My first Lonely Planet printed book feature

And how it all started with a fabulous press trip

Hi Friends!

Last week, I wrote a super popular newsletter about Why You Should Have Invited Travel Writers to Visit This Fall. I immediately received last-minute press trip requests and I’ll be writing another newsletter soon about how one destination convinced me to visit on such short notice (I head there next weekend).

Anyway, in that newsletter, I said how a lot of my fall foliage articles this year are so last-minute that there wasn’t time (or even a need) for me to put out a pitch call so I relied on first-hand experience. One is this new piece I wrote for Sierra Club about Leaf Peeping for Hikers. The piece drew on my previous fall hiking trips, including one fabulous fall press trip last year (which I outline in the previously mentioned newsletter).

Yesterday, I received in the mail a copy of Lonely Planet’s new The Joy of Quiet Places book, which I wrote a chapter on about canal hikes in Madeira, Portugal (there’s also small mentions of canals in Scotland and Ohio). Above are the first two pages of the piece. I’m so excited! This is my first printed piece for Lonely Planet and I started working on it a year and a half ago so it feels good to finally have the book.

Another reason I’m so excited about this Madeira article is because Madeira is my favorite place in the world (though Slovenia is a close second). It’s a joy to write about destinations you truly love and I was lucky enough to take two press trips to Madeira. They were fabulous so here’s some info below on what made them so special and what the publicists did right.

Cassandra

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My first trip to Madeira

I love Madeira because it is beautiful, relaxed, and has amazing nature. My first press trip to Madeira was a small group trip in November, 2021. It was a six-day group trip and a friend who had been there before encouraged me to stay longer. So, I booked a rental car and an AirBnB for an extra week and I did a ton of reading and hiking after the trip. This was a fabulous compliment to the group press trip, which had more of a focus on hotels, whale-watching, wineries, gardens, and typical attractions.

That first trip to Madeira gave me what I needed to pitch and land digital features in The Daily Beast and TIME (part of the World’s Greatest Places Series), along with a printed storytelling piece in Ensemble Travel. I loved Madeira so much that I worked with the tourism board to arrange a last-minute follow-up trip in January, 2023. This time, it was a solo press trip and they let me bring my sister. I even got a caregiving grant from the Alzheimer’s Association to pay for a week of care for our mom so that she and I could travel together for the first time in years (which I wrote about for AARP). It was unbelievably meaningful.

This second trip gave me what I needed to write this AAA printed piece on Marvelous Madeira, and also the previously-mentioned Lonely Planet print piece.

This follow-up press trip was very different from the first group trip and it also was completely different from every other press trip I’ve ever taken. I think it was the best press trip I’ve ever taken in my life.

Here’s what made the trip so special and what the publicists did right.