What do we believe is the essence of good PR for the travel sector?

Our thoughts on this matter can be summarised under the following points:

1. The travel industry is highly commercial, with operators continually fighting for market share and needing to do their utmost to demonstrate an edge over rivals. In practice, it is perfectly possible to avoid a travel company's offering being seen as purely a commodity: you do this by promoting the particular Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) of the company and its offerings. Da Vinci is expert at identifying USPs and emphasising them. But we accept that there will inevitably be many customers who are concerned primarily about price issues. This drives our energetic and vigorous campaigns, which are geared around winning you editorial coverage that generates a direct response from consumers and/or travel agents.



2. We place particular emphasis on the quality of our media research. We believe this is often handled skimpily by other consultancies. We look in detail at the nature of your existing customer base and, which is even more important, at where and how you want your business to grow. We identify print and broadcast media likely to be of interest to precisely the kinds of customers you are trying to win. This means looking hard at customers from a variety of perspectives such as: where they live, their financial position, their professional lives, their leisure interests, the special-interest groups to which they belong and so on.



3. Next, we `work' the media list intensively. We believe that a travel firm that chooses us as its PR consultancy is entitled to expect that we have made submissions to all relevant features planned by media on the media list. We pay particular attention to features planned by high-profile media such as national newspapers and leading consumer magazines. We also pay careful attention to regional newspapers, whose travel sections are often extremely influential for people who prefer to buy the regional newspaper rather than a London-based national. We also pay careful attention to travel trade press features because of their immense importance among travel agents.



4. We submit incisive, clearly-written accurate and pithy editorial material to features. Our executives all have a journalistic background and know how to summarise key points in a few words.
   
   
5. We have considerable experience of arranging press facility visits that allow journalists to conduct a `review' of a travel company's offering and write it up in an editorial submission. We are aware of the importance of carefully defining the scope and nature of the review before the journalist is sent on a trip and we expect journalists to sign a letter of agreement with us that stipulates when the feature will appear, the amount of coverage our client can expect, whether photographs will be included and other key points. We also insist that journalists put the client's contact details at the end of the review.



6. We are adept at coming up with creative ideas, ranging from competitions through to strategic development plans that can take a client's business in to a new dimension. These ideas play a key role in helping to advance our travel clients' commercial agendas, to reach their target market and bring in the business they need.