If you have never worked with a PR consultant or press office before, it is natural to judge the work by what you can see: the press releases that go out, the articles that appear and the report at the end of the month. It is also why many hotel owners struggle to understand exactly what they are paying for, particularly during quieter periods when no new coverage appears. What you see is only the surface. Most of the work happens before, during and between one story and the next.
Here is the figure that tends to surprise people most. In my own work, the press release is probably five per cent of what I do. The other ninety-five per cent is what this article is really about.
What does a hotel press office actually do?
Hotel PR is about building and managing relationships with journalists in order to earn editorial coverage: articles, interviews, reviews and features that publications choose independently to run. It does not buy advertising space, manage a hotel’s social channels or replace digital marketing. It works in earned media – visibility that has to be earned because an editor or journalist believes the story deserves space.
But “managing relationships with journalists” is still a fairly abstract description. In practice, the work is continuous: understanding the hotel, identifying stories, selecting the right media, developing relevant pitches, coordinating opportunities and applying judgement at every stage. For me, the press release is simply one small part of that process.
The work starts long before a journalist is contacted
Before writing to a single journalist, a good PR professional needs to understand the hotel almost better than the hotel understands itself from an editorial point of view. That means getting under the skin of the property, carrying out an initial audit, ideally experiencing it first-hand, identifying what may genuinely matter to an editorial team and working out which stories can be built from it.
This stage determines almost everything that follows, yet produces very little that the client can physically see. I have written separately about what makes a hotel genuinely interesting to journalists, and about what happens when a hospitality property has a good story but is not yet ready for PR. The relevant point here is simpler: without the work that happens upstream, everything that follows risks becoming noise.
A media list is not a list of email addresses
A media list is not an address book. It is the result of choosing, publication by publication and journalist by journalist, who might genuinely care about a particular story. That means identifying the right titles, the right editors, understanding what each person covers, reading their recent work and asking whether this specific hotel has anything useful to add to what they are interested in.
Relevance is built around the individual journalist, not around the size of the database. The same hotel looks very different to a travel desk, a design editor, a lifestyle journalist, a food writer or a hospitality trade publication. Sending exactly the same thing to all of them is one of the quickest ways to be relevant to none of them. The distinction is often this simple: one PR professional has a contact list; another has a working map of who covers what, what interests them and why the story might fit.
Why the press release is probably only 5% of the work
Press releases have their place, but in my work they probably account for five per cent of the activity. Most of the rest is individual pitching. I do not rely on blanket outreach: each proposal is developed for a particular journalist, based on their interests, what they have published over the past year and what they are covering now.
A large part of my week – the part a client almost never sees – is spent reading. I look for new articles and publications, follow what particular journalists are working on and try to understand when there is a genuine editorial opening for one of my clients. When I find a journalist covering a subject where a hotel can make a useful contribution, I email or call them and shape the angle around that context. The aim is to make their job easier, not add another irrelevant message to their inbox.
This is also why one hotel asset can produce several completely different stories. Take a spa. For a wellness editor, the story may be the treatments and what they are designed to achieve. For a hospitality trade publication, it could be data: occupancy, when guests actually use the spa and what those patterns suggest about changing behaviour. A lifestyle publication might be interested in the culture or thinking behind a particular treatment. There may be a destination angle in locally sourced ingredients, or a sustainability angle in pool energy consumption, materials or the oils used in treatments.
One asset can open many editorial doors. None of those angles begins with a press release. They begin with knowing the hotel and the media well enough to keep finding new ways into the same room.
That, to me, is the real difference between distributing press releases and doing media relations. One is distribution. The other is judgement applied continuously.
What happens when a journalist says yes?
Once a journalist shows interest, another part of the work begins. The client may see very little of it, yet it can determine whether the eventual article works well – or whether the opportunity disappears altogether.
The first job is to understand exactly what the journalist needs: a dedicated feature, an interview, a broader piece, a visit, and on what deadline. Then I try to remove as much friction as possible. Because I have already read their recent work, I can provide relevant material and suggest the angle I think is most useful for that particular publication.
If experiencing the hotel in person makes sense, I assess and coordinate the visit. When the travel editor of a leading British publication came to Matera to experience Moyseion, I had identified the opportunity with her directly. I explained that this was not another glossy new hotel opening, but a project worth looking at for a different reason. Once she was interested, I immediately asked the owners for approval to organise the trip, flights and experiences on the ground.
I also prepare whoever will be speaking to the journalist, whether that is the owner, chef or general manager. I brief them on the journalist and the publication, what is worth emphasising, what is probably less relevant and anything sensitive that should not be disclosed. But I never want the conversation to sound rehearsed. Quite the opposite. The journalist should be able to feel the enthusiasm, intention and vision behind the hotel and build a genuine connection with the people involved.
Sometimes the work continues after publication. On one occasion, an important article stated the wrong number of rooms. I contacted the journalist politely, without turning it into a drama, and asked for the figure to be corrected. Accuracy is part of the job. So is knowing how to ask for a correction without damaging the relationship.
Incoming enquiries, exclusives and managing opportunities
Not every story starts with an outbound pitch. Sometimes a journalist approaches me first, and that requires judgement too. When an enquiry comes in, I first look at the publication, the importance and relevance of the opportunity, and the type of article being planned. From there I decide how best to respond, anticipate any potential issues and help steer the story in a direction that works both editorially and for the client.
