Creativity and planning are crucial to the successful launch of a hotel public relations campaign. Media events still hold the allure of the press, and remain an essential element of launches, stirring awareness in a compelling way. A savvy boutique PR firm should be prepared to successfully organize and execute these events in any media or economic environment.

Advertising and marketing efforts have undeniably been hindered by the poor economy, but more companies are realizing that a savvy public relations campaign can act as a catalyst in marketing efforts. As the economy continues to recover and consumer behavior begins to return to normal levels, it is particularly important that businesses continue to define and promote their brand in preparation for a better environment in the future. Luxury brands PR firms have the tools and contacts to do just that.

Suppose a luxury hotel in New Delhi decides to employ public relations in the United States for the first time. The hotel does not know where to begin looking, and surely sending a representative to the United States in search for the perfect firm would be inefficient. The hotel decides to use an Internet search engine to find a firm that can provide what they need. The hotel manager goes on google.com, as millions of people do every day, and he or she searches “United States hotel public relations.”  There may be millions of results, which translates to thousands of travel public relations firms that meet the criteria, but realistically, only the first handful will be considered. Becoming one of the few firms who makes it to the first page of a search engine’s search results may be tricky, but is valuable for a public relations agency. Achieving this task has become known as “search engine optimization,” and is currently a hot topic in the world of public relations. But, how does a firm become “search engine optimized?”

Companies in all industries, not only public relations, publish information, and opinion pieces, and press updates on a regular basis. The content of these publications is sent out and becomes public domain via the Internet, which will potentially show up in the results of search engine listings. If a boutique public relations firm can publish the keywords or search phrases commonly searched by their potential clientele, they will see new business. For example, if a public relations agency in the United States frequently publishes content with the phrase “United States hotel public relations,” they will appear earlier on searches for this phrase. After a while, they could even become one of the first few results on a search engine, and they will receive more business.

Boutique PR firms can help their clientele succeed by helping them with search engine optimization. Encouraging and guiding a hotel or travel agency to publish content including terms that are relevant to their market and potential consumer population will result in growth in business, and success for the firm. The world of travel PR continues to devote faith in this tactic as the influence of the Internet continues to grow.

In order for a hotel or other entity to succeed in the travel industry, they must overcome competition through networking and motivation. Networking is about being genuine in your business relationships and helping others. Expanding contacts of other agencies and your own, as well as using internet public relations will create a large, mutually beneficial network with higher capabilities of expanding. Being a powerful resource to a large network increases publicity and keeps you visible in the expanding crowd. A travel public relations agency should be able to make more connections, and build a firm’s network through their own contacts. Creating new opportunities for the business will allow them to focus on strong new relationships and standing out in the crowd.

For luxury brands pr, agencies must be able to motivate clients and help them emphasize their strengths and unique qualities. To stand out in an industry, being able to show off what makes a firm different than others will make them more recognized in a network. Focusing on these points can help drive a firm and build their status in the travel industry. This is essential to become successful.

Applying these strategies for clients in travel pr can help both clients and pr firms achieve success. Combining networks and helping emphasize strengths of a firm can propel them through a market and has benefits for all parties.

While filming the movie in India, Julia Roberts, who plays Gilbert in the film, was spotted, sparking international media attention. A good technique for public relations firms is to latch on to current news stories, as a chance to promote their client’s products and services and gain publicity. After Roberts’ spotting in India sparked media attention for the book and movie, Spirit Quest Tours’ “Eat, Pray, Love” tour was featured in a press release issued by Abelow PR. With all of the attention surrounding Gilbert’s experiences, Abelow PR promoted the tour and the company while spreading awareness that now everyone can experience Gilbert’s journey the same way it was done in her book. The tour quickly filled up, causing a second trip to be scheduled for next year.

Gilbert’s memoir inspired more than just a movie and a tour, but it gave Abelow PR the opportunity to promote Spirit Quest Tours by linking them to popular current news stories. At Abelow PR, these opportunities are not missed, and clients like Spirit Quest Tours are able to enjoy publicity and well-deserved success. Techniques like this can benefit a boutique PR firm and their clientele, since popular current news stories are, well, already popular.

