★ For Destination Marketing Organisations
PR software for destination marketing organisations
Press Pilot gives destination marketing communications teams a practical system to gather stories from local businesses and partners, turn them into press-ready releases, organise relevant outreach and retain a clear record of the activity created.
The opportunity
Turn local stories into visible destination marketing.
Visitor-economy stories rarely sit in one place. They are spread across accommodation providers, attractions, hospitality businesses, events, makers and local partners, and most of them never reach a journalist.
A hotel refurbishes a wing, an attraction confirms a strong half-term, a food producer wins an award, a festival adds a weekend. Individually each item looks small. Together they describe a destination that is worth visiting, and that is the story travel desks and regional newsrooms are actually interested in.
A lean communications team needs a repeatable system to surface and shape those stories, rather than relying on whoever happens to email in that week. The practical goal is a steady, predictable flow of material you can choose from, instead of a scramble when the board asks what has been in the press.
The workflow
One workflow from partner story to press-ready release.
Four stages, in the same place, so nothing depends on someone remembering where the last version was saved.
01
Gather the partner story
Partners submit news through a branded form, so material arrives with the facts, dates, quotes and images already attached.
02
Develop and approve the release
Draft the release, edit it into your house voice and route it for approval before anything goes out.
03
Organise relevant outreach
Build and segment the press contacts who cover travel, the visitor economy and your region, then send from one place.
04
Keep a record of activity
Retain what was sent, to whom, when, and the coverage that followed, so the evidence exists when it is needed.
If an announcement needs to be held until a set date, the same record keeps the timings and the contact list together. Our guide to sending an embargoed press release walks through how to do that without confusion.
The DMO shape
You're amplifying other people's brilliant work. We get it.
Hotels, attractions, operators, events, member experiences. Every one of them has a story this month. The trade press wants the angle. The regionals want the visitor numbers. The board wants the share-of-voice chart.
Partner intake that respects your brand
A branded portal partners actually use. You stop being the inbox triage layer.
Travel-press first
Our journalist database is heavy on travel, regional and trade, the patches DMOs actually pitch.
Member-renewal evidence
Coverage credited to the right member, ready for the renewal conversation.
Multi-region, multi-language
If you sell into the US, IE, CA and AU as well as the UK, we'll keep the patches separate.
Funder-ready reporting
Quarterly funder updates that don't need a designer or a panicked all-nighter.
Board chair's dashboard
A live link for your chair. No more 'can you send the latest numbers?'
A typical week
Monday to Friday, with Press Pilot.
- MonPartner submissions land overnight. AI drafts ready for your edit by 9.30.
- TueApprove drafts, schedule three pitches, brief one journalist on a longer-lead piece.
- WedCoverage starts landing. Mentions auto-credit to the right campaign.
- ThuMember preview of next week's coverage report. No spreadsheets.
- FriBoard chair already opened the dashboard. You actually leave at five.
The DMO reality
Fifty partners, one inbox, a board meeting on Thursday.
DMO comms teams sit in a very particular bind. The hotels, attractions and operators in your patch each have a brilliant story this quarter - a new chef, a refurbished wing, a record season, a sustainability milestone. They want airtime. You want airtime for them. The travel desks want angles, the regionals want visitor numbers, and the board wants a chart that shows the levy or the grant is doing its job.
What usually gives is your week. The inbox becomes the bottleneck. Drafts pile up in WhatsApp threads. Coverage lands but nobody traces it back to the right member. Friday afternoons disappear into spreadsheets nobody will open. Press Pilot is built to take that grind off the desk - the intake, the drafting, the targeting, the credit, the rollup - so the team can spend the week on the work that actually needs a human: the calls, the relationships, the storytelling.
"The Monday morning fire drill is the thing we set out to kill. If your DMO still has one, we haven't done our job."
A day in the life
Thursday with Hannah, Head of Comms at a coastal DMO.
Hannah looks after 62 partners, reports to a board of nine and a city council, and runs the press desk on her own three days a week. Here's what a Thursday looks like once Press Pilot is in.
