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Alessia Horwich (00:08):
Welcome to On The Rox, a podcast from Roxhill Media that asks some of the best journalists in the UK for their solutions to the kind of dilemmas that confront PRS daily. We know that there’s not a one size fits all way of communicating with journalists, so we are going direct to the writers in the newsroom to hear how they like to work with PRXSW32s and how to stand out in their inboxes. My name is Alessia Horwich. I’m a former Sunday Times journalist, now the brand director at Roxhill. Today we’re going to be talking about how to pitch hotels to the Telegraph Travel with the hotels editor Rachel Cranshaw. Rachel, we’ve spoken several times before about your role and stuff, but do you know what, I dunno, a huge amount about how you got into journalism and how you found yourself as hotels editor at The Telegraph. Can you tell me a bit about it?
Rachel Cranshaw (00:51):
I’ve been there for 10 years. I’ve always worked on hotels in travel, so I started on that team as a content editor. I was then a senior content editor, then a senior commissioning editor, and then I became hotels editor. Before that I worked at Mumsnet for two years, the parenting website. I worked on their lifestyle content, which included reviews and travel reviews. So that was kind of my way in to travel, I guess. And before that I did an NCTJ, which is an excellent foundation for anyone looking to get into journalism.
Alessia Horwich (01:22):
So you’ve done lots of reviewing through your career. I mean, what is the best thing about doing a hotel review?
Rachel Cranshaw (01:26):
I think the best thing is it’s being able to find places which are an overused phrase, but hidden gems basically. I mean, massively overused phrase, massively overused phrase, but you know what I mean. Those places that you can recommend, that I can recommend to peers, people will genuinely be able to stay at places that under the radar places people might not otherwise be able to find. When I come across those and I know that this is somewhere I can legitimately pass on to people, it’s not a thousand pound a night. That’s really the best thing. I think
Alessia Horwich (02:01):
It’s quite exciting, isn’t it, when you’ve got somewhere that potentially is off? Well, I don’t want to say off the beaten track.
Rachel Cranshaw (02:08):
I know it’s hard not to talk cliches we’re talking about,
Alessia Horwich (02:10):
But yeah, when you find something really great and you want it, you’re enthusiastic about telling people about it. Yes. Do you also like the free food and spa treatments? No, I hate them. It’s a real downside of the job, how many I was thinking about this. The telegraph is so big, it’s such a massive beast. Do you have any idea how many words you PRocess per day, per week, per month about hotels?
Rachel Cranshaw (02:40):
Yes. So I’ve had to work this out. It is more than or in excess of 150,000 Per month.
Alessia Horwich (02:47):
Per month?
Rachel Cranshaw (02:48):
Yes.
Alessia Horwich (02:48):
Oh my gosh,
Rachel Cranshaw (02:49):
It’s so much. So that’s including reviews, features, and hotel guides. Yeah. Yeah. Why are hotels so important to the Telegraph? I guess kind of a different kind of content or our other types of content. We have many different kinds of content. Hotel reviews and hotel guides are, they’re not behind a paywall there. For a lot of people. They’re kind of an entry point to travel. They often, anecdotally when I talk to people, they say, oh yeah, I know there’s reviews. I use them. The scored ones. Yeah, so it might be kind of how they come to us and how they then discover all our other amazing content. They’re a thing in themselves, they’re an ecosystem and a universe and a PRoduct in themselves. We have more than 10,000 of the reviews, which obviously is very unique. You just name
Alessia Horwich (03:29):
Checked the three ways that you cover hotels, but let’s go through them. So there’s the standard reviews with the scores. How many of them do you, because it’s mostly updates now, right?
Rachel Cranshaw (03:39):
Yes.
Alessia Horwich (03:40):
How does it work?
Rachel Cranshaw (03:41):
We’re updating things on a three year cycle and we do it in Priority order of destination. So we’re working through top destinations and that was started was all sort of re kickstarted, I guess you could say. After the pandemic, obviously when travel generally everything was kind of a bit chaotic. So the first third of those were done last year or up until the end of Q1 this year, and we’re currently in the sort of the middle cycle and then we’ll do a third cycle at the end and then it’ll be kind of back to the beginning.
Alessia Horwich (04:17):
When you say destination led, what does that mean? What destinations are you talking about?
Rachel Cranshaw (04:21):
So the places that people are looking at that readers are looking at the most when it comes to hotels, which tends to not be that surPRising. Obviously the Maldives is a big hitter. Lots of cities like Paris, London, Venice, all those sorts of places.
Alessia Horwich (04:39):
And how do you deal with the writers of those reviews? I mean I assume they’re all in situ.
Rachel Cranshaw (04:45):
Most of them are, yes. So for places like the Maldives, it obviously can be a bit harder to have people who actually live in the Maldives.
