Our Brief

• To stimulate media interest about Absolutely Abruzzo’s unique travel experience
• To promoting Emirates Airline by generating positive media coverage around our media familiarisation theme of the “real Italy”, food and tradition of Italy.

Our Work

In September 2006 McMillan Communicators developed a national media familiarisation opportunity for our client Absolutely Abruzzo Tours to showcase its unique “off-the-track” travel experiences in central Italy’s region of Abruzzo; as well as promoting Emirates Airline, Absolutely Abruzzo’s preferred travel partner.

Due to pre-existing relationships, McMillan Communicators’ approached the following tourism leaders for media familiarisation support:

• Emirates
• Small Luxury Hotels of the World

Our Results

Emirates’ Media and Publicity Unit supported Absolutely Abruzzo Tours in this media familiarisation by providing airfares to fly Veronica Matheson Travel Editor from the Sunday Herald Sun (Victoria) to Rome for this media familiarisation.

Due to our strong relationships with Veronica Matheson we were able to successfully negotiate additional publicity opportunities for Emirates, as a major supporter in this media familiarisation, across all News Limited newspapers.

Flight schedules for Veronica Matheson indicated an overnight stay in Rome. This created the opportunity to negotiation additional story angels and coverage for Italy as a travel destination.  Successful negotiates with Small Luxury Hotels of the World secured free of charge accommodation for Veronica Matheson at the Hotel Art on Via Margutta while creating an additional publicity opportunity for Italy.

These negotiations with Small Luxury Hotels of the World provided an avenue to generate additional travel stories for Veronica Matheson. Successful negotiations, coupled with McMillan Communicators’ credible relationship with Small Luxury Hotels of the World led to the opportunity for Veronica Mathewson to attend a media familiarisation whilst on a stopover in Dubai.

Our Success

• The media coverage achieved was very extensive and diverse in terms of the geographical locations where the stories were placed.
• This successful initiative was measured by the value of the media coverage generated as a direct result of the media familiarisation.
• This was a great result for our client and the destination which both received sensational publicity out of this activity.

Media clippings amplifying this are available upon request.