Internet hospitality marketing is more than building a website and waiting for customers to come. Whether you’re a hotel, resort, restaurant, or attraction, you can distinguish your brand from the competition using strategic online PR.

This type of tourism marketing involves PR activities geared toward influencing media, communities, and travel audiences that exist only on the Internet. While traditional press relations meant securing coverage in newspapers, magazines, radio and television news, online PR builds brand profiles and drives web traffic by using what the Internet is all about: peer-to-peer marketing and search.

Why it Works

Online travel releases get picked up by social media users and bloggers, who re-tweet, re-post, and re-link, spreading your message virally. News and messages are spread using search engines, forums, blogs, discussion threads, social networks, and tools such as RSS feeds.

Online PR also has a longer shelf life, in the form of...Sign in to read the full article.