Associates, Team With Us
You Need Market Visibility.
We Help You Get It.
You’re a travel and hospitality industry pro. You run a professional tourism agency, hotel, public relations firm, theme park, convention and visitors bureau, destination management organization, tourist board or other entity with a big footprint in your area.
You know your venue: your city, your region, your country. You know the personalities and businesses that make your destinations desirable. And you know which events and activities at your destinations will attract and drive traffic.
But how do you get the word out? And how do you break through the white noise of cyberspace to get out high quality thought-provoking stories for maximum market exposure at the lowest costs for your clients?
That’s where we come in. We bridge the gap between you and our content creation specialists. We make it easy for you to find the right pros to meet your needs.
Sherrye Wyatt, PR and Marketing Manager for Whidbey and Camano Islands Tourism, describes how greater connections to international markets opened doors to new audiences: “International markets are a source of growth for our local tourism economy. Last May [2018] we hosted the International Food, Wine and Travel Writers Association annual conference and brought nearly 50 influencers from throughout the world to our islands. This was the first time this conference was held in the Pacific Northwest and it led to new coverage from the UK to Australia.”
When you join us as an Associate member, you gain access to a host of benefits that will make your professional life much easier. Here are just a few benefits you realize as a member …
Reason #1: Tell Our Members Who and Where You Are
You’ll have a member profile on our membership website. It’s your chance to tell your story to our freelancers and let them know how to work with you.
- Tell them what you do and sign-up to guest-host an IFWTWA webinar.
- Tell them about your destination and your clients.
- Tell them what you need.
- Tell them how they can collaborate with you.
Reason #2: Find Talent at our Conferences and Workshops
Join us at one of our popular annual conferences or regional workshops and meet up with our writers and content creators in one-on-one sessions. We set up a marketplace at these events just for this purpose.
- You can collaborate on stories with our freelancers in person and virtually.
- You can keep track of multiple approaches to ensure there is no duplication of effort.
- You can set freelancers up with the dining, lodging and other logistical support to help them gather the evidence they’ll need to craft the best travel stories tailored to the right audience for your clients.
- You’ll walk away with a fistful of business cards from these events and know that for the cost of an annual membership and a flight to our conference, you’ve come up with dozens of professional contacts that will make your job easier.
Reason #3: Collaborate With Us on Media and Press Trips
We don’t wait for annual conferences to provide members a chance to work together. As an Associate member, our media trips committee team will work with you proactively on hosting media and press trips to your area.
These trips will consist of small groups of travel writers, photographers, and videographers. We’ll make sure you have access to all of the information you’ll need to help you pick those content creators most likely to produce the content you want and need at your destination.
Reason #4: Network with Freelancers Online
Our Association membership website is jam-packed with social community features you’ll just love. Our site is for members only.
Join our private FaceBook group to gain access to what is happening with IFWTWA, get to know our members, or share information about your destination.
On our Website:
- Want to chat with colleagues while on the run? No problem. We can set you up with an Email list so you can message one another at will on a topic central to your interest.
- Looking for ideas on how to improve your hosting expertise and experience? Join our Associate Members forum and share your experience and suggestions with like-minded professionals sharing the same challenges you do.
Reason #5: Be a Guest Host at a Webinar
Join one of IFWTWA’s webinars. As a guest host present your destination or specialty to our members.
This allows members to become acquainted with your destination, inspiring a future visit.
Reason #6: Grow Your Brand on Social Media
Our members are all over the internet. Every week of the year, they share social media posts with one another. It’s easy to join in. Every week we promote our members on:
- Magazine Monday
- Travel Tuesday
- Wine Wednesday
- Instagram Thursday
- Foodie Friday
Join every week sharing social media post with one another to spread the word about your destination.
You’ll also gain access to our private Facebook group where you can ask questions, share travel plans, and collaborate on social media posts, and more. Some members tell us this group is worth the entire cost of membership!
Reason #7: Promote your business or destination on radio
We’ve teamed up with Big Blend Radio & TV Magazine to give you the extra exposure you need for your business or destination. Since 1997, Big Blend Magazines has produced, published, and distributed engaging content in multimedia platforms, successfully educating and entertaining an audience. Their digital content marketing and branding system works like a matchmaker, introducing and connecting their partners with audiences of like interest.
Live and recorded radio segments and podcasts set you apart as an industry subject matter expert beyond your present placements in print, blog, or online. As an Associate member in good standing, you can apply to be part of a panel or do a solo business or destination promotion.
Reason #8: Advertise in Food Wine Travel Magazine
Advertise your destination/organization through ads in IFWTWA’s digital magazine.
Reason #9: We Help Protect You Online
Online theft of content is a constant threat for our members. Internet scammers threaten and try to extort our members into paying fees for alleged copyright violations.
IFWTWA is very much aware of this threat and takes the lead among travel and hospitality Associations with a unique proactive approach to protect the work of our members.
Thanks to our exclusive arrangement with Digiprove, all member stories on Food, Wine, Travel Magazine are signed with one-time irrefutable cryptographic signatures conferring copyright protections on member stories and photos. The proof is stored on Digiprove’s servers as third-party authentication.
What does this mean to you? It means when your clients read their stories on our sites, they may be certain the content is authentic.
But our deal with Digiprove doesn’t stop at protecting content on our sites. You can use their tools to protect your sites.
Associate members can take advantage of our exclusive arrangement with Digiprove to protect content on their sites by using the same tools we use to protect content for Food Wine and Travel. And you can get their tools to secure all of your content before you put it online — all courtesy of our generous discount arrangement with Digiprove.
We Don’t Just Talk: We Do
When you think about it, we just don’t talk about helping you bridge the gap between you and our freelancers. We open the doors to help you live it.
When you join us, you’ll partner with a unique group of content creators who work together to evaluate and improve the travel and hospitality industry.
IFWTWA is set up to advance the interests of the food wine and travel industry, our members and your business or destination.
When you think about it, you have every reason to join and no reason not to do so.
Membership in IFWTWA means shortcuts for you to find the best content creators to get the message out fast about your destinations.
Associate Membership is $255 per year with a first-year application fee of $50.