Choosing who to trust with your hotel’s PR is one of those decisions you often have to make with imperfect information. You cannot really trial the service before appointing someone, and it may take months before you have enough evidence to understand whether the work is genuinely effective or simply keeping your budget busy. PR is a service whose quality is often easier to judge after the relationship has started than before it. That is precisely why the questions you ask during the selection process matter so much.
This guide is built around those questions. I have written it by thinking about what I would want to know if I were sitting on the other side of the table as a hotel owner, general manager or marketing director deciding whom to appoint. Some of the answers may lead you towards working with me. Others may lead you somewhere else. That is perfectly fine. The point is to give you better tools to make the decision.
How should you choose a PR agency for your hotel?
Choose a hotel PR agency or consultant by looking beyond promises of coverage and claims about knowing the “right” journalists. Look for someone who has genuinely researched your property, can explain what makes it editorially distinctive, pitches selectively and personally, understands hospitality media, and is transparent about what PR can and cannot deliver. Earned media remains an editorial decision: no serious PR professional can guarantee coverage in a specific publication.
Before choosing: be clear about what you are actually buying
Before asking the ten questions below, clarify what you want to achieve and what kind of service you are actually looking for. PR and media relations are built around earned media: editorial coverage that journalists and publications choose independently to produce because they believe the story is relevant to their audience.
That is different from advertising, paid advertorials, day-to-day social media management or creator campaigns. All of those activities can be legitimate parts of a wider communications strategy, but they are not interchangeable. Expecting a PR programme to behave like a performance advertising campaign means judging it with the wrong set of metrics.
For the same reason, I am very clear about the scope of my own work. Press & Pillow specialises in PR and media relations. I do not provide digital marketing or day-to-day social media management. If what you need is one supplier to manage social media, paid advertising, website performance and bookings alongside PR, you are looking for a different type of partner – and it is much better to establish that before the first proposal arrives.
With that distinction in place, these are the ten questions I would ask.
1. Do they have genuine hospitality experience?
The first thing I would want to understand is whether the person in front of me genuinely knows hospitality and travel media, or whether “hospitality” is simply one sector among twenty listed on a website.
It matters because travel, lifestyle, design, food and culture journalists all approach hotel stories differently. Someone who works regularly in this world will usually speak to you about editorial angles, seasonality, destination relevance, lead times and the reasons a particular story might interest one publication but not another. A generalist is more likely to speak about “visibility” in broad terms.
A simple way to test this is to ask which comparable hospitality projects they have worked on and then listen carefully to how they discuss your own property. Do they immediately understand the difference between promoting a hotel to potential guests and making that same hotel relevant to an editor?
In my case, my background comes from years spent inside luxury hospitality, including managing PR for Splendido in Portofino with Belmond. I mention that not as a badge, but because working inside a hotel taught me something that is difficult to learn from outside: what journalists actually need from a property, how editorial visits work in practice, and how relationships with the media are built over time.
2. Have they actually researched your hotel?
This is probably the most useful test of all. Once a PR professional has had the opportunity to look at your property, ask them a very specific question: what would you pitch next, what are the strongest editorial angles, which types of journalists would you approach, and why?
If they have done the research, the answer should be concrete. If they are improvising, it usually becomes obvious very quickly.
Proper research should happen before a proposal is treated as genuinely bespoke. It means understanding who is behind the hotel, its history, its target guest, its location, its relationship with the destination, what has already been communicated and which stories could realistically be developed. A proposal produced without that work may still look polished, but it is difficult for it to be truly specific to your property.
There is also one question I ask my own clients repeatedly: what do you have, or what do you do, that no other hotel can credibly claim in quite the same way?
That question matters because a good guest experience is not automatically a good media story. Foraging herbs from the garden with the chef may be a lovely activity, for example, but plenty of hotels offer something similar. It is unlikely to be the thing that makes an editor stop and pay attention. A good PR professional should not simply describe everything your hotel offers. They should help identify the angle that is genuinely yours.
3. Who will actually work on your account?
You should know exactly who will manage your hotel day to day, and at what level of seniority. One recognised feature of the agency model is that senior professionals may be highly involved during the pitch process while some of the ongoing work is later handled by more junior members of the team.
That is not automatically a problem. A junior PR professional can be excellent, and larger agencies need teams in order to provide scale. But if you believe you are paying for senior expertise, it is reasonable to understand how much senior involvement you will actually receive once the contract has been signed.
I would go beyond asking for an organisational chart. Ask what the relationship looks like in practice. Who writes the pitches? Who speaks to journalists? Who joins your regular calls? Who makes strategic decisions? If that person is away, who takes over?
