Travel & Tourism Public Relations
Travel & tourism brands need strategic public relations to stand out in a competitive market. EPR has created dozens of media relations campaigns designed to drive visitors to its clients who represent top hotels, attractions and cities. In addition, it has developed programs targeting meeting planners and influencers in the travel & tourism industry.
We can assist travel & tourism clients with:
- Hotel, attraction and destination grand openings
- Group and individual press trips for travel writers
- Foster ticket sales by working with travel influencer groups
- Support event bookings by tapping into EPR’s extensive network of meeting and event planners
- Position key stakeholders as travel & tourism industry experts by generating interviews
- Visitor campaigns and destination marketing
Our Travel & Tourism Experience
Examples: Estes crafted a media and meeting planner event in Chicago for Louisville Tourism centered around bourbon. We enlisted the help of Wild Turkey master distillery Jimmy Russell to create a special evening featuring a Louisville chef, Kentucky cuisine, bourbon tastings and entertainment. Regional meeting planners and media were invited to attend this reception-style event.
The city of Hilton Head Island enlisted EPR to create awareness of its culinary community among the James Beard Foundation and its members. EPR created a low country evening featuring chefs, spirits and ingredients from Hilton Head Island at the prestigious James Beard Foundation’s culinary center in New York. In addition, they set up deskside media appointments.
The B-Line
Travel & Tourism Case Study: The B-Line
Although Northern Kentucky is the official gateway to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail, the Northern Kentucky Convention & Visitors Bureau (meetNKY) created “The B-Line” to help bring additional recognition to the region. The B-Line is a self-guided bourbon trail highlighting more than two dozen restaurants, bars, distilleries, shops and other bourbon-centric attractions throughout Covington, Newport, Independence, Burlington, Sparta, Augusta, and Maysville.
In 2022, on behalf of meetNKY, Estes Public Relations launched a six-month travel & tourism campaign to build brand awareness around The B-Line as a bourbon-centric destination for consumers interested in culinary and bourbon travel. EPR’s campaign included crafting successful pitches, curating three-day itineraries for media attending, booking travel and coordinating logistics, and providing additional information and assets needed.
As the result of this campaign, Estes Public Relations generated more than 40 articles with a UVM of 205,858,104 and an estimated ad value equivalency of $1.9 million.
According to the findings of Zartico, in 2022, 75.9 million travelers (about twice the population of California) visited Kentucky, spending $8.9 billion across Kentucky with the Northern Kentucky region representing the second-largest impact region in the state at $1.95 million. This was an 18% increase from 2021 with the growing interest in bourbon being cited as a top reason visitors are coming to Kentucky.
Patrick Properties Hospitality Group
Travel & Tourism Case Study: Patrick Properties Hospitality Group
Since 1997, Patrick Properties Hospitality Group has lovingly restored landmark properties and historic estates, inspiring unparalleled backdrops for special events in downtown Charleston, S.C. These include top wedding locales like the 19th-century William Aiken House and majestic Lowndes Grove — downtown Charleston’s last great waterfront estate. PPHG’s celebrated portfolio also showcases an art deco-style cinema, The American Theater; the picturesque River House at Lowndes Grove; and Parcel 32, an intimate event venue featuring a stunning upstairs cocktail lounge that makes it the perfect setting for rehearsal dinners, welcome parties, and micro weddings. Patrick Properties hosts more than 500 events annually across its suite of properties, and its exclusive in-house coordination, event and design division, Peninsula Events, serves all five iconic venues.
Having worked with PPHG since 2011 on their public and media relations efforts, the company entrusted Estes Public Relations with full-scale management of its entire social media presence in 2020. This included content creation and post scheduling for three Instagram business accounts and seven Facebook business pages, Instagram story scheduling and real-time posting, daily monitoring of all social platforms, and timely, interactive consumer engagement.
As part of Estes Public Relations’ comprehensive strategy for Patrick Properties Hospitality Group, our primary objectives were to maximize brand awareness through organic engagement across all Instagram and Facebook accounts and increase both exposure and sales of the company’s iconic, historic venues by individually showcasing the multi-purpose use of each venue.
From 2020 to 2o23, Patrick Properties Hospitality Group saw consistent growth across all platforms with approximately 33,000 combined followers across all 10 of their social media accounts.
The brand’s impressive social media presence helped Estes Public Relations garner prime media placements in local, regional and national industry-related digital and print publications — and the client also reported booking three international clients who discovered PPHG through the client’s social media.