Speaker 1: I am legit so excited about today's video because it's all about pitching tourism boards and hotels and in the travel industry. Now, I don't know when you guys found this channel or how you found out about us, but our roots are on the brand side and mostly travel. Now, we have tried to get out of the travel creator niche for a long time because now we work with so many creators and the pet niche and fitness and beauty and wellness and teachers and business, all the different niches. I could go on and on, but we started off in travel. I worked on tourism boards and hotels and I used to like go and put influencers on different press trips and I would pay creators for content and all of that. So my roots started in the travel industry. So today's video is going to be really good because it's going to be about tips for pitching travel. Now, full disclosure, I get asked this all the time. I actually have my phone with me with the top questions I've gotten asked. I like put them there because people always want to know about how to work in travel, how to pitch travel, all the things, because here's the thing. As a creator, you don't have to be in the travel niche to pitch travel. I have fitness influencers who are pitching hotels, right? And their angle will be something like, oh, as someone who works out like while I travel, I noticed your property has a state of the art gym facility, right? So there's ways to pitch outside your niche. So what I want to talk about for pitching travel, I want to go over like some of the main questions that I have gotten on Sidewalker, Instagram, Sidewalkers, TikTok, the comments, all of that. I like literally go in and put them together. So one of the main questions was, oh yeah, experience. The people were like, I don't have experience working with travel. How do I pitch travel? To which I say, experience is not the prerequisite here. It's the content. It's the quality of the content. You could have zero experience but have amazing content to show. And that's what these places want to see. So what does that mean? What's the homework here? You need a portfolio. You can't pitch travel without a portfolio. That's for sure. And let me tell you, I know for a fact that your Instagram and your TikTok, those are not your portfolios, guys. Those are your social media handles. I know so many creators who shoot really beautiful content, interiors, shoot food content, you know, all that stuff, but they're not posting it on their Instagram. So how is that hotel going to know that you even make that? They know because it's in your portfolio. So when you pitch them, you could say, while I'm in this space or in this niche, I have a portfolio that shows the variety of my work, including hospitality. So important, like for the big first tip is if you don't have experience, find a way to build up your portfolio. I have creators, they've even bought like one day resort passes where they go to the resort and just shoot for the day. I don't know if you guys know resortpass.com. I've seen like creators literally just go and shoot to build their portfolio or even DMing the hotels and saying, hey, I'd like to come by and shoot. They need experience. They need content. Right. So that's the first step. The second big tip when it comes to pitching travel. And a lot of people were asking like about this. And this is why they're not doing well in their pitches is applying for travel influence jobs on the websites versus pitching a direct person. So a lot of times hotels and tourism boards, they'll have like a survey or catch all form that's like, fill out this form to be considered people in my Pitching to Brands master course. You guys know that that's not how we pitch. We don't fill out forms. We go straight to the source. Right. We get the exact contact. We go after certain people in certain different PR agencies. Right. We are very good at finding that contact because we know if we send it to the decision maker, that is who's going to open the email and be interested in working with you, not sending it to some hello or info email. That is a big no-no in travel. You want to go to the decision maker. Now, if you are a creator or influencer that is interested in this topic, you want to work with brands, whether it be travel brands or products or whatever. Come to my next live free training. I'll include a link below. It's live. It's free. It's me. It's fun. And it's tons of information you're never going to find on the YouTube channel. It's stuff I only share live. Another big question and or fear was around follower count. Nina, I want to pitch travel, but I don't have a lot of followers. To which I say, well, who is your audience? Let's think strategically, people. So the example I like to give is let's just say you are a hotel in the Florida Keys and an influencer from Bali or from the West Coast comes to you. And there's like no direct flights to your destination. And they have millions of followers and they come to you. To me, I rather work with a smaller creator that has a more targeted audience than one that has millions and millions of followers. So, for example, that hotel property in the Florida Keys, they probably want to work with a Tampa influencer or a Miami influencer, someone that's driving distance away because they probably have a very local Miami audience who's actually going to book hotel rooms versus the Bali influencer who has millions and millions of followers. But their audience, what are the chances of them even like booking? It's quite low. So when you're stressed about followers, think about your audience. That's what people on the hotel side and tourism board side are really interested in. And again, if your follower count is small, this goes back to that first tip, which is content. Sell these brands content. They need content and they need all types of content. Drone, underwater, interiors, lifestyle, couples, family shots, whatever. Content is king. And that's something that you can definitely license these properties and destinations as well. Now, another big misconception is that like, well, what do I ask these hotels and tourism boards for? So let's talk about tourism boards. But basically you can ask for whatever it is that you need. So a press trip, when I would organize them, we would cover everything for the creator and a plus one round trip, airfare, all transportation, food and beverage, hotel, two activities or one activity per day, full itinerary. It was the whole suite. But that doesn't mean you need to ask for that. Maybe you want to ask for that. Or maybe you just need one thing from a tourism board. You're like, I would love car rental so that I can explore the outer islands or explore the outer little areas because I'm a fitness creator and I want to talk about the best hiking trails or off the beat hiking trails in your destination, right? You know, you can just ask for smaller things. You can also piecemeal a trip. You can ask a tourism board for one thing and ask a hotel for something else. Again, it's more work. But when you're first starting, this is common. People will just kind of get certain things covered. And then again, if you're reaching out to a tourism board and you are their guest of honor, chances are they are going to provide you with that all inclusive experience because you're going there on behalf of the country to report for them. So they want to make sure you are covered. Another big tip when you're pitching hotels and tourism boards is to make there be a connection in your pitch when you're reaching out to them. You don't want a copy paste template. Be honest with me. Don't you guys get brands that copy and paste pitches to you and you just know they're copying and pasting and it doesn't feel, you know, authentic. It's the same thing when you pitch to a brand. I literally got a brand hit me up and they were like, Hey, Nina, we love your fitness YouTube channel. And I'm like, I do not have a fitness channel. You're clearly not worth my time. Bye. Right. So brands know this as well. So I always say don't do copy and pasted templates. Make sure you're adding value in your pitch and that the pitches are smart, helpful, and not about you, but more about them. Again, if you're interested in hearing what a pitch like that sounds like, if you come to one of my free trainings, you're going to hear me role play and read that style of pitch out loud. Another big question I got was, well, what if I've already booked the trip? Does that mean I can't pitch to this tourism border hotel? Here's the thing. If you've already booked the hotel stay and you're already paying to go, you may as well reach out to the property. Let them know you're coming. You know, use it as a networking opportunity. Ask for, you know, if you could meet with the marketing director in person or for a quick coffee or to get a private room tour. You need to put yourself out there. You can't just expect it to come to you. You have to go for it. So even if you've already booked travel, it doesn't mean you can't still pitch the property or the destination and see if there's ways that you guys can work together while you are there. And here's the thing. You may not end up working with them when you're there, but at least you have a contact. So if you end up shooting lots of content and want to send it to them afterwards for a fee, that's something that you can do as well. And one of the big tips, guys, when it comes to travel is these are not like hotels. They don't want up close shots of you and up close things of you. It's about them. It kind of relates to that whole value style of pitching. Make it about them. When you're shooting content for properties, show the beautiful property, show the beautiful destination. This is not like beauty or fitness or fashion, right? That's like up close and about you. They're more focused on showcasing the destination. So make sure that really comes alive in your content when you are putting it together. All right, guys, let me know if these tips were helpful. I have so many more where that came from. I love talking about things travel, pitching travel and tourism boards. So again, if you're interested, come to my next live free training. I always use travel examples and I'll see you guys in the next video.