I listened in on a very interesting conference track yesterday at Blogworld hosted by John Forrest Ales, who leads communication strategies for Hilton Hotels and Resorts. He explained some great dos and don'ts for travel bloggers who are looking to pitch travel brands, especially for free hotel stays and other activities as part of a trip you may be planning. One key piece of advice I did like was to ask for something that you may not have otherwise been able to experience while on your trip, instead of expecting that a brand will comp your entire stay. These companies still need to make money!
With that said, I am booked and heading to the Hilton Hawaiian Village in the next few weeks for vacation. I always use my vacations to gather more content for my blog, and this one is no exception. We are planning on attending the Waikiki Starlight Luau during our stay, and I have seen the penguins, flamingos and swum in the super pool so many times that I plan to email John Forest and find out what else I might be able to do during my trip. Maybe there is some secret tour at the Hilton that I don't know about? Or maybe I can get a room upgrade so I can have uninterrupted views of the crystal clear Hawaiian waters. Stay tuned, I'm excited to hear what he says!
In any case, I will be doing a full review of our stay at the Hilton Hawaiian Village so watch this space for more information over the next couple of weeks.
4 comments:
I wish I am at Blog World with you. Looking forward to your post o Hilton :)
Especially with travel blogs and scandals and such for fake reviews like with TridAdvisor and the like, hotels are really keen for looking at and reaching out to independent bloggers and what their readers are saying.
An interesting side story, my wife uses to always go to the Heavenly Spa at the Westin Maui every year. One year, we walked over to make our appointment and they had a minor power outage. No big deal for us, we just stopped by later.
I mentioned it in passing on a blog journal entry the following day as part of the 100 things we did that day, and someone from the Westin had found it, looked our contact info from the spa reservation and left us a message offering her an extra treatment for free.
You won't find that buried in some review hidden one massive travel site.
Kris thanks for sharing that story. Talk about amazing service!
Sounds like you are learning a lot at the conference. Thanks for sharing some of your new knowledge.
Many of the workers (housekeeping, etc) from Hilton Hawaiian Village were on strike over the weekend but they are scheduled to end the strike today so you should be able to order room service and get fresh towels delivered when you are here. Maybe being at a hotel during a worker strike and blogging about it would get you lots of free stuff later...but a pleasant stay the first time would probably be even better.
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