Let's Talk About: 5 Press Trip Invite Do's and Don'ts (Part 1 of 5)
Due to SO many requests, I'm rolling out highlights from the AMA session with Aly and Alice last week
Hello, subscribers!
If you missed last week’s press trip-focused AMA session, cohosted with 2 of my favorite travel writers — Aly Walansky and Alice Dubin — don’t worry, we’ve got your back! We’re sharing the highlights over the next few weeks, including some content that even the attendees didn’t get to hear because we ran out of time!
We received so much great feedback, including:
“Thank you, all, for a phenomenal press trips AMA – I learned a lot, which I will very much keep in mind for those Italy invitations!”
“Thank you very much for allowing me to partake in today's press trip seminar. The information provided was extremely helpful and I know that I will be taking everything learned and utilizing it when planning future press trips.”
We firmly believe that the ROI you get out of a press trip is directly proportional to the thought and care you put into your press trip planning and execution — and that’s why we’re sharing all this insider info!
Before we dive in, we want to set the record straight on one thing so we’re all on the same page:
Press trips definitely aren’t a free vacation for us. In fact, they aren’t even a vacation and oftentimes we LOSE money by attending them.
We’ve heard some comments from publicists over the years along the lines of, “Well, you get all these amazing free vacations …” No, press trips aren’t vacations. Are they fun? Usually! Do we enjoy them? Usually. Are we grateful for such cool jobs? Absolutely!
But please don’t forget that we’re working our butts off on these trips — not only by running around with you for 12-18 hours a day, but also trying to keep up with client emails, editor requests, source interviews, and assignments (not to mention our families and personal matters, etc.) in the little bit of downtime we get. This often means we’re answering emails or getting writing done at midnight or 5 am.
And we’re often having to turn down assignments that would need to be done during a press trip because there’s not enough time in our schedule to get it done, which means we are actually losing money in the process.
Choosing to attend a press trip is a massive time commitment and monetary investment on our end, just like it is on your end. We all need to prove ROI at the end of the day.
So we’re starting at the beginning of the process, with invitations:
Part 1: Invite Do’s and Don’ts
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