(04:51):
Yes. For places like that, we tend to have a few people who will go and do one trip and try to do as much as possible, win that trip. But generally, yes, we try to use on the ground resident experts who know the destination really well. They can. Then they’re reviewing everything really, really contextually, which is really important. So they can really confidently say it is a nine out of 10 and it’s the best hotel in this city. I know because I’ve stayed and I’ve reviewed all the other ones.
Alessia Horwich (05:22):
There’s two other ways that you cover hotels. What are they?
Rachel Cranshaw (05:24):
The two other ways are hotel guides. So those are kind of curated roundups of the reviews, so they’re more thematic. So in destinations like Paris for instance, say we will have best luxury hotels, best family friendly hotels, romantic boutique kind of sub genres like that. And those are chosen by, again, it would usually be the local expert. So in an ideal world, it’s the same person who they’ve done most of the reviews and then we’re going to them and saying, okay, now from all of those reviews, can you now pick for us the 10 that are best for families? Say
Alessia Horwich (06:03):
How often are they updated those lists? Are they just like a constantly revolving thing? If a new hotel opens and the writer thinks it merits being on that list and do they just kick one off and then you put it up again and it’s a new or?
Rachel Cranshaw (06:19):
So for those ones, high priority ones could be done as often as two or three times a year, but more likely it would be once a year you’d be looking up for something like that. So obviously if someone emails us and says This place is closed and it needs to come out, obviously something big like that, we would make smaller ad hoc amends. But generally speaking, yeah, the writer is making that pick or the expert is making that pick once a year.
Alessia Horwich (06:48):
The third type, so this is a bit more the bit more newsy thing, the features. What kind of stuff have you been doing recently that is a good example of this type of coverage?
Rachel Cranshaw (06:56):
These days we always are looking for basically wider angles on hotel stories. So that can be kind of trend led. It can be a destination sort of angle on a hotel once upon a time. I think all kind of media outlets generally. There was more of a thing of just being like, oh, this new hotel’s opened and we are going to do a kind of colour read through of it. We don’t really do that anymore. So we’re always looking for real kind of stories.
Alessia Horwich (07:26):
I think we talked about the capsule hotel in London.
Rachel Cranshaw (07:29):
Yes. That’s a really good example. Francesca Seats did that for us. It opened, everyone’s talking about it. It was a great new budget option for London. So we sent someone down.
Alessia Horwich (07:39):
In terms of PRs, the best thing to be thinking about pitching for is this feature hotel thing you think? Do you agree with that?
Rachel Cranshaw (07:46):
I do agree with that, yeah. And I think it’s where, in terms of the relationship between me say and PRs, that’s kind of where it’s most relevant because with reviews and hotel guides, it’s kind of the expert who’s going to be making those selections. So in Rome for instance, our we will go to the Rome expert at the beginning of the year and say, right, this is what needs updating from three years ago, so can you please arrange those stays? And at that point they will obviously review the list, this place is closed down, that needs to come out, blah, blah, blah, this place is opened, it’s really good, let’s swap it in, blah, blah, blah. Making sure obviously that if you’ve got a hotel that you really want to be reviewed, making sure that the expert knows about it obviously is important. But in terms of actually pitching to me, yes, I agree that features and interesting angles, that is PRobably the most fruitful thing I would say.
Alessia Horwich (08:39):
In terms of pitching to you, I mean I’m assuming that you want people pitching to the wider team as well. So do you want to tell me a bit about your team, who’s on it and who does what
Rachel Cranshaw (08:47):
We’ve got Emma Beaumont, who is senior commissioning editor, Harriet Jones, who looks the hotel guides, and then we’ve got two content editors, Patrick Courtney and Harriet Charnock-Bates. Yeah, I mean those are the people that PRs most likely to hear from on a regular basis.
Alessia Horwich (09:07):
In terms of features, how many features are you feeding into the wider team per week?
Rachel Cranshaw (09:11):
Between or five and 10 a month? I would say, and I always say as well, I think the best way to get an idea of what kind of things we’re looking for and what to pitch is just looking at what we do. Now, I say this to writers as well, if you look at the kind of things that we’re publishing, and PRobably actually the easiest way to do that, I’m not just saying this as a way to get newsletter subscribers, but if you subscribe to the Telegraph Travel newsletter, there’s a hotels edition of it once a month, so it’s once a week and then one out of four of those is a hotels one. That’s kind of the, you literally don’t even have to do anything. Then it’ll just arrive in your inbox and you can see the kind of things that we’re publishing and that might spark ideas of other things that you could picture.
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Alessia Horwich (10:42):
So obviously alongside the feature, these three types of hotel features, we’ve got the PRint slots that happen twice a month. How do they work and can PRS really have any involvement with them?