Studies have shown that the companies who cut back on PR and promotion tools during the recession fell off the media map, while those who upheld these tools are coming out ahead. Managesmarter.com has called PR a way to “recession-proof your business,” and luxury travel public relations have proven to do exactly that for the luxury travel industry.

Hilton Worldwide has announced that the demand from travelers is increasing.  As consumers’ postponed travel plans are being resumed, hotels that have maintained strong media communications and publicity through internet public relations are the first to fill their rooms.  Hotel public relations firms have been a vital constituent to the success of hotels during the recession, and many opportunities to promote hotels and other travel-related agencies are still around as firms that dropped their PR during the recession are recovering. With this new and promising increase in demand, hotels around the world that once could not afford to employ PR services now can’t afford not to.

Whether it is bungee jumping, zip lining through the jungle or exploring the Belizean coral reef with their loved ones, newlyweds have many resources available to assist them in planning their adventure honeymoon. In this booming market, luxury travel PR firms like Abelow PR have the opportunity to promote the agencies that provide these resources.

Our NYC PR firm has taken initiative on this opportunity by promoting agencies like Kensington Tours. Kensington Tours helps make these wild, romantic excursions possible by offering something for everyone. With their help, a newlywed couple could enjoy a six-day guided expedition through Kenya’s desert, brush and mountains for as little as $1000 per person. If rhinoceros, baboons and pink flamingos don’t do the trick, perhaps a guided ten-day tour of the Greek islands for as low as $1900 per person will make the cut. The list also includes extravagant options like snorkeling or surfing the Brazilian coast, exploring the castles of France or hiking through the rainforests of Hawaii. Creativity is essential in planning an adventurous honeymoon, and Kensington Tours provides the most creative honeymoon options around, with prices for every newlywed couple. Promoting agencies like Kensington Tours is beneficial for any travel PR agency as new generations of honeymooners are getting more adventurous.

Today’s consumer is more informed than ever before. With the world at their fingertips, people can easily compare products; engage with friends and strangers alike, and even book an exotic vacation with the click of a mouse. This dynamic presents endless possibilities for savvy travel public relations agencies to promote your business, and help to keep your brand in the mind of the consumer. Social media outreach is an important component of the strategy, but it is certainly not the only component. Internet public relations through engaging interest-specific bloggers, obtaining coverage in web-based publications, and reaching out to “influencers” should not be ignored, as they can reap tremendous rewards as well.

Our own approach at Abelow Public Relations involves the careful planning of an integrated marketing and PR strategy, which does not rely exclusively on one particular tactic. Rather, we seek to utilize our extensive and established base of contacts within the press to secure publicity in a variety of channels, from prominent glossy magazines to interest-oriented blogs and everywhere in between. With consumers heading in a number of directions to find the information they desire, it is important that you go right along with them. Converting a prospect into a customer can be a difficult task in and of itself, and if you don’t know where to find them it becomes nearly impossible.

Experienced PR boutiques work to engage consumers in a meaningful way. With seemingly endless opportunities to pick and choose where, when, and from whom they get their information, consumers are now less susceptible to the overly aggressive sales pitch. To succeed in managing your marketing message, you must not only learn to solicit their attention, but to maintain it as well.

Companies successfully manage their marketing message by talking with consumers, not talking at them. PR firms can position your brand to engage in this dialogue, not simply helping your business maintain existing customers, but converting new ones along the way.

While marketers know its important to market their product or service to create demand is necessary, not all realize how much more cost-effective PR is when executed by publicity firms. Advertising is vastly more expensive and often not as effective as PR, because editorial coverage carries with it the third party endorsement of the publication.

A public relations firm is by far the best way for small businesses to go to in order to fulfill an affordable and effective marketing campaign. An established boutique PR firm, such as Abelow PR, which specializes in luxury travel pr and hotel public relations and consumer PR, is dedicated to getting the word out in online and in traditional media to successfully promote their clients to their target market at a fraction of the cost of advertising.

Necker Island was the site for the annual bathing suit spread Sports Illustrated runs annually on its cover. Necker Island is the home of Richard Branson, where private guests are hosted. In this case it was the stunning model for the cover of Sports Illustrate.

Coverage on the front page of the New York Times’ Sunday Styles section is read by millions.

