Byway

Each multi-stop journey is personalised for the holidaymaker, and optimised for quality of experience instead of speed. The company was founded in 2020 by Cat Jones, who’s never owned a car and whose annual family holiday is by train and bike, whatever the weather. Trips are currently available across the UK and Europe for all dates in 2025 and beyond. All bookings include customised transport, hand-picked accommodation and on-demand expert advice, plus a low carbon footprint.

The carbon impact of rail travel is 14g of CO2 per passenger mile, compared to 285g for air: you could get the train from London to Edinburgh and back five times and your carbon footprint would still be lower than if you flew there. Byway trips are not just about less carbon, but the wider benefits of travelling sustainably, avoiding hotspots, staying in locally run accommodation; about getting to know the places you visit and enjoying the freedom and unexpectedness of travelling overland.

Reactive PR is a strange discipline. You spend most of your time preparing for something that hasn't happened yet, and the entire value of the work is compressed into about ninety minutes, roughly four times a year, when a story breaks and a producer needs someone credible on the line immediately.

Get those ninety minutes right and you build a national voice. Miss them and you've got a very well-researched comment nobody ran.

Lemongrass Marketing, a B Corp-certified travel communications agency, delivered a founder profiling programme for the CEO and Founder of Byway, the UK's first 100% flight-free dynamic holiday planning platform.

Broadcast:

• LBC - national radio interview
• BBC Radio 4 - national radio interview

Print and online commentary:

• The Times, The Independent, Forbes, TravelWeekly, I News, TechRound and more

Speaking platforms:

• TTG Fairer Travel Event
• Climate Action Week

Related brand campaign results: 238 pieces of coverage, 250M reach, 67% from sites with excellent domain authority.

Byway's CEO and Founder had real expertise on a subject rising fast up the national agenda - sustainable, flight-free, slower travel. The brief was to build that profile across national media and industry events through interviews, speaker slots, profile features and reactive commentary.

The pressure was timing. Sustainable travel was becoming a live political and industry conversation, and the founders who establish themselves as the go-to voice during that window tend to hold the position for years afterwards. The ones who arrive eighteen months late find someone else has the producer's phone number.

We built for speed, not for the long lead

We structured the programme around responsiveness - securing commentary and interview opportunities across online, broadcast and print as stories broke, rather than exclusively pursuing planned features with six-week lead times.

Both matter. But a founder who can be booked at ninety minutes' notice, with a clear view and no need for sign-off, becomes a producer's first call. That's a compounding asset, and it's built entirely out of preparation done before anyone needed it.

We went where the argument was actually happening

The focus was placing Byway at the centre of political, industry and consumer conversations as they unfolded - timely commentary, strong spokesperson visibility, a steady drumbeat rather than occasional spikes.

Rail announcements, aviation policy, climate coverage: these are the moments when a flight-free travel founder has something genuinely useful to add. Not a brand message dressed as a comment - an actual perspective a listener benefits from hearing.

We pushed beyond media into the room itself

Alongside commentary, we secured the founder's involvement at key industry conferences, including the TTG Fairer Travel Event and Climate Action Week.

Media coverage builds public profile. Speaking platforms build peer credibility - and they put the founder directly in front of the organisations, operators and policymakers shaping the conversation, which is where influence in this category actually accumulates.

The programme secured broadcast interviews on LBC and BBC Radio 4, alongside commentary across national, trade and tier-one consumer titles including The Times, The Independent, Forbes, TravelWeekly, I News and TechRound.

Speaker opportunities followed at key industry events, from the TTG Fairer Travel Event to Climate Action Week.

The outcome is a founder established as an ongoing voice in the sustainable travel conversation rather than a one-off commentator - which is the difference between being quoted and being called.

What is reactive PR? Reactive PR involves responding rapidly to breaking news and live conversations with relevant expert commentary, rather than pitching pre-planned stories. It requires prepared spokespeople, clear positions agreed in advance, and the ability to respond within very short windows.

How do you build a founder into a media go-to voice? Through consistent, fast, genuinely useful commentary on live stories, combined with speaking platforms that establish peer credibility. Byway's founder secured LBC and BBC Radio 4 interviews alongside speaking slots at the TTG Fairer Travel Event and Climate Action Week.

Is founder profiling worth it for a small travel brand? It can be particularly valuable for smaller brands, because a credible founder voice provides a route into national conversations that a small marketing budget could never buy. It works best where the founder has genuine, specific expertise on a subject with live news relevance.