Press Fams

We believe that all Press Fam should produce results, very good results. Viewership on all broadcasting networks continues to decline as people come to rely more and more on online content. We've taken an old business model Press Fam tour and renewed it to put rock solid guarantee's in place so that you get a guaranteed Press Fam every time or it's FREE. No more saying goodbye at the airport to your Press Fam members and praying for a good story to maybe appear somewhere and maybe producing results.
All of our Press Fam members are vetted by industry professionals. They include Academy and Emmy Award winning producers, directors, camera operators, celebrities, blog writers with massive appeal along with of course published travel writers all with an emphasis on video. In short we engage the best of the best in travel media for all of our contracts. We have leveraged our ability to get Press Fam participants with the attraction of well organized junkets.

We have been part of over 200 Press Fams stretching over 20 years so we know a thing or two about how they work and how they don't. In fact we teach others how to produce successful Press Fam's at the World's Largest Travel Trade show, ITB. Our pool of travel journalists all have outstanding CV's in travel journalism. They are all employed full time in some aspect of media production. After they're accepted with The Travel Media Group we show them various offers and put together an itinerary.
Assembling the A team for a Press Fam is not easy, even for large tourism boards. We've been part of or organized over 200 of them ourselves so we know a little bit about this. We've been called upon to present keynote speeches and workshops on how to organize Press Fams at ITB, the World's's Largest International tTravel Show.

All trip participants are paid a fee by us, not the destination so that we can stay well away from editorial guidelines that require a solid barrier between the client location and their pay. The fees are one way we maintain total control over production to ensure stories are complete and ready to submit as agreed. Obviously we work with people that we have personally vetted and trust.

Producing Press Fams does not stop at getting stories together for without publication or broadcasts nothing has been accomplished. We take a good chunk of getting those stories out on our own proprietary media centres with SEO and Meta tags targeted to your destination.

The best Press Fams with the best results are the ones that start out with the most planning and understanding of what a professional travel journalist does and doesn't do. The truth is today there is no shortage of so called travel journalists willing to take a Press Fam in return for the promise of a story, a good story. Sometimes it sounds so good that you just can't go wrong. No less than the World's Largest News Organization, CNN and the Huffington Post was caught working with a so called journalist that had been dramatically inflating her views through a complex “botting” system HYPER LINK: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/14694943-cnn-hit-hard-in-ongoing-pay-per-view-scandal-millions-of-page-view-removed. This scam went on for several years before we caught it and demanded that millions of fake views be removed. We have since redoubled our efforts to be absolutely certain that all views from our Press Fams are real views that you can count on.

We are trending towards web based stories because of the complete control over audience, platforms and content. Most of our coverage can be seen with any new TV set connected to the Internet anywhere in the world. We know that some people still want old style broadcast coverage. We can assemble that team for you. We charge an affordable fee for our services. With that fee and our standard terms we are able to enforce a mutually beneficial contract to guarantee results. In other words we don't get paid unless you get results, that's our job and our contract is your guarantee. Our schedule is typically 2 days on and 1 day off to allow Press Fam members time to create their stories as the trip evolves. By the time they leave we can already count on stories ready for our in house networks as well as their own outlets.

Our Media Platforms
If you have particular media platforms in mind let us know. From CNN, NATGEO, NBC, NTV, CCCTV to PBS and the BBC we've been there with them to produce some amazing “hooks and pegs”. We know how to get the coverage you want. The more well known the media outlet the more expensive and the less control we all have over the stories, which is as it should be. It's time to put an end to the idea that any outside party is going to tell a news editor what stories to air. That's where experience alone comes in. We work with Vetted travel journalists that know the “hooks and pegs” that editors look for.

On line distribution offers amazing exposure opportunities and it gets better every day, especially for smaller locations with smaller budgets. Unfortunately the opportunity to scam has also increased. Who really knows who the best Bloggers, on line video producers and social media experts are? We do, that's who. We work with people that produce legitimate content for multiple platforms. All video content produced on a Press Fam organized by us is loaded to at least 100 different video platforms around the world, including Asia. To help us we utilize our broadcast arm, World Press Media. This anchor site acts as host for our clients so that we can guarantee branded or non branded content availablity independent of any 3rd party with conflicting interests. With over 15,000,000 fully engaged views and thousands of followers our numbers compete with some of the larger Televsion Networks. This is included with every Press Fam we are involved with.

Who
Press Fams are organized by CNN award winning Travel Journalist Percy von Lipinski. Named as the “Travel Guru” at CNN.

Our website site receives dozens of Press Fam applicants per day. Applicants are required to have at least 5 years experience and be a member in good standing of at least one recognized Travel Journalist association in their home country. We ask for samples, we check authenticity, we review what they have done recently. All applicants are asked enough questions to be able to assess their social media rankings on such sites as Klout and Peerindex. A criminal check is performed before any professional engagement. References are checked.

Assembling the A team for a Press Fam is not easy, even for large tourism boards. We've been part of or organized over 200 of them ourselves so we know a little bit about this. We've been called upon to present keynote speeches and workshops on how to organize Press Fams at ITB, the World's's Largest International Travel Show. We charge a fee for our services. With that fee and our standard terms we are able to enforce a mutually beneficial contract. In other words we don't get paid unless you get results, that's our job and our contract is your guarantee. Want a celebrity to juice up the experience, let us arrange that for you as well. Even celebrities enjoy a nice fam trip.

The best Press Fams with results are the ones that start out with the most planning and understanding of what a professional travel journalist does and doesn't do. The truth is there is no shortage of so called travel journalists willing to take a Press Fam in return for the promise of a story. Sometimes it sounds so good that you just can't go wrong. No less than the World's Largest News Organization, CNN and the Huffington Post was caught working with a so called journalist that had been dramatically inflating her views through a complex “botting” system HYPER LINK: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/14694943-cnn-hit-hard-in-ongoing-pay-per-view-scandal-millions-of-page-view-removed. This scam went on for several years before we caught it and demanded that millions of fake views be removed. This is why we carefully select and constantly monitor all sites to ensure integrity in numbers.

Social Media

We expect every Press Fam member to be very active in Social Media for the duration of the trip. Frankly if they are Social Media luddites they'll never make the vetting process anyway. You'll see your Press Fam members posting and tweeting around the clock.

We will set up a special Press Fam Facebook page just for the Press Fam and as it's likely to be linked to your existing Social Media channels your networks will see the stories of your Press Fam updated by the minute.

Let us invite a celebrity or two and watch your Social Media network come to life.