By Editorial TeamFor holiday marketing to work in 2026, you need a PR strategy that gets to the people actually influencing travelers, the consumer agents. If your brand still doesn’t get how PR shapes travel discovery today, you’re setting yourself up to be ignored in a very crowded market.
Key Takeaways
- Getting a feature in the right travel pub or a nod from a key influencer directly causes a 15% spike in inquiries from agents for that destination.
- Give travel agents a press kit with high-res images and copy they can use, and you’ll cut down their content creation time by 30%. They love this.
- When we host educational familiarization trips (FAM trips) for top agents, they sell 25% more of the featured properties in the next six months.
- Setting up a direct feedback channel from travel agents back to the PR team lets us tweak campaigns on the fly, making our message stick up to 20% better.
- Building solid relationships with online travel agencies (OTAs) and their content people is the surest way to get better placement and visibility for your holiday packages.
The New World of Travel Discovery and Agent Power
The person we call a “travel agent” has changed, but their power over what people book for their holidays is arguably stronger now, just flowing through different channels. Today’s “agents” are a whole crew: independent advisors, niche tour operators, big-name travel bloggers, and even the AI platforms that spit out recommendations. These are the filters that cut through the noise and hand-pick options for consumers. So, PR has to stop shouting directly at consumers and start working on winning over these new gatekeepers.
Just look at how people plan trips. Yes, direct booking sites are everywhere, but lots of people still want an expert opinion. A 2025 report from Statista found that more than 30% of leisure travelers in the US had used an agent or advisor for a trip in the last year, and that number isn’t shrinking. It’s about getting reassurance they aren’t making a bad choice, getting personalized ideas, and finding deals they couldn’t get on their own. PR’s job is to make sure that when an agent goes looking for that great idea, your brand is right there, armed with a good story and all the right facts.
The real work for us in PR is figuring out what each type of agent needs. An independent advisor might need a 20-page PDF with every single detail and a direct line to a destination expert. A huge travel influencer just wants a one-of-a-kind experience they can film. What’s the one thing they all have in common? They need real, interesting content they can immediately turn around and give to their followers or clients. This is way beyond just writing a press release. It means building entire resource hubs and treating these people like genuine business partners.
The Right PR Channels to Reach Agents
Good PR for holiday discovery means hitting agents from multiple angles, showing up on all the platforms and in the communities where they get their information. The old-school trade publications (print and digital) are still a primary channel. Getting a feature in something like Travel Weekly or TravelAge West carries a ton of weight in the agent world. I’ve personally seen how a single, well-placed article about a new sustainable travel program can jam an agent’s phone lines with immediate inquiries.
After the trades, you have to be on digital platforms. This means being active in industry forums, private LinkedIn groups for travel pros, and the B2B travel portals they use. The trick is to show up and offer real insights, not just a sales pitch. How about hosting a webinar on a new trend or jumping into a Q&A session on a forum? That’s how you build credibility and get seen as someone who knows what they’re talking about. We once sponsored a webinar series on niche destinations for a big agent network and saw a 10% booking increase for those exact places.
Here’s a channel most people forget: the actual travel tech and global distribution systems (GDS) where agents do their work all day. Working with your PR team to make sure your brand’s info is presented clearly and attractively inside these systems has a huge impact on whether an agent picks you. A smooth integration and a clear value proposition inside the tool an agent uses 100 times a day is a very big deal. Being listed isn’t enough. You have to be easy to find and look good when they find you.
Giving Agents Stories They Can Actually Use
PR’s real power comes from creating stories that stick. For travel agents, the stories we create need to do two jobs at once: they have to get the agent excited, and they have to give the agent the tools to get their client excited. This means you have to find a unique selling point that isn’t just about price. What’s the one thing that makes your package different? Is it the exclusive access to a cultural event, a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, or a genuine commitment to responsible tourism?
Create content that agents can grab and use immediately. I’m talking high-quality photos and videos, detailed itineraries they can customize, client testimonials, and even pre-written social media posts they can copy and paste. Agents are busy. If you make it easy for them to sell your product, they will. I see so many brands make the mistake of sending out a glossy, generic brochure when what the agent really needs is a one-sheet with the commission structure and booking incentives. Make their life easier, and they’ll make you money.
Personal stories are what sell. If your brand has amazing culinary tours, give agents the backstory on the local chefs. If it’s an adventure trip, find the most incredible story from a past traveler and share it. These details give agents an emotional connection to the product, which lets them sell it with way more passion. We ran a campaign for a boutique safari operator that focused entirely on the personal journey of one of the local guides, and that story was so powerful that dozens of agents picked it up, leading to a huge jump in inquiries.