One warning sign I know well is having to explain the same context repeatedly because the person you speak to keeps changing. Continuity matters in PR because both the understanding of the property and the relationships with journalists become stronger over time.
In my own model, the answer is simple: clients work directly with me throughout the mandate, and I deliberately keep the number of ongoing projects limited. That is not a claim that a one-person structure is right for everyone. It is simply a deliberate choice about the kind of working relationship I want to provide.
4. How do they decide what is genuinely newsworthy?
A good PR professional does not write a press release simply because there is space for another press release in the monthly plan. They write one when there is a story worth taking to the media.
Ask how they make that distinction.
Adding one new dish to a restaurant menu is not automatically news. Organising a New Year’s Eve dinner is not automatically news simply because it is happening at your hotel. Either may become editorially relevant if there is something distinctive behind it: a meaningful collaboration, a connection with the destination, an unusual cultural idea, a new approach or a genuinely original experience.
The distinction matters because journalists’ attention is limited. Sending weak material repeatedly does not demonstrate activity; it can make future communication easier to ignore.
Part of my job is telling a client when I do not think something is strong enough to pitch. I do not see that as being negative about the hotel. Quite the opposite. It protects the stories that deserve attention by not surrounding them with material that does not.
5. What does their pitching process actually look like?
The answer I would want to hear includes words such as “personalised”, “relevant” and “selective”. I would be far less impressed by “we know everyone” or “we have thousands of journalists in our database”.
Serious pitching requires analysis. You need to understand what a journalist covers, what they have written recently, what their publication is interested in and why this particular hotel story makes sense for them at this particular moment. The pitch then needs to reflect that understanding.
If someone presents a database of 2,500 travel contacts as proof of the value of the service, I would ask a very simple question: how many of those 2,500 people are actually relevant to my hotel and to this particular story?
The same caution applies to claims such as “I am personally friends with that editor, so I can get you in”. Good relationships matter enormously in PR, but friendship is not a substitute for editorial relevance. A journalist who likes you personally can still say no to a story that does not work for their readers. And when the story is right, a thoughtful and well-targeted pitch can open doors without relying on that kind of promise.
6. Which media and markets are actually included?
Ask explicitly which markets, countries and types of media form part of the mandate, and how those choices have been made. This tells you whether you are buying a strategy built around your audience or simply a generic package.
If international PR is included, the geographical scope should be clear from the beginning. Which markets are part of the agreed activity? Why have those markets been selected? What would happen if you later decided that another country had become strategically important?
The same applies to publications. Prestige alone does not make a title valuable for your hotel. A highly recognisable publication with little relevance to your target audience may be less useful than a specialist title whose readers are precisely the people you want to reach.
A good media strategy should therefore begin with the hotel’s objectives and audience, not with a list of famous mastheads.
7. What is included in the retainer – and what sits outside it?
You should understand the commercial boundaries before the work begins. A good proposal makes it clear what is included, what is not, and which expenses require separate approval.
There are certain items that make me pause when I see them separated out: consultancy charged as an additional service, a rigid allowance such as “two press releases per month and the third costs extra”, onboarding billed separately, or the creation of the basic press kit treated as an optional add-on.
That does not mean every agency must structure its pricing as I do. Different organisations have different cost structures, and defined scopes are perfectly legitimate. The important question is whether you understand the real cost of receiving the level of service you expect, rather than discovering each additional charge once the relationship is already underway.
In my own model, strategy, consultancy, press materials, personalised pitching, follow-up, monitoring and reporting form part of the ongoing service. Direct expenses remain separate: my travel, the travel and hospitality costs associated with hosted journalists, and any external production such as professional photography. Those costs are discussed and approved in advance rather than appearing unexpectedly later.
If you want to compare proposals in more detail, I have written separately about how much hotel PR costs and what actually sits behind the fee.
8. How do they measure results?
A useful PR report should help you understand what happened, not simply give you the largest number possible.
I would ask what the provider counts as a result and how each piece of coverage is classified. Was it a dedicated article about the property? A substantial feature in which the hotel received several paragraphs and imagery? A short mention? An automatic republication of somebody else’s story?
Those are not equivalent outcomes and they should not be presented as though they were.
My own reporting focuses on the publication, date, market and nature of the coverage so that a client can understand the quality and relevance of what has actually been achieved. A long list of placements becomes much less impressive if most of it consists of syndicated copies or incidental mentions.
