In my previous post about pitching tourist boards I shared the one and only thing you must know before you start;… …Tourist boards work for the hotels, tour operators and other stakeholders in the destination.  So don’t start by pitching tourist boards directly, start with the stakeholders. Develop a killer idea with a hotel first, [...]

Between the horrific events of 9/11, a struggling global economy, and the unknown impact of new technologies,… …the early-2000’s were not a good time for the travel industry. This is also right about the time I was hired to run North American marketing for the Kenya Tourist Board. This was my first gig in the [...]

Some travel writers make the mistake of thinking they need to travel to far-flung destinations many time zones away…. … when, in actuality, there are interesting travel-related stories waiting to be written about their own backyards. In fact, one of the best ways to build a travel writing portfolio is to write about the destination [...]

  I cringed when I saw the headline… … “How to Score a Press Trip”, By Christy and Scott, from The Ordinary Traveler and as I hovered over the link to click it, I braced myself to read something that was going to get me all fired up. As a PR pro, the last thing [...]

New writers and bloggers ask me all the time how I’ve used social media to advance my reach since the launch of Brendan’s Adventures last year. I constantly tell them that I treat social media use like any business would treat advertising. You have to decide if the cost of the advertising is worth the [...]

There’s no such thing as a free lunch – but who wants to eat alone anyway? One day during the summer of 2009, I picked up the phone and Vibhava, an IndiaTourism officer I knew, said: “I have been reading your blog. You really love India. The next time you go to India, you will [...]

  Most of you reading this know that TBEX10 was held this past weekend, in New York City. Some of you also know that I was there, because we finally got to meet in person (yaay!). No doubt you’ll be reading many “wrap-up” posts from any of the several hundred bloggers who also attended, as [...]

Here’s a secret that most traditional travel writers know, but only a few travel bloggers seem to. Almost every city or town has a CVB (Convention and Visitor’s Bureau). A CVB’s mission is to promote their locale as a tourist destination, and they typically LOVE to work with travel writers and travel bloggers who have [...]

You’re at a Travel Writing Conference, and an editor or PR person wants to follow up with you. So you quickly whip out a business card…..or do you? I’m surprised by how few new media travel writers and bloggers take the time to create their own marketing tools such as business cards, post cards, etc…to [...]

  You Mentor Me and I’ll Mentor You. My blog is less than a year old, yet it now holds position 51 in Travel Blog Sites’s top 100 travel blogs. I could not have achieved this spot without my blogging mentor. Keith of the Velvet Escape and I met on Twitter 10 months ago. I [...]