What makes an editor stop scrolling and think, “There’s a feature in this?” While researching Spotlight Communications’ latest white paper, Invisible or Influential?, CEO Lucy Clifton spoke to some of the industry’s most influential editors to discover what they’re really looking for and why those qualities matter more than ever.
Key takeaways
- Don’t pitch information. Pitch a story. AI can generate facts; editors are looking for original reporting, fresh angles and ideas worth commissioning.
- Lead with people, not press releases. Founders, chefs, designers and experts with genuine insight are often more compelling than the hotel opening itself.
- Think about format. Show how your story could become a destination guide, first-person review, expert round-up or trend feature, not just a news item.
- Understand the publication. Tailor your idea to the editor’s audience, style and editorial agenda rather than sending the same pitch everywhere.
- Original journalism has lasting value. Exclusive, experience-led stories are more likely to earn editorial coverage, and increasingly, to be surfaced and cited by AI.
There was a time when writing a decent press release took most of the morning. You’d interview the client, wrestle with the angle, agonise over the first paragraph and spend an inordinate amount of time searching for a better word than “luxury”. Somewhere on the desk there’d probably be a dog-eared thesaurus, marked-up printouts and a half-drunk cup of coffee. The press release itself was the craft.
Today, AI can produce a perfectly competent version in about 20 seconds. It can summarise a hotel, rewrite a launch announcement and produce a respectable list of opening dates while you finish your coffee. There has never been more information in the travel industry. Hotels open. Restaurants launch. Residences are unveiled. Every week brings another announcement, another press release, another perfectly polished email.
But it raises an interesting question.
If everyone can generate the information almost instantly, what becomes valuable?
Over the past few months, while researching our latest white paper, Invisible or Influential?, we interviewed editors from some of the world’s leading luxury travel publications, including The Times, Elite Traveler, OutThere, Country Life and Country & Town House, to understand how AI is changing luxury travel media.
As we spoke to editors, one question kept coming up. What turns a press release into a story? It’s a question every editor has always asked. AI has simply made the answer more important.
Editors receive dozens of press releases every day. Most are skimmed. Many are unread. Almost all are forgotten. Only a handful become stories. So, what makes an editor stop and think: “There’s a feature in this?” What transforms a press release into something worth adding to the features list?
Their answers suggest AI increases the value of the things facts alone can’t provide. Originality has become more valuable.
Why? Because editors are no longer just deciding what appears in tomorrow’s edition. Increasingly, they’re helping shape the information AI presents to tomorrow’s travellers.
AI generates information. Editors commission stories
AI changed the economics of information. It didn’t change what editors commission. Last week, Financial Times travel editor Tom Robbins posted a beautifully simple explanation on Instagram of what makes a great travel story for The FT:
“Find an interesting place. Find something new and interesting going on there.”
Tom Robbins, travel editor, Financial Times
Tom’s point is deceptively simple. Editors don’t commission information. They commission stories. They always have. They want exclusives, original reporting, founders with something to say and new angles that give readers a reason to care. AI hasn’t changed that. The hotel opening isn’t the story. It’s the starting point.
What has changed is the value of those stories.
Our Invisible or Influential? research found that AI increasingly surfaces and cites original, attributable journalism rather than duplicated information. An exclusive look or a first-person feature doesn’t just differentiate one publication from another. It creates original reporting that AI can reference, recommend and return to users. A press release repeated across dozens of websites becomes another version of the same information.
That’s why editors are doubling down on the qualities that have always defined great journalism. As Paul Croughton, editor-in-chief of Elite Traveler, told us, “I’ve moved Elite Traveler much more toward that expert, first-person opinion… Experience and expertise still count.”
The same principle applies to PR and what we pitch. The story is the founder giving their first interview. The architect explaining the design philosophy. The destination indicating a wider travel trend. The chef changing the way a hotel thinks about food.
Those were always the stories editors wanted. Today, they’re also the stories AI is most likely to find.