08.10
Coffee, then the Press Pilot inbox. Overnight: a boutique hotel submitted an autumn package, an attraction confirmed a record half-term, an operator wants to flag a sustainability award. All three drafts are already roughed in.
09.20
Hannah edits the hotel piece in her house voice, swaps the headline, approves the operator's quote. Two clicks, both pitches sequenced to the right travel-trade patches with embargo Friday 06.00.
10.30
A regional daily journalist replies inside the platform asking for an image and a second quote. Hannah pulls both from the asset library without leaving the thread.
12.45
Lunch walk along the prom. The phone's quiet because the coverage tracker emails itself to the chair at noon.
14.15
Board meeting prep. Hannah opens the live dashboard - share-of-voice up 18% on last quarter, eleven members with coverage this month, three with none. She schedules outreach calls to the three.
16.00
Coverage from yesterday's embargo starts landing. Each mention auto-credits to the right partner. A member emails to say thanks; she replies with a one-line link to their own dashboard.
17.05
Friday's preview report is already drafted. Hannah adds two sentences of context for the board chair, hits send, closes the laptop.
What Hannah sees
The DMO Monday-morning view.
Member submissions
Review content submitted by members and generate press release drafts.
- Anya WhitfieldNew visitor centre opens at Harbour QuayAttractionSpringTourismHeritageDrafting
- Marcus AdeyemiMembers report strong Easter tradingTrendHospitalityRetailUsed
- Priya ChandraFestival of Light returns for tenth yearEventSummerCultureCommunityUsed
- James HollowayApprenticeship cohort grows 40% YoYSkillsWorkforceNew
- Eleanor PikeIndependent retailers extend opening hoursMember newsRetailNew
Capacity
Built for lean DMO communications teams.
For teams with limited time and capacity, the constraint is rarely ambition. It is the number of hours left after everything else.
When story collection, drafting, outreach and record keeping each live in a different place, most of the week goes on moving information between them. Chasing a partner for an image, finding the approved version of a release, rebuilding a contact list from last quarter: none of it is editorial work, and all of it takes time.
The practical result of putting those stages in one workflow is a more consistent story flow and less avoidable administration. It does not remove the need for judgement, relationships or good writing. It removes the parts of the job that were never supposed to be the job.
Evidence
Make communications activity easier to show.
Leadership, boards, funders and partner businesses all ask a version of the same question: what did the press work actually produce?
An organised record of releases, outreach and coverage answers that question without a week of reconstruction. You can show which stories were published, which journalists received them, which outlets covered them and which partner businesses were named.
Naming partners matters in a destination context. It is the clearest way to show a levy payer, member or funded partner that the communications team created visibility they would not have had on their own. For more on reporting press activity honestly, see the Press Pilot resources library.
Common questions
Questions destination marketing teams ask.
What is PR software for a destination marketing organisation?+
It is software that helps a destination marketing communications team run press work in one place: gathering stories from partner businesses, developing and approving releases, organising outreach to relevant journalists, and keeping a record of what was sent and what coverage followed.
Can Press Pilot help a DMO collect stories from partners?+
Yes. Partners submit their news through a branded submission form, so accommodation providers, attractions, operators and event organisers all send material in the same structured shape instead of scattered emails and messages.
Is Press Pilot a CMS for DMOs?+
No. Press Pilot is not positioned as a content-management system and does not replace your destination website. It is designed to help communications teams organise stories, press releases, outreach and evidence of press activity.
How can a DMO organise press outreach more effectively?+
Work from a segmented list of journalists who genuinely cover travel, the visitor economy and your region, pitch stories that match their beat, and keep one record of who received what and when. Grouping related partner submissions into a single themed release also tends to be more useful to a journalist than sending each one separately.
What should a DMO measure from press activity?+
Start with what you can evidence: stories submitted, releases published, outreach sent, named outlets that covered the story and which partners were featured. Those figures are more credible with a board or funder than headline reach estimates.
Bring Press Pilot to your destination team.
A 30-minute demo using your real partner list. We'll show you a Monday morning that doesn't feel like a fire drill.
Book a demoOr read the 30-day plan before you commit.