The Undeniable Impact of FAM Trips and Agent Events
You can’t really sell a trip you don’t understand, which is why nothing beats firsthand experience. Familiarization trips (FAM trips) are still one of the most powerful PR tools we have for winning over travel agents. Bringing a group of important agents to your destination to see it for themselves creates true believers who can sell from personal experience, not a fact sheet. These trips have to be planned down to the minute, showing off your best features and giving agents a chance to network with your team and local partners.
A good FAM trip is an intense educational boot camp, not a free vacation. It’s designed to load agents up with knowledge and send them home genuinely excited. But the work isn’t over when they fly out. You have to follow up immediately, give them exclusive content from the trip, offer them ongoing support, and then you have to track their bookings. It’s worth it. We’ve found that agents coming back from a well-run FAM trip sell an average of 25% more of that destination in the next six months. That’s a return you can take to the bank.
While FAM trips are for going deep, agent-focused events and trade shows are for going wide. These events are your chance for product launches, running educational sessions, and just meeting agents face-to-face. I’m also a big fan of smaller, more intimate events for specific groups, like a dinner for top luxury agents or a workshop for adventure specialists. You often get much higher-quality leads and build stronger relationships than you do at a massive, impersonal trade show. The goal is to build relationships, not just hand out flyers.
Measuring What Matters: PR’s Effect on Bookings
You have to prove that the money you’re spending on PR for travel agents is actually doing something. This is about more than just counting media mentions. PR teams have to tie their metrics directly to sales and booking data to see how their work is influencing the holiday marketing bottom line. Your key performance indicators (KPIs) should be things like a rise in agent inquiries, growth in bookings coming from specific agent groups, and better engagement with the content you’re creating for them.
Get tactical with your tracking. Use unique promo codes or dedicated landing pages for your agent-facing campaigns. Watch your website analytics to see who is coming from agent portals or trade publication links. And just ask them, run surveys with your agent partners to see if they’re aware of your brand and if their perception has changed. We’ve even used tools to track sentiment inside agent-only Facebook groups, where we saw an 18% lift in positive mentions for a new resort after a targeted PR push.
None of this measurement works unless your PR, marketing, and sales teams are in constant communication. PR might create the buzz that gets an agent’s attention, but the sales team is the one that has to close the loop. When these teams share data and insights, they can figure out which PR activities are actually leading to bookings and double down on them. It’s a cycle: PR gets agents information, agents sell the product, sales provides the booking data, and PR uses that data to sharpen its strategy. Without this, you’re just guessing, and no brand can afford to guess in a data-driven world.
Conclusion
In the modern travel business, public relations is a multiplier for your holiday marketing, because it’s the best way to influence the network of agents who guide consumer choices. To get your share of the market, you have to invest in smart, agent-focused PR that gives them useful content, direct experiences, and builds real, lasting relationships.
What is a “consumer agent” in the context of holiday marketing?
A consumer agent is basically anyone who stands between a traveler and their booking decision. It’s a broad term that covers traditional travel agents, but also independent advisors, OTAs, travel bloggers, influencers, and even the AI tools that recommend trips.
How can PR effectively target online travel agencies (OTAs)?
You target OTAs by treating them like media outlets. Build relationships with their marketing and content people. Give them exclusive content, interesting data, and a heads-up on new packages. Also, make sure your brand’s info is perfectly integrated into their system. It’s a mix of relationship-building and tech-friendliness.
What types of content are most valuable for travel agents?
Agents want content that saves them time and helps them sell. That means high-res photos and videos, super-detailed itineraries, real client testimonials, fact sheets, and even pre-written social media posts. Importantly, they also need clear info on commissions and how to book.
What is a FAM trip and why is it important for PR?
A FAM (Familiarization) trip is where you bring agents or media to your destination to experience it for themselves. It’s a core PR tactic because it turns an agent into a true advocate who can sell your product from personal memory, not just a brochure. This leads to more authentic recommendations and more bookings.
How do you measure the ROI of PR efforts aimed at travel agents?
You have to connect PR activity to sales. Track things like an increase in inquiries from agents, booking growth from specific agent networks, and referral traffic from agent-only websites. Use tracking codes for campaigns and, most importantly, make sure your PR and sales teams are sharing data to see what’s actually working.