Managing opportunities also means sequencing them properly. If I agree an exclusive with one publication, I may share the news with other editorial teams under embargo until a later date, giving the outlet with the exclusive enough time to publish first. It is not about playing publications against one another. It is about respecting both the story and the relationships involved.
What is happening when no coverage has appeared?
A quiet month is not necessarily an empty month. Very often, it is a month of preparation. When a client asks what I have been doing during a period with no new articles, the truthful answer is often that I have been preparing the ground for what comes next.
If a hotel earned twenty articles in July and August arrives with newsrooms running on reduced staff, inactivity is not the only explanation for fewer results. I may already be working on September: looking at post-summer editorial hooks, following what journalists are likely to cover when they return, developing new angles and keeping relevant relationships warm.
Most pitches never become articles. Journalists receive an extraordinary volume of email, and even a relevant, timely and personalised idea is competing with countless other stories and editorial constraints. But a pitch that leads nowhere today is not necessarily wasted. A journalist may remember the hotel later, when the right commission or story lands on their desk.
This is why quieter periods are often the periods in which the next visible results are being prepared.
The hotel has work to do as well
PR does not happen in isolation. A meaningful part of the outcome depends on what the hotel can provide, and how quickly it can provide it.
I need the right assets, not simply a folder full of generic images. If the story is about a particular spa treatment, I may need a photograph of that exact treatment, alongside accurate descriptions, ingredients, spokesperson quotes, opening hours and prices. I normally request material as opportunities develop, but the information has to exist and it has to arrive when it is needed.
Speed matters more than many hotel owners realise. I once had a journalist working to a tight deadline who needed specific photographs for an article. The property could not provide them in time, and the opportunity was lost. On another occasion, I urgently needed summer images that we did not already have. The client understood the deadline, took the photographs straight away and sent them to me a few hours later. We kept the coverage.
The request was essentially the same. The outcome was completely different because one hotel was able to respond in time.
The people involved also change according to the story: marketing to keep communication aligned, sales to understand commercial priorities, the GM or owner for interviews and quotes, and sometimes members of staff when the story is about the people who give the property its character.
What a good PR professional should choose not to do
Part of this job is knowing what not to do. A good PR professional says no more often than many clients expect. No blanket mailouts simply to demonstrate activity. No weak news pushed to journalists because something needs to be sent that month. No promises of coverage, because the editorial decision belongs to the journalist. And no treating journalists as a database to be repeatedly mined.
There is another decision that can be harder: sometimes the right choice is to turn down genuine exposure in order to protect the story. For a cultural hospitality project I represent in Matera, I chose not to pursue publications whose lifestyle treatment would have struggled to capture the depth of the project. I even decided against a television opportunity that could have reached a very large audience because the format would have pushed the story in a direction that felt too commercial.
Turning down the wrong visibility is not excessive caution. Sometimes it is part of building the right reputation.
How can a hotel tell whether work is happening during a quiet month?
A client should still be able to understand what is happening when coverage is quiet, without having to wait for a monthly report. The signals are concrete: pitches being developed and sent, editorial angles under consideration, forthcoming initiatives, ideas for revisiting existing material ahead of another season, deadlines being tracked, information being gathered and new journalist relationships being explored.
In my case, this rarely needs to arrive as a formal monthly surprise because I stay in regular contact with my clients. They generally know what I am working on while I am doing it. I have written separately about how to measure hotel PR results and distinguish valuable coverage from an inflated article count. The point here is more straightforward: invisible work is still work, but a good PR professional should be able to make it understandable without inflating activity for effect.
What are you really paying for when you hire hotel PR?
The visible result of PR is media coverage. But coverage itself is not really the product you are buying. You are paying for the process that makes relevant coverage more likely to exist in the first place: understanding your hotel, reading the media every day, developing individual pitches, maintaining relationships over time and knowing when to speak – and when not to.
The press release is five per cent. The rest is what makes it worth paying someone to do the job properly.
If you run a hotel and want to understand what PR would actually involve for your property – and whether your project genuinely has enough editorial material to support it – we can talk it through without obligation. You can explore my PR and media relations services or book an introductory call.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between sending press releases and doing media relations?
A press release is one tool, and often a relatively small part of the work. Media relations means building and maintaining relationships with journalists, identifying the right stories, pitching them individually at the right time and coordinating whatever is needed for an article or feature to happen. A serious PR service is not selling email distribution. It is providing that process.
What does a hotel need to provide to its PR consultant?
The hotel needs to provide accurate and usable assets: specific rather than generic photographs, detailed descriptions, relevant facts, spokesperson quotes, opening hours and prices, as well as access to the right people for interviews. The hotel does not need to write pitches or manage journalists, but even strong PR work can stall if accurate material is unavailable or arrives too late. Speed can determine whether an editorial opportunity is secured or lost.
Why pay a monthly PR retainer when no new coverage has appeared?
Because much of the work happens before the coverage does. During quieter periods, a PR professional is reading the media, identifying opportunities, maintaining relationships, developing future stories and pitching ideas that may lead to coverage later. Articles are the visible result of an ongoing process, not a direct measure of how much work happened in a particular month.