Rachel Cranshaw (10:51):
Yes, so yes, I should have said actually, I suppose you could say there that’s kind of a fourth stream. We don’t think of them as PRint because the Telegraph is completely digital first now. Sorry about that. No, it’s fine. So also I don’t commission them on the basis of PRint. Basically I commission them in the same way I commission features. i.e. What’s the story here? Is this something that someone’s going to want to subscribe to Seller after Reed? They’re British hotels only. That’s quite specific. The two writers that do those are Fiona Duncan and Mark O’Flaherty. If you’ve got a really exciting new but hotel opening and making sure it’s on their radar, giving them plenty of information about what the angle is, what the story is, something that can turn into kind of a much meatier feature and read that’s going to be interesting to people beyond just this hotel exists and is opening.
Alessia Horwich (11:47):
And then also we talked about there’s a nibs section in your newsletter that also goes in the paper.
Rachel Cranshaw (11:55):
Yes. So on the weeks that that column is not running in print, we pick a new opening, a new review that runs in a, it is called West a. So that’s again kind of a rare example of something that it always happens every two weeks and it’s for print. But obviously even those, we’ve commissioned them, obviously they’re live online, we’ve commissioned them as digital hotel reviews.
Alessia Horwich (12:23):
They’re not just British?
Rachel Cranshaw (12:24):
No, no. They can be anywhere. Yeah, they’re anywhere in the world. And at the bottom of that there’s a little a column called Hotel happenings, which is news and brief. Exactly. So that can be a really good place for smaller things that we might not necessarily want to do an entire feature on, but they’re still fun and useful to tell people about.
Alessia Horwich (12:42):
Is there anybody specifically on the team who’s in charge of that?
Rachel Cranshaw (12:45):
Yes. So generally speaking, Patrick, he does that mostly. So he’s the best person to be in touch with all that. Yeah,
Alessia Horwich (12:52):
Great. In terms of pitching to you guys and thinking about coverage, I mean obviously our PRs are very keen to get their hotel reviews done with their score and everything, and that’s taken, that’s more they need to deal with the writers to talk about that. And then the roundups that you guys are doing them dynamically anyway. So if you are sending pitch emails, it’s got to be with a trend, it’s got to be with an idea, it’s got to be with a story. How should that be delivered to you guys in a pitch? What does a really good pitch email look like? What’s in the subject line and when does it land with you? Does it matter that in timing wise?
Rachel Cranshaw (13:24):
Timing wise, I would say no, it doesn’t matter too much. The department, we have a weekly ideas meeting on a Monday, so if I get a really good idea, which is midday or Monday, so if I get a really good idea on my inbox on Monday afternoon that’s not time sensitive, I would kind of wait till the next meeting to pitch that. But equally, if it was time sensitive, we also have a morning ideas meeting every day. So for things like the capsule hotel, that will be the forum for that. So yeah, timing doesn’t matter too much. Subject line, just as clear as possible. I think sometimes if you just put the name of the hotel in it, it’s obviously very easy to miss. You could think it was a PRess release. So I usually just try and as much clarity as possible.
Alessia Horwich (14:14):
What should it say? Like idea or pitch and then the name of the hotel or
Rachel Cranshaw (14:18):
Yeah, yeah, that would be fine. Yeah.
Alessia Horwich (14:18):
Is there anything that you’ve had recently that has really zinged in your inbox that you can remember?
Rachel Cranshaw (14:23):
It was M Collective said to me, there’s a new hotel opening from the Margal Group and it was Palacio de Tavira and they were like, oh, they basically kind suggested a really good angle, which was, it’s in this little place on the agar. It’s kind of a, again, overused but hidden gem. Obviously we wouldn’t say Hidden Gem, but that’s essentially what they were saying. And we’ve been talking to Mary Lussiana, who is our Portugal expert, who writes for us all the time. She’s keen to go. So that was just super easy for me. Everything. Yeah, they hit all the bases. Exactly. Everything I needed was there and I was just like, yes, this is a good idea. Let’s do it.
Alessia Horwich (15:03):
Yeah. So actually that’s a really good idea to go to the writer in the area, get there, kind of sign off and then pitch it round to you to make sure it happens.
Rachel Cranshaw (15:10):
Yes. With that it can be kind of case by case, but generally speaking that if you can see that it’s a writer that clearly we are clearly using them regularly.
Alessia Horwich (15:20):
I mean Mary clearly does all the Portugal stuff.
Rachel Cranshaw (15:21):
Exactly, yeah. Then yes, that’s a good idea.
Alessia Horwich (15:24):
And she wouldn’t come to you directly to pitch it. Is it better that the PR, I mean, I guess the PR,
Rachel Cranshaw (15:28):
Well, no, actually more usually the yes, the writer then would pitch it to me and they might have other ideas for angles. That PRobably is the best way. But again, I say it’s kind of case by case, and this was just like I would’ve taken it from Mary, but I just said it directly and that was fine.
