Are Travel Journalists the Only Ones Writing About Travel?

More and more people now ask ChatGPT or Google’s AI answers where to stay and who to travel with. Rather than focusing on which section a piece ran in, those tools look at how trusted the publication is, how clearly it mentions you, and how well it matches the question being asked. That means a piece in a fashion, food or entertainment section can do as much for you as one in travel, while reaching readers who weren’t looking for a hotel. Looking beyond travel gives your story more places to land, and more ways to be found. 

Coverage that brings guests no longer comes only from people with “travel” in their job title. Writers on fashion, food, motoring, wellness and lifestyle now cover hotels, trips and destinations all the time, because their readers want to know where to go.

Take our client Wild Frontiers. When Anna Murphy, Fashion Director at The Times, joined their ‘Across the Caucasus’ tour, she came home and wrote about Armenia’s architecture and art: a travel story seen through a fashion editor’s eye. She later unpacked the trip with founder Jonny Bealby on the Wild Frontiers podcast, giving one journey a second life.

Anna isn’t the only one. A fashion writer wants the hotel with the good bathroom. A motoring writer wants the road trip. A wellness writer wants the retreat. A food writer wants the restaurant inside a resort in Puglia. Many publishers also have teams who write articles based on what people are searching for. When “best places to travel in October” spikes, someone writes that piece, and their job title doesn’t say travel either.

It limits your coverage. The writers most likely to cover you aren’t on a travel list, so they never hear from you.

It limits how easily Google finds you. A link from a respected publication helps your website show up in search, wherever in the paper that piece appeared. Ignore everything outside travel and you ignore a lot of those links.

It limits whether AI tools mention you. AI tools build their answers from what’s been published about brands, and respected publications carry real weight. If you’re missing from the places they learn from, you’re less likely to be named when someone asks for a recommendation. A travel-only list covers only part of that ground.

It also places you in a crowded inbox. Travel writers hear from hotels and tour operators every day, so even a strong pitch has plenty of company.

That doesn’t mean a list of travel journalists isn’t useful. It’s a sensible place to start. The real opportunity comes from looking a little further.

Finding the right writer is only half the job. A motoring writer is less interested in your hotel than in the road that leads to it, while a wellness writer will look past the spa menu to ask why people happily drive four hours for a cold-water swim. The same hotel can hold several different stories, and the right writer will pick yours up when you send them the one that fits their beat. 

We start with the story and the search. Before we contact anyone, we pin down the story: something specific, timely and worth talking about. Then we check whether people are already looking for it, on Google and in the questions they ask AI tools. If we can’t explain it in one sentence to someone who’s never heard of you, it isn’t ready.

We find who’s written about it recently. Rather than going by job titles, we read what writers have published in the last six months, following freelancers across every publication they write for. The contact list comes from their coverage, not the other way round.

We tailor the story to each group. We usually end up with four or five small groups of writers, and each one gets its own version. That means changing the angle itself, not just the subject line.

We plan for what happens after publication. Will the piece rank well on Google? Will it link to your website? Will it say clearly who you are and what you do, so AI tools can repeat it accurately? We build all three in from day one rather than leaving them to chance.

Here’s how that worked for Byway. When the new Wuthering Heights film became a cultural hit, we spotted a 5,000% jump in searches for its filming locations. The story wasn’t about a rail holiday company, but about a rush of people wanting to stand where the film was shot. So we led with the locations and the data, and made Byway’s rail trip through the film’s setting part of the story, rather than the headline.

The writers most interested were entertainment journalists covering the film, so we built a fresh list around them. Coverage followed in Forbes, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Express and the Northern Echo, all including the rail trip, and none appearing in a travel section.

Three habits will help:

Search like your customer. Look for your story on Google the way your customer would, then ask ChatGPT the same question. Notice who appears, and who’s being quoted.

Follow writers, not publications. Set up alerts for individual writers, especially freelancers, who often move between titles. Before you pitch anyone, read their last three pieces. It takes ten minutes, and it shows in your email.

Send fewer, better emails. Twelve writers across four tailored versions will beat sixty writers receiving the same email, even if the bigger send feels more productive.