It is important to first understand the benefits of public relations versus advertising. These two disciplines are vastly different both in content and cost, especially with respect to ROI. Advertising is a method in which a company pays the agency to place an advertisement in a publication. And many readers scan over ads or fast forward through them on TV.

Public Relations, on the other hand is an affordable, efficient way to market. It not only brings in inquiries, it also delivers trust. Through recent surveys conducted on households, marketers found that people tend to trust what they read or see in the media more than what is displayed through advertisements. The difference between advertising and public relations is that anyone can buy space to advertise, but media publications will publish only what they find enticing and worthy of their editorial space. In this sense, public relations and acquire media who believe in the campaign, giving people another reason to trust public relations more than advertising.

Let’s look at a small example of the difference with cost in these two tactics, using the example of a luxury hotel that recently opened. If this company decides to market through advertising, they will pay about the same amount for a full page ad in a top travel magazine such as Conde Nast Traveler, which would be the same cost as a six month publicity program conducted by a competent agency that does hotel public relations. Through luxury travel PR; on the other hand, they will be guaranteed media coverage through a wide variety of outlets and multiple stories in newspapers, magazines, and online publications. A boutique PR agency can secure coverage on the Travel Channel too which is worth thousands of dollars.

A public relations campaign conducted by a boutique PR firm costs about one-tenth of what an advertising campaign costs. Companies big and small can benefit from the expansive results that good PR agencies and publicity firms offer whether it be for hotel public relations or business-to-business  products. Abelow PR helps clients with positioning, publicity, speaking engagements, special events and trade show support all of which contributes to generating invaluable word-of-mouth buzz factor. The decision is left for businesses to make; a daunting money pit to advertise, or PR – a tremendous resource for quality media.

For business owners and marketers, 2010 is proving to be an exciting year. The recent economic problems that have crippled the corporate world have eased up creating a new landscape for media relations specialists. Defined by growing efficiency due to the Internet, the shift away from traditional media has created new trends for internet public relations that savvy marketing and public relations firms like Abelow PR are paying close attention to.

Hotels and tour operators and their consumers are showing a persistent emphasis on value and efficiency as a result of their careful spending, and a boutique pr firm can make valuable advantages through creative hotel public relations. For example, Abelow PR is promoting the fact that Premium Island Vacations is offering villas in exclusive St Bart’s for only $1,500 per week. Employing public relations has always been an influential and inexpensive alternative to traditional advertising, and the hallmark of successful PR firm.

It is important to substantiate claims to gain legitimacy in the competitive travel pr industry. Show your clients how far their hard earned dollars can go. Demonstrating what a top public relations agency has done is a far more convincing strategy than telling what you can do. There is nothing like a solid track record of hits. For example, Abelow PR, a boutique PR firm that does consumer and travel campaigns shows its clients how the results from the campaigns with their modest PR budgets provides multi-million dollars worth of publicity when translated to advertising dollars. After all, who can even buy the cover of Conde Nast Traveler, and yet a talented public relations firm can score a placement of that caliber.

With this said, successful campaigns give the clients a reason to continue employing public relations services in this recovering economy. The recession was in part caused by dishonesty and broken trust across corporations and consumers are aware of this. Proving your reliability and honesty creates the type of trust and security that consumers of this new economy are looking for. Firms and consumers in any industry are not willing to put their money somewhere they are not entirely comfortable with, and public relations firms need to prove that they are reliable, and cost-effective. These new trends are here to stay and should be integrated, not ignored.

For those of you in the travel and luxury goods sectors who still harbor doubts about the resiliency of these industries in the US and abroad, this article is a must-read courtesy of Sarah Nassauer and The Wall Street Journal. The good news is that the hotel industry is showing strong signs of a rebound, and it is the “luxury players” that are leading the charge. Although luxury properties have been hit particularly hard by the troubled economy, they are historically the first to rebound as well, and today’s environment is no exception. Successful travel PR campaigns position these properties to take advantage of this dynamic.

This economic turnaround means that those “once-in-a-lifetime” discounts travelers have enjoyed over the past two years are now becoming more difficult to find. You can be sure that people will continue to search for deals, however, making your travel public relations strategy that much more important. Now is the time to entice travelers to your property with creative offerings and great deals.