The same principle applies to commercial impact. PR can contribute to awareness, reputation, branded search, qualified traffic and ultimately demand, but attributing a particular booking with certainty to one editorial article is often impossible. Reporting should make the work easier to understand, not create a false precision that the data cannot support.
I have explored this in more detail in my guide to measuring hotel PR results, KPIs and ROI.
9. Are they promising something no PR professional can guarantee?
If someone guarantees a specific number of editorial articles or promises that your hotel will definitely appear in a particular publication, I would treat that claim with caution.
Earned media works precisely because the final editorial decision belongs to journalists and editors. A PR professional can improve the conditions for coverage enormously: find the right story, prepare strong materials, identify the right journalist, build a relevant pitch, follow up professionally and respond quickly when interest develops. What they cannot control is the final decision to publish.
One of the questions I am asked most often is: “Which publications can you guarantee?” I understand why hotel owners ask it. They are investing money and understandably want certainty.
But there is an important distinction. If you need guaranteed presence in a particular publication, that normally belongs to paid media: advertising, sponsored content or an advertorial purchased from the commercial side of the publication. Those can be perfectly legitimate communications tools. They are simply not earned editorial coverage.
The way I think about reliability is different. I do not accept a project because I can guarantee where it will appear. I accept it when I believe its story, positioning and actual guest experience give me credible material with which to earn meaningful media attention. I cannot promise the name of the publication. I can be selective about the projects for which I believe valuable coverage can realistically be built.
10. How much access will you really have to the person leading the account?
PR works better as an ongoing exchange than as a monthly report sent in one direction. Ask what communication will look like once the contract begins.
Who can you contact when an opportunity appears? How quickly can you expect a response? Can you discuss an idea before investing time and money in it? Will the person leading the strategy actually be available when a journalist needs an answer quickly?
My preferred working relationship is straightforward. If a client has a question or an idea, or if I identify an opportunity that needs a quick decision, we speak. That might be a call, an email or a WhatsApp message depending on what is easiest.
That accessibility is useful to me as well. The client knows their property better than I ever can. Regular conversation gives me the details, context and small pieces of information that often become the basis of a strong editorial angle. When there is very little exchange during the early stages of a mandate, I usually see that as a warning sign because it makes it harder to build the depth of understanding the work requires.
The red flags that would make me ask more questions
If I had to reduce the selection process to a short list of warning signs, these are the ones I would pay attention to:
- Guaranteed editorial results or promises of specific publications without explaining the distinction between earned and paid media.
- The size of a media database presented as evidence of the quality of the work.
- Claims based mainly on being a “personal friend” of particular journalists.
- A proposal whose initial fee looks attractive but separates out basic elements such as onboarding, consultancy, reporting or routine press materials.
- A constantly changing point of contact, making you repeatedly explain the property from the beginning.
- A PR professional who, after researching your hotel, still cannot explain what they believe your genuinely distinctive editorial angle is.
None of these points automatically makes someone a bad PR professional. Business models differ, and context matters. But several of them appearing together would make me ask considerably more questions before signing.
If I were a hotel GM: what should happen in the first 30 days?
One of the most revealing questions you can ask is: if we appointed you tomorrow, what would you actually do during the first month?
The answer helps distinguish genuine groundwork from impressive-sounding promises of immediate coverage.
In my case, the first month does not begin with a race to secure articles. It begins with the foundations. After the initial conversations and the appointment, I ideally visit the property so that I can understand the hotel as an actual guest experience rather than simply as a website and a set of photographs.
Then comes the press infrastructure: establishing the positioning, gathering accurate information, identifying the strongest stories, building or updating the press kit, organising the image library, understanding the year’s key initiatives and making sure that what we are about to tell journalists can be supported properly.
The speed of that process also depends on the hotel. If basic information, approved photography or practical details take weeks to arrive, PR activity cannot magically move at full speed around them.
That gives you another useful test. If someone guarantees significant editorial coverage in the first week before they have properly understood the property or assembled the materials journalists will need, I would question how realistic that promise is.
Good PR can move quickly when there is a genuine reason to move quickly. But speed without foundations is not the same thing as effectiveness. I have written separately about when hotel PR should begin before an opening and why the preparation phase matters.
What if a PR campaign does not work?
There is another question I think a thoughtful hotel decision-maker should ask: tell me about a campaign that did not perform as well as expected, and explain why.
How someone answers that question tells you a great deal.
A credible answer should not blame everyone else, but it should also acknowledge that PR results depend on conditions that extend beyond the PR consultant. A campaign may struggle because the available assets are weak, because materials arrive too late, because the property is unwilling or unable to host relevant journalists, because the story is less distinctive than originally believed, or because operational constraints limit what can be communicated.
