Archive for March, 2009
Monday, March 30th, 2009
Special thanks to Marina Echavarria of Realm Media Productions, Inc. for inviting me to write a media relations post on Hospitality public relations, by sharing some tips to manage the ever changing scope of the field as it keeps evolving in the industry.
Fun and useful media relations tips on her well-circulated Build-A-Buzz professional PR blog: http://buildabuzz.wordpress.com/
As PR people, sharing information, tips, contacts, and articles is an important part of keeping up our relationships, coming up with new ideas, discussing trends, and of course learning new things as our network expands!
Share on Facebook
Tags: hospitality, media relations tips, PR
Posted in Hospitality, PR | 2 Comments »
Thursday, March 26th, 2009
This Saturday,on March 28, 2009, from 6pm-midnight, the four star boutique Hotel Heritage in Bruges will turn off the lights in the public areas of the property for six hours instead of the customary one hour (8:30p-9:30p). The hotel strives to be sustainable and is introducing several green initiatives through its scheduled renovations. www.hotel-heritage.com
Unfortunately, events like Earth hour are not realized as much as they should. The lack of awareness around this global WWF annual event ties into the continuous conversation of sustaining resources to take action on climate change.
Some hotels are following the ritual from 8:30-9:30 this Saturday, according to my dear friend Mark Johnson’s award winning travel blog, HotelChatter, http://www.hotelchatter.com/tag/Earth%20Hour%20Hotels. I think more hotels should follow suit, create PR around them, and why not go the extra step like the Hotel Heritage will be doing to conserve energy.
It happens to be my birthday on Saturday, so I’ll be sure to help however little I can to prevent global warming.
Share on Facebook
Tags: belgium, bruges, earth hour 2009, hospitality pr, sustainable hotels, WWF
Posted in European Destinations, Hospitality, PR, Top Accommodations | 2 Comments »
Monday, March 23rd, 2009
Hospitality is one of the many industries affected by the downward economy on a global level. Hotels are folding, chains are being bought out, properties are not opening, or they are abandoned in midst of final construction. Other hotel projects remain in blueprints. 2009 is just a bad year for the travel industry, and for hotels it affects departments differently. Fewer meeting conventions and less up-selling mean less revenue. Fewer travelers mean less reservations and possibly lower rates. Your plans to replace all in-room TVs to plasmas are on hold. You’re understaffed and overworking your salaried managers. You have no marketing dollars because it’s all going into running basic operations.
But this is also the best time to reinvent your message, stack your hotel’s priorities, and redefine your audience if necessary. It is so important to keep PR and marketing communications as part of your strategic plan, especially during this unusual downturn. Start by creating a fast action plan and create messages. Talk to employees, other hotel contacts, even competitors, and keep up with what’s happening in the industry. To keep your hotel alive, you need to make changes that sustain momentum, and a strong and healthy PR presence to your guest audience is a vital component of that process.
Share on Facebook
Tags: hospitality, hospitality pr, hotel public relations
Posted in European Destinations, Hospitality, PR, Top Accommodations | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
During a downturn, so many businesses get discouraged with layoffs pending, budget cuts, hiring freezes, and cuts in benefits. As a business, as much as you are fighting to survive, you should make an effort to invest in your existing employees. Internal communications should be a big part of your PR outreach as a company. Even if you have been forced to slash your external PR and marketing budget -which you should still avoid if you can-making sure your employees are informed about how the economy is affecting their workplace is vital to productivity and morale. It’s not about cutting back on the holiday party or stopping the managers’ outings, but about maintaining a continuous flow of communication, and allowing for feedback. Tactics to reach your employees are easier than you think, by organizing assemblys, monthly company-wide meetings, writing in-house newsletters, starting a company blog, and even keeping in touch through an internal social network can motivate staff. These, and many other communication vehicles allow for a healthy business environment that can hopefully survive the economic downturn.
Investing in internal PR communications requires careful attention and will certainly be appreciated by employees in the long term. And that’s the type of employees you probably want to have.
Share on Facebook
Tags: Downturn, employee communication, Internal communications, PR
Posted in Hospitality, PR, Top Accommodations | 2 Comments »
Friday, March 13th, 2009
Just a few days ago Kim Orlando, Founder of TravelingMom.com, was in the lead paragraph of Lauren Sherman’s story in Forbes.com about kids and travel, providing helpful tips and information to the reader. Connecting clients to reporters who are seeking for a reliable source - especially on a tight deadline - must be done strategically. Timing is everything, and effective PR professionals are charged with walking the fine line of helping their clients meet their objectives, and providing a reporter useful, credible and accurate information to make their stories better.
It is generally not known that more than 70% of news stories every day are provided by PR practitioners and the success of each one depends on so many factors… timing, relevance, angle, news worthiness and messaging. Maintaining and keeping up relationships with good reporters obviously makes a huge difference in PR campaigns– even if you are turned down on a story pitch few times it’s ok. Building trust in those media relationships is important. The right story angle coming from the right PR person will eventually make it in!
Share on Facebook
Tags: Media Relations, pitching, PR, travel
Posted in European Destinations, Hospitality, PR, Top Accommodations | No Comments »
Friday, March 6th, 2009
Since messages are everywhere we look nowadays, it’s easy to read an article and forward it to ten people who we think will find it interesting. Everyday, we share information, news stories, funny anectodes, events we would like to attend, video streams, and photos. Each time we forward a message through email, or social networks, it is because we want to create a chain reaction from people we trust. We want to start conversations on topics we find interesting. Recently, we created a Facebook page for the four star Hotel Heritage in Bruges, www.hotel-heritage.com, where we are working on creating a fan base of people interested in traveling to that destination. When the hotel won the 2009 TripAdvisor Award for Best Luxury Accommodation earlier this year, we sent an update to fans to let them know. We opened the topic for discussion and paired it with traditional media relations. Spreading a strong, well-tailored, yet simple message strategically to its audience, helped the hotel with outreach, awareness, exposure and branding.
Consistently examining and re-examining your message will help you determine if it is newsworthy enough to have a viral component.
Share on Facebook
Tags: belgium, bruges, hotel marketing, luxury hotels, PR, viral messages
Posted in European Destinations, Hospitality, PR, Top Accommodations | 1 Comment »
Monday, March 2nd, 2009
While the press release has always been the staple for most successful PR campaigns, over the last few years, it is no longer necessarily viewed as the bread and butter of media relations. Is the press release no longer effective because it is outdated the minute it becomes published? Is it because editors are simply overloaded by too many messages that clutter their real and virtual inboxes? Or is it because the press release today actually has the flexibility to become an ever-evolving communication that effectively lends itself to various outlets? The press release’s role remains to create and disseminate an actual newsworthy item to the public it speaks to. However, its structure and formality is slowly fading. With the arrival of web 3.0 and social media becoming mainstream, updates, announcements and news items become far more interpersonal, viral, and casual. All you need to do is become a fan of something on Facebook and you get all the updates you need. You don’t always need the press release to mediate the process anymore. At the same time it is still one of the most formal methods to credibly inform the public. So, nostalgically, it sounds like the press release is an old but wise communications tool, that will stick around in some form.
So, while I think the content of a well-written press release will continue remain very much viable in the PR process, the vehicles that create the structured message continue to evolve… from the days of handwritten news, to those of the typewriter, to the keyboard, and onto whatever is next.
Share on Facebook
Tags: Media Relations, PR, Press Release, Writing
Posted in European Destinations, Hospitality, PR, Top Accommodations | No Comments »