Alessia Horwich (15:49):
What is it that makes a Telegraph hotel? But I’m assuming you’re basically covering most things as long as it appeals to a Telegraph reader
Rachel Cranshaw (15:59):
With the reviews. The reviews are broader than obviously, because they’re not payrolled a broader audience than things that are subscriber only. So we even review hostels, not obviously the most budget basic places, but I mean Capsule Hotel, that’s PRetty budget Generators, things like that, right up to obviously very, very expensive places, reviews wise, a real range, but not so for the features. You need to think more about the audience for that. Yes, I would say so. Yeah. Destination again is obviously really important. When thinking about that, is it somewhere that if it’s in, I can’t think of it somewhere off the top of my head, that somewhere that’s really unsuitable for the average telegraph reader, then perhaps not Malia or somewhere
Alessia Horwich (16:52):
We’ve all been there. In terms of big hotel chains, it’s tricky because obviously lots of PRs represent big hotel chains. How can you pitch a chain hotel, hotel to you?
Rachel Cranshaw (17:02):
One thing that obviously can be really interesting is sometimes you get places that are actually very interesting, historic buildings and properties and hotels in their own, like yes, they are part of a chain, they’ve been bought out or whatever, but we absolutely places like that, we will still kind of consider them as hotels in their own right. For places that are more generic, we definitely do still, of course we review chains for a feature that’d have to be something interesting enough to say about it. So I guess that would be more likely to fall into the category of it’s historic building or something like that. Or like a grand dam that’s come back to life because it’s been taken over by chain or something like that. And then in terms of reviews, when the experts are suggesting places to us, obviously we’re asking them to tell us where is the best in the city. So we probably wouldn’t have multiple of one chain. We’d probably just say to them, just pick the best or the best two, if it’s a really big destination.
Alessia Horwich (18:01):
How important are images for you and should PRs be pitching them with? Well, putting them with their pictures when they’re sending them
Rachel Cranshaw (18:07):
Images are definitely really important. I think it is most often an issue for small independent places if I’ve occasionally had that with the Mark and Fiona and the British hotels. Obviously I love when they find a really small independent place, but if it hasn’t got pictures, then we do have a problem. We just can’t obviously run it. If it doesn’t, do you
Alessia Horwich (18:28):
Ever shoot?
Rachel Cranshaw (18:29):
Yeah, we can and can and do, but it definitely makes things much easier if there are great pictures ready to go.
Alessia Horwich (18:37):
And I’m guessing that you have to have both orientations now or they all landscape images,
Rachel Cranshaw (18:44):
Mostly landscape, but sometimes portrait. And what we’re doing a lot more of these days is getting writers taking their own images of them. And for something like that, even if we’ve got really lovely PR images, we might still send a photographer so that we can get the writer in situ.
Alessia Horwich (19:00):
So you’re a PR, you’ve got a hotel, you want to get a story to you. What’s your three golden rules for pitching? Do your research. Okay. What does that mean? Subscribe to our newsletter?
Rachel Cranshaw (19:13):
No, look at the, you’re just trying to please just subscribing numbers. Now look at the kind of content that we’re publishing so that you have a clear idea of whether this is relevant to us and how it could be relevant. And if you’ve got a specific idea of format, what you’re suggesting it for, that’s obviously really helpful. Clear subject lines in emails, how much it costs is always going to be helpful actually, because I often with writer pictures, I will go back saying, how much is it per night? That will massively affect if it’s an amazing bargain, obviously we definitely want to hear about that and highlight that to people. You’ve done your research so that then you have an understanding of, particularly with features, you have an understanding of who a reader actually is, not who you think they are.
Alessia Horwich (20:00):
Do you want to tell us who your reader is?
Rachel Cranshaw (20:01):
It’s not anything like vastly really, really astonishing that they’re going to be usually leaning kind of older, higher spending, well travelled. I think the thing you have to remember as well is that our readers are, they’re readers of the telegraph generally of the entire, all those different streams of content. Admittedly, some of them might just come to us for travel, but in terms of being able to grab people’s attention, sometimes people will suggest things that are actually, obviously to us, people who work in the industry, they seem, of course everyone would be interested in that, but actually they’re really quite niche and for something, it needs to be sort of relatable to really a broader audience, I think.
Alessia Horwich (20:45):
Yeah, I think that’s a valid point as well. You do get completely wrapped up in the industry, but actually you’re talking to somebody who’s two holidays a year, normal kind of traveller.
Rachel Cranshaw (20:54):
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Alessia Horwich (20:56):
Rachel, thank you so much. You’ve given us loads of useful information. I hope that you’re going to get some great pictures. I hope so too.
