Abstract
Hosting the international travel media provides many benefits to individual tourism organisations and entire destinations. Various national tourist organisations (NTOs) have developed visiting journalist programmes to entice the media to visit a destination and maximise the publicity that can be gained. Unfortunately, there is also much scope for a mismatch of expectations between the destination and media. This paper initially examines the four main issues of understanding travel journalists, recognising different cultural needs, understanding individual journalists’ needs, and examining the travel media market. The paper then examines the case of the visiting journalist programme run by the Australian Tourist Commission. It examines their processes and highlights the integration of their media programme to support the overall marketing objectives. Finally, there is a discussion about some of the less understood issues that arise from operating such programmes.
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