Missouri Division of Tourism Press Trip
From January to August 2016, I interned at the Beenders-Walker Group (TBWG) in Jefferson City, MO, a destination marketing and public relations firm. At TBWG, one of the biggest projects I assisted with was a press trip contracted to us by the Missouri Division of Tourism.
The goal of this press trip was to promote the Katy Trail, a 241-mile bike path across Missouri converted from the old MKT railway. Much of my assistance on this project was related to the planning and logistics aspect. I researched communities to visit along the way, looked up lodging and food, and coordinated travel for 10 journalists representing multiple media outlets.
After several months of planning, our trip had settled on a 5-night, 6-day trip starting from the east trailhead in Machens, MO. We visited 11 different trail communities in those six days, transporting our journalists by car, train, bike, and bus. On this trip, I was on the support team, running journalists to different points of interest, setting up interviews for them with community leaders, and making sure everyone was arriving to their different obligations on time.
I’ve embedded some of the documents we used to plan this, including the application sent to journalists, the pitch to the Missouri Division of Tourism, documents we used to coordinate travel, and a post-trip questionnaire. Also embedded is a 17-page comprehensive playbook I developed for the trip. In this is the itinerary for every journalist, all lodging arrangements, emergency info, and weather for the week.
Below is a sample of the work from the journalists who participated in this trip.
