The Concept of Press Trips and Building Relationships with PR

How do you write about the travel industry when people can’t fly on airplanes? That’s a question Kelsey Ogletree had to ask herself in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. By that point, she had worked for several years as a freelance travel writer, and like many of her colleagues, she didn’t know how the travel restrictions would affect her own career.

So she decided to do something about it. She announced on her newsletter that she was hosting a live Zoom call about the future of the travel industry, and hundreds of people signed up to join her. That call was so successful, in fact, that she began hosting several more of them. Eventually, this ad hoc service grew into Pitchcraft, a paid membership community that costs thousands of dollars a year to join. 

In a recent interview I spoke to Kelsey and her husband Derrick about how they built their platform, what benefits they offer to paying members, and how they attract new customers.