the only way around it is to have a go-to publication where you're a regular or run your own site. Hey at least that second option is viable. Before the web came along, we writers had to query print editors for every trip. In actual envelopes with a stamp! Now the top 100 travel bloggers are getting more readers than most remaining travel magazines, so they can reach more people and it's a sure thing.

How to improve your odds of getting invited on press trips

There are natural things you can do to make the cut on more press trip invites. Going to conferences helps a lot once you have something to talk about. There are ones geared to matching writers with destinations and brands, such as International Media Marketplace in New York, TBEX on several continents, or the media offshoot sections of IPW or WTA. If you belong to NATJA or SATW, you'll meet a lot of PR representatives at their conferences. You can also monitor sites devoted to travel writing for trip announcements. See the travel writing resources section and also network on Facebook or LinkedIn for leads.

If you're active on social media and have a lot of engagement, that can help too with some brands and destinations, sometimes being reason enough on its own. If you're the clear top writer in a specific niche or place, you have a higher chance of getting invited on trips that involve that niche or place.

The best thing to do is raise your traffic and influence if you're a blogger, raise your profile and your number of good clippings if you're a freelancer. Stats matter a lot because they go onto a report for the boss, so have readership and follower numbers available or on your media kit.

Then when you get invited, deliver in a big way so you can do it again.

Last, this should be obvious, but it doesn't seem to be: make yourself easy to reach. Put a real e-mail address and working phone number on your site, not just one of the contact forms we all look at as "do not contact" forms. Then respond quickly to any invite you get, even if it's to decline. Many PR agencies represent a whole long list of clients, so even if that trip's not right for you, another may be later.

Hey, they should be paying ME to go on this trip!

Some people don't just get invited on press trips. They actually get paid to be there—either a daily rate or a set fee for a higher level of deliverables than someone who's not getting paid. If you go on a press trip, there's usually no set expectation besides an article or two and some social postings. If you're getting paid, there's a contract and you're now a paid client, not just an "earned media" writer.

First though, a step back. Just 15 years ago, print writers got far more invites and attention than bloggers. It took a long time for travel destinations to wake up from their slumber, take a look around, and realize that most people were getting their travel planning info online, not from dead trees. They started to realize that while those 400-word magazine mentions may look nice hanging on a wall or on a "as seen in" web page, they don't move the needle much in terms of visitors. Most travel research happens on the web and print publications are still shedding subscribers and advertisers at an alarming rate—if they're surviving at all.

Now in the post-pandemic 2020s, many marketing and PR people are still catching up when it comes to the travel space. They are still usually organized in old silos of "earned media" having one budget and "marketing and advertising" having another. Remember that most convention and visitors' bureaus (CVBs) are government agencies. They're not too quick to adapt.

In Latin America and in many developing countries, cronyism rules and the whole agency can be a clueless bunch of political appointees and friends of the governor or president. When there's an election, the whole lot may be replaced with a new set of clueless cronies. You can call, e-mail, send a letter, or shout through a megaphone in Spanish and probably still not get anyone's attention. There's a reason you don't read much about travel in these places. And a reason why their messaging seems so out of touch.

The more tech-savvy a country's population is, the more likely they respect online media and understand the power of it. For some it will take years more to get there. Maybe not until the old guard has completely died off or retired.

The good news for bloggers is that they are finally getting recognized for the serious clout they wield. They have true influence because they can impact buying decisions, not just throw up an article with pretty pictures for dreamers on a treadmill. In some cases there has been an overreaction in the other direction, with a destination shunning traditional media and spending all of their budget on paid influencers and social media. Sometimes the invite lists are prepared hastily, without much research, and then the destination complains that they got burned by fakers. (News alert: if you're not going to vet them, Instagrammers are going to buy followers to inflate their numbers. It's cheap and fast.)

Yes, some people get paid to go on trips. Their justification is that they need to be paid for their time as a professional. They would make more money sitting in their home office than traveling to a destination they're not thrilled about going to, so they want to be compensated for coming there and highlighting the place or company for their audience.

I would argue if your site is doing well you're getting paid even while you sleep, so you don't need the subject of your articles to pay you on top of that. Plus then they're your real boss who is paying you and they can dictate terms. Every once in a while I'll take that deal though if editorial integrity is ensured in the contract.

Understand though that this implies much more work. You are now a contracted employee of the organization paying the invoices and you will likely have a long list of things you must produce, in a set amount of time. With spreadsheets and reports. You might want to sign up for InfluenceKit to make those reports fast and pretty.

A bit of parting advice...

No matter how this all works out for you, remember that too much of a good thing can be detrimental. I know a blogger who went on 27 press trips in one year, all around the world. Much of what she produced on the page was worse than what she used to write and by the end she was really burned out.

I know a few really famous bloggers that do almost all of their travel independently and rarely do any press trips, paid or otherwise, because they got tired of the obligations that didn't always fit their angle well. They'd rather go where they want and write about what they want, plus they have control over their schedule to get the real work done in one place.

It's physically tough on your body to do this and it's likely the work itself will suffer too if you're on the road too much. Take time to reflect, to do deep work, and to get reasonably caught up in between those trips where you're on the move constantly. Sometimes the best thing a travel blogger can do for their career is to stop traveling for a while and produce more content, produce better articles, and get fully caught up on the to-do list.

Also, it's tempting to say yes to any invite, but first ask, "Is this right for me?" If it won't resonate with your audience and it doesn't fit your niche/slant as a blogger, you should probably pass. If you're going to have to struggle to get it placed in an outlet as a freelancer, you probably shouldn't go.

And remember, if you do get invited, you are a guest. Don't be that writer who is a diva or a jerk.

How about you? What did you learn on your path to press trips acceptance?

This post on press trips for travel writers was updated in June of 2023. 

 

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