United States, 8th Oct 2026, – By Olivia Grant, Hospitality Marketing Consultant | Last updated: October 2026

About the author: Olivia Grant is an independent hospitality marketing consultant who works with boutique hotels, resorts and travel brands on PR, content and digital campaigns.

Hotels sell an experience that guests can’t try before they buy. That makes trust and visibility more important in hospitality than in almost any other industry. Travellers read reviews, look for coverage in travel media, and search the hotel’s name before booking.

Press releases, used well, feed all three. In my work with hotels and resorts, a well-timed announcement has often done more for brand awareness than weeks of paid social posts. Used badly, it disappears without a trace. Here’s what separates the two.

What hotels should actually announce

Not every update deserves a press release. The announcements that consistently earn coverage in hospitality are:

• Openings and reopenings: a new property, a renovated wing, a reopened restaurant
• New experiences: a spa concept, a chef partnership, a seasonal package or a signature event
• Awards and recognition: industry awards, sustainability certifications, notable rankings
• Partnerships: collaborations with airlines, travel programmes, designers or local brands
• Milestones: anniversaries, record occupancy seasons, community or sustainability initiatives

A new menu item or a minor website update is better suited to social media.

Lesson 1: Sell the experience, not the facility

The weakest hotel releases read like a brochure: room counts, square metres and amenity lists. Travel journalists and readers respond to what a guest will feel and do.

Compare these two openings:

“The resort features 120 rooms, two restaurants and an outdoor pool.”

“Guests at the resort can now start the day with a sunrise kayak tour and end it with a five-course tasting menu built around the morning’s local catch.”

The second gives a journalist a story and gives a reader a reason to book.

Lesson 2: Target travel and lifestyle media specifically

General business news sites rarely help a hotel fill rooms. The audiences that matter are travel publications, lifestyle magazines, regional news in key source markets, and trade outlets read by travel agents and tour operators.

When choosing a distribution service, ask directly: which travel and lifestyle outlets are in your network, and in which countries? A resort in the Maldives targeting European guests needs placements that Europeans actually read.

Lesson 3: Plan around the booking calendar

Travellers book months in advance. A release about a summer package sent in June arrives too late. With the hotels I work with, I plan announcements around these windows:

• Summer offers: announce in late winter to early spring
• Festive and New Year packages: announce in early autumn
• Openings: announce three to six months before the opening date, then again at launch
• Events and festivals: announce at least eight weeks ahead

Lesson 4: Use strong visuals

Hospitality is a visual business. Every release should include high-quality, properly licensed images: the property, the rooms, the food, and people enjoying the experience. Journalists often choose which story to cover based on whether usable images are available.

Lesson 5: Keep messaging consistent across properties

Hotel groups with multiple properties often send releases that read as if different companies wrote them. A simple style guide, covering tone, how the brand is named and a standard boilerplate, keeps every announcement recognisably part of the same brand.

For a closer look at how premium hospitality brands approach this, Naluda Magazine explores how strategic PR helps luxury hotels and resorts stand out, including targeting high-end travellers, consistent messaging and global media exposure.

Measuring whether it worked

Hotels have an advantage over many industries: the results are measurable. After each release, I track:

Metric	What it shows
Placements on travel and lifestyle sites	Whether the right media picked it up
Branded search volume	Whether more people looked up the hotel
Referral traffic to the booking page	Whether readers moved toward booking
Direct booking enquiries	Whether coverage turned into revenue
Journalist or influencer requests	Whether media wants to visit or feature the property

Tagging links in the release with tracking parameters makes it much easier to connect coverage to actual bookings.

Common mistakes hotels make

• Announcing too often with too little news
• Writing in brochure language full of “luxurious” and “world-class”
• Sending releases without images or with low-resolution photos
• Ignoring source markets and distributing only locally
• Never reusing coverage on the website, booking pages or social channels

Final thoughts

For hotels and resorts, a press release is more than an announcement. It’s a way to put the guest experience in front of travellers and the media who influence them. Focus on genuine news, write about the experience rather than the facility, time releases around booking behaviour, and target travel media in the markets you want to reach. For more context on how leading hospitality brands use strategic press release distribution, the Naluda Magazine analysis is worth a read.

Media Contact

Organization: Hospitality Marketing Consultant

Contact
Person: Olivia Grant

Website:

American Express Dominates Hotels and Resorts with Strategic PR

Email:

CSS@contactme.com

Country:United States

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How Hotels and Resorts Can Use Press Releases to Win Bookings and Media Attention appeared first on
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