Getting Ideal Tour Operator Coverage

When I worked in PR, a familiar challenge was securing meaningful coverage in consumer publications for tour operators. Coverage that would inspire readers to book a trip with said companies. Invariably, this was not just a credit at the end of a feature — one they had expensively facilitated. Very often, it seemed, that sort of coverage had little or no cut-through.

In the Sunday Times this weekend, there was an article about a Mexico tour from the escorted tour firm WeRoad. “​​Launched in 2017 by three friends in Milan,” it read, “WeRoad is an Italian start-up that specialises in group adventure trips for solo millennial travellers. Today, it is one of the fastest-growing travel platforms in Europe, with a team of about 150 employees and additional offices in Spain, France, Germany and the UK.” And so on, and so on.

Despite some elements of the trip being reviewed less than positively, this was surely a dream scenario for WeRoad’s PR, Sarah Lloyd-Morrison, freelancing for JV Public Relations, even if it didn’t originate via her or them. A company-focused write-up, full of detail about the firm’s ethos and USPs, in perhaps the most powerful national newspaper of them all. Rare gold indeed.

I’d guess that WeRoad’s USPs — being so geared to solo millennials (which is, admittedly, a sexy demographic to tackle) — much aided the piece’s commission. And that perhaps is the lesson to take here: to know very clearly where your client stands out versus its closest rivals; to know its USPs, with the emphasis on the ‘U’. So not just the bland platitudes — “expertly curates”; “in-depth knowledge” — that could be true of tens of operators, but something tangible that separates them.

If there really doesn’t seem to be such a thing, then look instead for interesting, hitherto-uncovered trends that the company is seeing and can back up. What are clients newly doing or wanting that will be a surprise to most readers?

Addendum, March 27th 2024

Since writing the column, above, I’ve gleaned that it was Black Unicorn, WeRoad’s corporate PR firm, which painstakingly secured this glorious Sunday Times coverage. So kudos to them and their Senior Consultant, Alice Lam, for such a good piece of work.