AI knows the facts. Editors want the thinking
Ask AI about a new hotel, and it can tell you the opening date, the room count, the architect, the nightly rate and the facilities. Useful? Absolutely. Enough to commission a feature? Not even close.
The editors we interviewed weren’t looking for more facts. They were looking for the thinking behind them. Why was the hotel built? Why now? What was the founder trying to achieve? What changed during the design process? What surprised the chef? What does this opening say about the direction of travel?
That’s where original journalism begins. It’s another example of AI reinforcing an old editorial truth rather than replacing it. As Claire Irvin, Head of Travel at The Times, observed, “AI still can’t quite replicate voice and in an ideal world human experience will continue to be prioritised over machine recommendations in travel.”
Editors are looking for perspectives that can’t just be assembled from publicly available information.
That has important implications for PR. If you have access to someone with a genuinely interesting perspective, don’t treat the interview as supporting material for the press release. Lead with it. Because AI can summarise what happened. It can’t ask, “Why?”
AI doesn’t just read stories. It recognises formats
One of the more surprising findings from our research was that AI doesn’t simply favour certain publications. It also favours certain ways of telling stories. For a PR, this means you’re doing two things at once: making an editor’s job easier and creating the kind of structured journalism AI is most likely to surface.
Again and again, we saw the same editorial formats surface across AI platforms: destination guides, itineraries, expert recommendations, ten best lists, and practical round-ups. They weren’t just good journalism. They were formats AI could easily interpret, attribute and recommend. That’s interesting because it’s also how editors think.
Editors don’t just commission stories. They commission formats. Again, this isn’t new. AI is simply rewarding that discipline because structured, well-signposted journalism is easier to interpret and cite.
Your new hotel could become a first-person review for OutThere. Or a consistently structured hotel review for The Telegraph by a named expert, which AI loves. It could be part of Country Life‘s ‘the best’ series, a first look for Country & Town House or the reason Elite Traveler might commission a destination guide. The story hasn’t changed, but the editorial format has become more important.
The editors we interviewed repeatedly emphasised the importance of ideas that fit how their publication worked, not simply the destination being pitched. The format is often the first editorial decision, not the last. For PR professionals, that’s an opportunity. Don’t just pitch the hotel. Pitch the article.
Show the editor how the story could work on the page, who it is for and why that format suits their audience.
The surprise? AI is taking us back to basics.
When we began this research, we expected to discover that AI was changing what editors valued. Instead, we found almost the opposite. The qualities that have always turned a good pitch into a great feature – exclusivity, judgement, originality and a deep understanding of a publication’s readers – are becoming more valuable than ever.
The editors we interviewed still wanted the same things they’ve always wanted: original reporting, human experience, fresh angles, strong editorial formats and relationships built on trust. AI hasn’t rewritten the rules of good journalism. It has reinforced them.
For years, digital publishing has often rewarded writing for search engines. The pressure to chase keywords and algorithms sometimes produced content that was technically optimised but editorially forgettable.
What this means for luxury travel PR
The AI era is beginning to shift the balance back again. The publications AI surfaces consistently aren’t simply those producing the most content. They’re increasingly the ones creating original, well-structured, experience-led journalism that is easy to understand, attribute and trust. This is central to how we approach AI search visibility for luxury travel brands.
Perhaps the future of AI isn’t quite what we imagined. The best way to be found by AI may not be to write more for algorithms. It may be to rediscover the things that made great journalism valuable in the first place.
Perhaps we’ve come full circle. Back to the interesting angle. Back to the original interview. Back to the marked-up draft. Back to the half-drunk cup of coffee.
Spotlight Communications works with luxury hospitality and travel brands to build editorial relationships that generate coverage worth having. If you would like to talk about how to pitch luxury travel editors more effectively, get in touch.
About this research
This article draws on interviews conducted as part of Spotlight Communications’ white paper, Invisible or Influential?, which explores how AI is changing the way luxury travel and hospitality brands are discovered, recommended and covered. Editors interviewed included representatives from The Times, Elite Traveler, OutThere, Country Life and Country & Town House.
