DESTINATION MEDIA AND PUBLIC RELATIONS

Tourism destinations need public relations professionals that can manage media relationships, news coverage, crisis management, and more. As most leisure travel is consumer-driven, it is critical that your destination emerge as a top choice that comes to mind when consumers are making their travel decisions. Public relations activity is a powerful and cost effective way to promote a destination to targeted worldwide audiences. Editorial coverage generated by public relations activity is a valuable mechanism. It can position a destination as a desirable, not-to-be missed experience.

It is most important to remain on the top of tourism trends and news, to maintain relationships with the travel press and understand how to navigate and integrate traditional and social media PR methods. Designing and managing effective and innovative tourism public relations strategies makes the difference: by tapping into the established audiences of well-known traditional and online media outlets; by building relationships with editors, reporters, and bloggers who can maximize your destination story’s readership among the target market; and leverage the unique aspects of the destination to host highly-visible events that generate buzz and inspire journalists to talk to their audiences about your place.

• Media Database: To ensure efficient media outreach, you need a comprehensive list of media contacts while understanding their audience and areas of interest e.g. National daily and weekly key newspapers and newsmagazines, travel magazines, business travel magazines, wellness and lifestyle magazines, women’s magazines, food magazines, architecture magazines, interior design magazines, general travel trade publications, magazines for event, conference and incentive planners, hospitality magazines, on-board magazines etc.
• Audience Target: PR messages to travelling public, business and leisure travellers, potential guests or customers, tour operators and wholesalers, travel agents, travel guide publishers and events and incentive planners.
• Press Packages : You need a multimedia kit that provides detailed background information for journalists and free content for use in their articles.
• Media Pitches:  Public relations activity can result in editorial exposure in targeted, credible third-party outlets, which offers legitimacy and considered comment by a reputable source. A journalist will usually produce stories as a result of first-hand experience of their subject matter or via carefully angled news stories generated by a professional practitioner.
• Press Trips: You need to invite media to experience your place firsthand which will provide for the best opportunity available to write thoughtful, effective pieces about your destination.
• Press Events : You need to hold press events at the target market that creates an immersive experience for journalists through live musicians, wine, food, performers, and multimedia.

A strong public relations campaign should include a range of elements, including:

• traditional targeted media relations activity, which targets print, broadcast and online media. The purpose is to communicate your experience or product via a story idea, media release or multi media kit and should include images and/or footage;
• online media strategy targeting social networking sites;
• inviting media onsite to experience your product first-hand;
• a press conference to announce a major new initiative;
• a media stunt;
• celebrity endorsement activity;
• a media or consumer event;
• a consumer promotion that includes a product prize offer.

Destination Marketing Plan

Determining the competitive advantage: A tourism audit needs to be undertaken to assess the product strengths. From this, careful analysis must then identify which strengths offer superior benefits when compared to competing destinations and how these match with consumer wants and needs. In determining competitive advantage,an individual product may have limited capacity to attract visitors, but when combined with a range of similar products, a competitive advantage can be developed.

Positioning: A positioning statement reflects how a destination is promoted to identified target markets. Positioning involves the consistent marketing of the competitive advantages of the area and should have an impact on all aspects of the promotion strategy.

Target Marketing: Rather than applying a generic message to all markets, target marketing is the development of a specific message tailored to the needs and aspirations of certain market segments. Target marketing involves targeting the markets that will be the most responsive to the product offerings of the destination. Target markets need to be large enough and accessible enough to be viable. The key to successfully defining target markets is research.

Communicating the right message: To maximise resources, communication strategies should be strategically planned and monitored. To be effective, marketing messages need to clearly emphasise the product strengths of the area - generic marketing messages such as ‘we have it all’ are no longer satisfactory.

Developing methods for evaluating performance: Benchmarks need to be developed upon which performance can be regularly measured. These may include visitor numbers, visitor nights, expenditure, satisfaction levels, traffic counts, room occupancy, awareness of the region and enquiries. Performance measures should focus on yield rather than sheer numbers.

The Marketing Plan should include the following 10 key sections:

1. Introduction: introduces the plan, sets the plan in context, gives the time span, methodology and addresses the key issues,
2. Vision: where does the destination want to be within a specified time period; what does it want to be recognised for ?,
3. Product strengths: what are the destination’s key selling features ?,
4. Goals: defines the primary goals of the marketing program,
5. Target markets: this section should provide a brief description of each of the target markets and the reasons why these markets have been selected; how does the destination’s product strengths fulfill the needs and aspirations of each segment?,
6. Objectives: each marketing objective needs to be clearly stated,
7. Strategies: each strategy designed to achieve the individual objectives should be detailed and costed (the organisations responsible for the implementation should be noted),
8. Implementation: should show the timing of each stage of the plan, preferably in the form of a chart,
9. Monitoring: this section should describe the method/s used to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the marketing efforts,
10. Budget: summarises the costings for the overall marketing plan.