In the hot seat:
- Delilah Khomo
Travel Editor at Tatler
Delilah's Focus:
- Responsible for all online and print travel content, also oversees the travel guide.
- Delilah likes coffee and breakfast meetings as more interaction. She also likes phone calls!
- The Bar and a breakfast are the two indicators Delilah looks for in a hotel, says a lot about the property.
Tatler:
- Demographic: high spender across fashion, beauty, travel, bars and jewellery
- Travel story feature currently a year’s lead time
- Plan ahead as minimum three-month lead time for shorter non feature led stories
- The November issue has a cruise section this year.
- There will be a big “Best of Britain” celebration focus next year post-Brexit and a commitment to not fly so much. Staying closer to home and exploring stories will all be popular
- 2020 trends Delilah predicts will be popular are: wellness travel, “check in to check out”, CBD spas, time warp travel
- Europe makes up 60% of the Travel guide – France has made a comeback this year
- New Guide 2020: Villas, private rental, and learning travel will all be focusses for next year
- New Guide 2020: she envisages there will be a restaurant guide
- Design stories work well but needs to be a renowned designer
Pitching Top Tips:
- Be open from the beginning about coverage
- Does not Instagram from personal account
- Likes email pitches, make it exclusive, take care over it with personalisation, tell her why it is for Tatler and why you are making her aware of it
- All emails are filed, and she loves a strong theme when pitching
- Trends for 2020: include design, wellness, Time-warp travel / historical experiences, educational or learn a skill themes, transformative travel, food and drink (menus) and redesign
- Angles for older properties with not a lot of news include tapping into the history, working out what it is good at and what the theme is
- Food is a massive part of travel and the food should correlate with the hotel – culinary experiences are important
- When on press trips she likes to meet with the Chief Bar man/lady and Concierge as well as the General Manager. They have great stories to tell and it’s easier to find out things from them, helps providing details
- Delilah doesn’t mind group press trips but wants to know who is going at the outset so that stories don’t get doubled up
- Christmas travel related stories are more online rather than print
- Hotel pitches: think design, geographical location, impact on community, local features, wellness, historical stories, what doing that is new – eg art, gardens, design etc
