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Discount travel for bloggers

January 13, 2006 by Neil Maclean 

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In his post prophesying imminent disruption to the PR industry, Silicon Valley Watcher Tom Foremski predicts the decline in many traditional PR practices.

At some point companies will realize that the ROI on being mentioned in a story in the Wall Street Journal or New York Times, or in trade publications, makes little difference to their bottom line. Press coverage might boost the egos of company senior executives but it doesn’t do much for overall sales.

Tom, some companies have got there already.
As I just commented on Morgan McLintic’s blog, a travel CEO recently told me:

“We used to kill for a feature about one of our trips in the Times. But we’ve looked at the results, done our sums and now it’s not worth much more than a classified ad”

In fact in many cases, it is worth a good deal less.

In the travel PR business, a decent feature in the Times or any national paper, often comes about as a result of a press trip, either solo or in a group.

Now even if an airline supplies the seats (increasingly rare) and a hotel provides the rooms and transfers, you still have to factor in the PR cost of arranging the trip.

Maybe even accompanying the trip (I have been on trips accompanied by no fewer than two PR shepherdesses whose job it was to make sure we didn’t get left behind or insult the hotel manager).

That’s when press trips start to make no financial sense at all.

So the answer is to take out a classified ad instead? No, it is to add social media to the game plan and to raise your profile on the internet (where a large percentage of your target customers have shifted their attention and are currently scanning the search results for vacations just like yours).

And the PR agency which can help you do that will triumph in a pitch against the PR agency who still barely knows how to use email.

It’s not hard for me to predict discounted travel for bloggers will feature in 2006.

It’s already on my agenda for a meeting next Tuesday.

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Comments

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    I can't see any reason why you wouldn't include bloggers in the 'press trips' if you know they are influential. Communiations is all about reaching your target audience. Whether they read the print press, online media or blogs, doesn't matter per se. Many blogs have higher readerships than monthly publications or local press, so should certainly be included in the comms plan. Heck, The White House even included a blogger in its briefing recently.

    Any free trips for tech PR bloggers going, will be gratefully recieved (ahem).
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    Thanks Morgan and sorry I spammed your site with extra double trackbacks.
    My thought is to do away with press trips altogether where they are not economically viable. So, sorry, there wouldn't be press trips for bloggers either. (and anyway, you're whole life sounds like one big holiday out there in the sun) :-)
    Instead the idea of blogger discounts is for a travel company (we're talking niche here rather than cheap sun, sea and sand) to offer a deal on the total price, or maybe an upgraded room at the other end, in exchange for a bit of linkage in the resulting blog entries.
    Of course they can say what they like when they get there - they are bloggers after all - but that's the risk you take with hacks as well. If they are well-enough loved bloggers, their holiday will pop up in the search engines and hang around on Google a long time after a newspaper travel section has been turned to back to pulp.
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    Ah well - don't ask, you don't get. I'm certainly not complaining about life in SF. The only ones who do are from Southern California, since they think it's too cold.

    Interesting about the discount idea. As a parallel, when I buy a new gadget like a TV or camera, I review it on my blog. When others Google to research the product, my impressions frequently pop up. I'm therefore influencing in some small way their reputation and the perceptions of their prospects. The same will be true of travel, so to do your best to make those impressions favorable would seem an excellent idea.
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    http://feeds.feedburner.com/Techcrunch?m=531) make it easier for purchasers to consult bloggers opinions before they buy.
    I have seen lots of statistics which show how important prosumer content is to travellers when they are deciding where and how to go.
    This is not something companies should leave to chance. The way I see it, my job is to show them how to tilt the balance in their own favour.
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