The Long Game of Hotel PR With Melissa Benhaim

Melissa Benhaim is the Founder of Benhaim Public Relations, a Miami-based consultancy specializing in travel and hospitality PR for independent hotels and tourism brands. Since launching her firm in 2019, she has helped clients earn coverage in outlets such as The New York Times, Business Insider, and Travel + Leisure. Melissa is a three-time Smart PR Best Pitch winner and an HSMAI Adrian Award recipient for a social media campaign that generated a 150x ROI. She began her career in hotel operations at Four Seasons before moving into hospitality PR, giving her a practical approach to helping independent hotels build visibility and compete with larger brands. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: • [00:00] Introduction • [4:58] The logistics question most hotel PR campaigns skip: what happens if a guest actually books the package? • [7:42] What changes when you move from in-house hotel marketing to the agency side • [14:48] Why first-person "I visited this hotel" travel writing is the one thing AI cannot replicate • [18:11] How a partnership with a local graffiti artist drove nine times the usual Sunday ticket sales • [21:06] How to measure PR: Google Analytics referrers, guest surveys, and the outlets your owner actually reads • [27:03] The Christmas in July Facebook campaign: roughly $750 in ad spend, over $110,000 in revenue • [31:36] Why the CVB membership your hotel already pays for is its most underused PR asset In this episode… Independent hotels earn national media by running two clocks at once. Long-lead features can take a year or more to land, so they run alongside shorter-lead placements that keep the property visible in between. Impact gets measured through referral traffic and guest surveys. Kin Sio sits down with Melissa Benhaim, Founder of Benhaim Public Relations, on The Lights On Podcast to break down how hotel PR actually works. Melissa started in hotel operations at Four Seasons before crossing over to the agency side, and that background shows up in how she builds campaigns. Her Travel + Leisure feature for Flamingo Lodge and Restaurant in the Everglades began with an editor query in January 2024, moved through a writer visit, a separate photographer visit, and rounds of fact-checking, and ran about 14 months end to end. The payoff was an eight-page print feature plus an accompanying online piece. A New York Times "52 Places to Go" mention for the same property produced a visible spike in website visits the day it went live, and at least one guest who told the property team that is where they read about it. She also covers what works when the budget is small. A partnership with a local graffiti artist brought nine times the usual Sunday ticket sales for a museum client during a slow Miami August. A Christmas in July Facebook offer campaign spent roughly $750 and returned more than $110,000, work that earned an HSMAI Adrian Award. And the move Melissa pushes hardest costs nothing extra: use the CVB membership the hotel already pays for, and host the media the tourism board is already bringing into the destination. Resources mentioned in this episode: • Kin Sio on LinkedIn -   / kinsio   • Lights On - https://www.lightson.co/ • Melissa Benhaim on LinkedIn -   / melissa-benhaim-90263734   • Benhaim Public Relations - https://benhaimpr.com/ • Michael Smart PR - https://michaelsmartpr.com/ • Ellen Mason on LinkedIn -   / ellenmason1   • Independent Hotel Show Miami - https://independenthotelshow.us • Travel + Leisure - https://www.travelandleisure.com/ • Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts - https://www.fourseasons.com/ • HSMAI - https://www.hsmai.org/ • Google Analytics - https://developers.google.com/analytics • Expedia - http://Expedia.com • Booking.com - http://Booking.com • Substack - https://substack.com/ Sponsor for this episode... This episode is sponsored by Lights On. Lights On helps hotels grow revenue more consistently by managing pricing, distribution, and digital marketing together. We help hotels identify new revenue opportunities, so they don’t leave money on the table. We also manage the full revenue and marketing operation, enabling the on-the-ground team to focus on the guest experience. If your hotel needs stronger revenue growth, visit http://lightson.co to learn more. Powered by Rise25 Podcast Production Company - https://rise25.com/