Erin, John and Kasey from the MarComm team recently attended the PRSA Travel & Tourism Conference conference in Philly. Below are some notes from the conference. If you know of VB experiences that are buzzworthy as noted below, contact egoldmeier@visitvirginiabeach.com with your idea!
PRSA polled the top 50 travel writers in the biz prior to the conference and learned the following:
Writers Are Sick of Hearing About These Travel Trends:
- Farm-to-Table
- Ultra Luxury
- Goat Yoga
- National Whatever Day
- Breweries & Beer Pairings
- Girlfriend Getaway
- Glamping
- Food Trails
Writers Want to Hear More About:
- Sustainability
- Wellness
- Multigenerational travel opportunities
- Solo travel opportunities
- Shorter trips
- CBD
- Cruises
- Veggie / Vegan
- Low ABV / non-alcoholic drinks i.e. kombucha
- High-end Asian
- Hands on cooking experiences
- Ugly food!
If any of you have ideas that would fall into any of the above categories, please share with me and I’ll pass along to writers
Top 8 Luxury Travel Publications Right Now:
- Travel + Leisure
- Conde Nast Traveler
- Robb Report
- Departures
- AFAR
- Forbes
- Town + Country
- Luxury Travel
Current Media Trends:
- Expanding influence of the citizen journalist and bloggers
- Live-streaming continues to grow in popularity and is a major force in breaking news
- GIFs are a driving engagement with news media
- We all produce content now; distribution is limitless
- Social apps are continually evolving and becoming media and publication offerings
More Travel & Tourism Trends:
- Virtual tours. Whether it’s a hotel room, a vacation rental, a cruise ship or even an activity at a destination, giving travelers the chance to explore the experience before they get there is helpful
- Smaller market cities have become a top travel bucket-list destination choice for many leisure vacationers. Locations such as Austin, Raleigh, N.C., Nashville, Tenn., and Spokane, Wash., (maybe we can get VB on here soon? J)are hot places to visit because of the affordability and unadulterated culture. Travelers have either already visited main market locations or know someone who has and want “something cool and different.”
- Reputation management, social media content creation and strategy, advertorial placements, and SEO/AdWords tactics are becoming more prominent tasks assigned to our departments
- Content that is shareable and can get extra legs after a trip or single news announcement. Creating those stories, memories, moments and photo ops can make a great initial story, but can be woven into future storytelling too.