The point is not to find a professional who claims that every campaign they have ever touched became a triumph. It is to find someone capable of understanding why something is not working, explaining that honestly and changing the approach where possible.
When should you not hire a PR agency – or not hire me?
Not every hotel should invest in PR at every stage of its development, and not every hotel should work with me. I think a consultant who says yes to every possible client is ultimately prioritising their own pipeline over the client’s outcome.
The first case is a property that is simply not ready for external scrutiny. If the actual guest experience is inconsistent, key operational problems remain unresolved or the hotel cannot yet deliver the standard suggested by its positioning, bringing journalists through the door can create more risk than value.
I have turned down potential work when what I could see from the property, its website or my conversations with the owner suggested that the timing was wrong. Press & Pillow is still a relatively young business, and protecting the credibility of my work matters more to me than adding one more retainer. I explored this issue in detail in A Great Story Is Not Enough: When a Hospitality Property Is Not Ready for PR.
There is also a very different situation in which an independent senior consultant may not be the right structure. A major international group with multiple properties, simultaneous launches across numerous markets, large-scale crisis requirements and several communications disciplines operating at once may genuinely need the infrastructure of a larger agency.
That is not a weakness of either model. They solve different problems. I have compared them in more detail in PR Agency or Senior PR Consultant for Hotels?
How do you justify the PR investment internally?
If you are a general manager, marketing director or Director of Sales & Marketing, choosing the provider may only be half the job. You may also need to explain the investment to an owner, asset manager or group leadership.
A good PR partner should help make the value of the work understandable without pretending that every editorial article can be converted neatly into a number of bookings.
What I do is show previous case studies and actual media coverage, explain the scale of the investment in relation to the work and results, and make the evidence available rather than asking a potential client simply to trust the sales presentation.
There is also a simple additional test. Search for one of my clients on Google, or ask an AI assistant about the property. The answer cannot prove that one PR campaign caused every aspect of its digital visibility, but it can offer another indication of whether the reputation built through independent third-party sources has become recognisable beyond the hotel’s own channels.
I have written separately about why AI systems may recommend one hotel over another and what PR has to do with it. My case studies and press coverage are public because, in the end, I would rather show what has genuinely been published than rely on claims about what my work can achieve.
In summary
Choosing a PR agency or consultant for your hotel should not come down to who claims to know the most journalists or who promises the highest number of articles. It comes down to method, research, relevance, transparency and the quality of the working relationship.
The ten questions in this guide are designed to help you see, before signing, whether the person or agency in front of you genuinely understands your hotel and how earned media works – or whether you are being sold activity without enough substance behind it.
The simplest test may also be the most useful: can this person explain what makes your hotel meaningfully different, identify why a journalist might care, and tell you honestly what they can and cannot control? If they can, you are already asking the right questions.
If you are currently comparing PR proposals for your hotel, we can have a conversation about the project. I will also tell you frankly if I think an ongoing PR mandate is genuinely necessary, or if I believe you would be better served by waiting or taking a different approach. You can explore my PR and media relations services for independent hotels or read the hotel PR frequently asked questions.
Frequently asked questions
How can you tell whether a hotel PR agency is good?
Look at the method rather than the promises. A strong PR partner should have researched your hotel, be able to explain its genuine editorial angle, use personalised rather than indiscriminate pitching, show previous results in a way that distinguishes meaningful coverage from passing mentions, and be transparent about what earned media can and cannot guarantee.
Is a PR agency or an independent consultant better for a hotel?
It depends on the hotel and the scope of work. A large group coordinating multiple properties, markets and communications disciplines simultaneously may benefit from the infrastructure of an agency. An independent or boutique hotel primarily looking for senior strategy, storytelling and ongoing media relations may be better served by a senior consultant who works directly on the account.
Can a hotel PR agency guarantee media coverage?
No serious PR professional can guarantee earned editorial coverage in a specific publication because the final decision belongs to journalists and editors. They can create the right conditions for coverage through positioning, strong stories, relevant targeting, personalised pitching and professional follow-up. Guaranteed placement normally belongs to paid media or sponsored content rather than earned media.
How many journalists should a hotel PR agency contact?
There is no useful target number. Contacting a large number of journalists indiscriminately can be counterproductive and damage future relationships. A smaller number of carefully selected journalists for whom the story is genuinely relevant is usually more valuable than sending the same pitch to a database of hundreds or thousands of contacts.
