Information from hotel
This morning, I received a reply from a hotel. I’m currently researching a feature on getting away from the whole family Christmas thing and thought this resort might be a good possible inclusion. But I needed a bit of information on it first before I could assess.
The response
The response, pasted below, is a priceless example of how not to deal with a journalist’s information request. I have bolded the bits that the hotel added to my original e-mail for ease of reading. Read and weep/ laugh.
“Thank you for your request for Information.
realname: David Whitley
email: [My e-mail address]
comment: Hi. I’m doing a story for [Magazine X] about places to escape the traditional family Christmas.
I thought [tiny island that resort is on] might be an ideal candidate, but I was just
wondering a couple of things:
- Can guests get mobile phone/ internet access at your resort? Not Confirm
- Are children allowed to stay at the resort? 1 child free sharing witj
parent until 12 Yo
- Does the resort do anything special at Christmas time (ie.
decorations)?not Confirm
- Do you have any rooms still available for the Christmas period?please
advise the date”
Tags: Christmas, hotel, marketing, PR, resort, Travel Writing
That’s pretty bad, and it’s happened to me as well. But – at the risk of being a humourless old goat – I’m wondering whether your good self might be a teensy weensy bit at fault here. Approaching an individual hotel like this (as opposed to a PR or head-office marketing rep) means that the message is likely to get read first – and, possibly, only – by the front-desk staff, mixed in with all the corporate fluff, spam, and boneheaded emails from the general public etc. If I attempt this, my subject line is always “Journalist request” (or, sometimes, JOURNALIST REQUEST). Email always starts “I am a journalist” (or, sometimes, “I am a JOURNALIST”) “and I am writing an article about X for X, which is a magazine (or, sometimes, MAGAZINE) in Country X. I need to ask you some questions for information (or, sometimes, INFORMATION)” And so on.
In your case above, would the hotel staff – who, from the quote above, don’t have English as a first language – be justified in turning round and saying “Well, he wasn’t clear enough for us to understand what he wanted”?
That is a fair call, Matthew, and it’s part of the reason why I omitted the hotel details. I just wanted to use it as a somewhat funny example rather than humiliate the hotel in question.
It is a resort hotel aimed largely at an English-speaking market; I didn’t have a PR or head office contact so tried going direct. And usually I do state more clearly that I’m a journalist, so an oversight on my part. But it’s still a bad response even from someone on the front desk to a potential customer – especially in a ‘luxury resort’ that charges from US$235 a night.
Fair enough. Quite agree.
Just as Matthew has suggested, I always put ‘Journalist Request’ in the subject header and then address the email to General Manager, PR/MR/Communications Manager & Marketing/Sales Manager. When possible, I call up first and get their correct email addresses although that’s not always possible if I’m on the other side of the planet.
But I *never* go through outside PR people/agencies if I can avoid and try always to deal with the hotels themselves, as I find that tends to slow down the whole process, duplicates communications, and can result in mixed messages. I hate having exchanged half a dozen emails to make arrangements and get the relevant permissions to photograph and review a property for a book and then get there and the people on site know little about what you’re doing.
In this case, though, your request was simple, and you’re right – at a place like that, if they didn’t have sufficient skills to respond bells should have gone off when they saw the words “doing a story” for “X magazine”and they should have forwarded the request to someone could could respond.
Just as Matthew has suggested, I always put ‘Journalist Request’ in the subject header and then address the email to General Manager, PR/MR/Communications Manager & Marketing/Sales Manager. When possible, I call up first and get their correct email addresses although that’s not always possible if I’m on the other side of the planet.
But I *never* go through outside PR people/agencies if I can avoid and try always to deal with the hotels themselves, as I find that tends to slow down the whole process, duplicates communications, and can result in mixed messages. I hate having exchanged half a dozen emails to make arrangements and get the relevant permissions to photograph and review a property for a book and then get there and the people on site know little about what you’re doing.
In this case, though, your request was simple, and you’re right – at a place like that, if they didn’t have sufficient skills to respond bells should have gone off when they saw the words “doing a story” for “X magazine”and they should have forwarded the request to someone could could respond.
I have received similar responses to yours before from some very widely publicized and well-regarded properties and I often wonder how writers managed to get the information they did… it soon becomes apparent when you eventually get a press kit and it’s oddly familiar.
Should not matter if you are a journalist or not, they should be able to answer those questions!