Media Marketplace: How to Schedule Appointments Between Destinations and Travel Journalists

At Travel South Global Week, a journalist’s appointment with a destination lasts 11 minutes, followed by one minute to reach the next table. Each supplier pod gets around 25 of these appointments in a single day. Suppliers who submit fewer than 40 media requests get no pre-scheduled appointments at all (Travel South USA, Global Week FAQs, 2027 edition). The rules are strict because journalists have limited time and many destinations want to meet them.

That is the main difference between a media marketplace and the buyer-seller appointments most tourism trade shows already run. A buyer comes with a budget and a reason to meet suppliers. A journalist comes to find stories and owes nobody an article. If you run the media day like a trade appointment day with different badges, destinations get full diaries and journalists get pitches they did not ask for.

This guide is for the organiser who runs the media programme at a tourism trade show, a national tourism organisation or a destination workshop. Every participating destination has someone who will judge that work: the PR manager at a regional tourism board who paid for a table and will ask, a few months later, what her 24 appointments produced. The answer depends on four decisions you make before the event: who counts as media, whose requests come first, how long a slot lasts and what you record afterwards.

What is a media marketplace?

Those four decisions only make sense once the format is clear. A media marketplace is a block of pre-scheduled one-to-one appointments between travel journalists and the organisations that market destinations and travel products: tourism boards, destination marketing organisations (DMOs), hotels, airlines and tour operators. It runs either as a session inside a larger trade show or as an event in its own right. Journalists move from table to table on a fixed schedule, and the destinations stay at their tables.

Published formats show how differently organisers set the parameters:

Sources: IPW journalist appointment options (2024 edition, the latest published); Travel South USA Global Week FAQs (2027 edition); TravMedia exhibitor pages for IMM North America and IMM UK (2027 editions).

The scale varies just as widely. IPW 2026 in Greater Fort Lauderdale reported more than 550 journalists and influencers on site (IPW 2026 recap). Destination Canada’s GoMedia Canada Summit in Jasper hosted 80 international travel media from its nine target markets in September 2025 (Destination Canada, September 2025). For a regional workshop, 20 carefully chosen journalists can be enough, provided each one writes for a market the exhibitors want.

Two neighbouring formats are easy to confuse with a marketplace. On a press trip, a destination hosts journalists on location, and the terms of the visit matter most; we cover that in our guide to press trips and influencer trips for DMOs. Press accreditation at your own event brings journalists who report on the event itself, which is the subject of our event press release guide. In a marketplace, the stories are about the destinations.

The event itself is rarely the story.

Why a media marketplace needs its own rules

Because the stories belong to the destinations, the balance in the room is the reverse of a trade appointment day. At a buyer-seller event, both sides want a deal, even if only one side pays. At a media marketplace, the destination needs coverage, but the journalist can usually find a story somewhere else.

That makes the journalist’s time the limiting factor. A media marketplace works when you design it around that time: qualify journalists by their current work, schedule by journalist demand first, keep slots short and measure each appointment months later. Copying the buyer-seller day misses each of those points.

The five steps below take those rules in order and add the briefing that makes short slots work.

Step 1: Qualify the media before you open the diary

Selection comes first, because every other rule depends on the quality of the journalist list. Large marketplaces publish clear criteria. IPW asks journalists for several articles published in accredited outlets within the past 12 months, about travel within the United States, or proof of their name on a masthead. Chief executives, publishers, advertising staff and sales representatives cannot register as journalists, and international media must be approved in advance by the regional chair of IPW’s International Advisory Committee (IPW media information, 2024 edition). Travel South invites international media only after review by a task force committee, and looks for media that write about the South from established markets (Global Week FAQs, 2027 edition).

You do not need a committee for a regional workshop. You do need written criteria, published before registration opens. Ask each applicant for the same evidence:

• Proof of current work: recent bylined articles or a masthead listing, ideally from the past 12 months.
• Assignments: commissions or editors the journalist currently writes for. For freelancers, a commissioning letter is the strongest evidence.
• Market and outlet: the source market, the readership and the language of publication.
• Topics: the themes they plan to cover in the next year, such as food, cycling, accessible travel or rail journeys.
• Role: confirmation that they work in editorial, not in advertising, sales or PR.

Decide early how you handle content creators. Travel South invites journalists, influencers and content creators to its appointments. If you do the same, give creators their own category with audience data by country, because destinations need to know who will actually see the content.

Weak selection becomes visible in the destinations’ diaries. A tourism board that booked a table to reach German food writers and finds three lifestyle bloggers from its own country in its diary will not come back next year. The PR manager from our introduction will notice this before the first coffee break.

Your journalist list is what destinations pay for.

Step 2: Build the matrix around requests

A strong journalist list still needs a fair way to share it. The most transparent published model comes from Travel South. Both sides submit requests through an online portal, and an automated system schedules them in a fixed order: first the perfect matches, where journalist and supplier requested each other, then media requests, then supplier requests. Nearly all mutual requests and about 90 per cent of media requests are confirmed (Global Week FAQs, 2027 edition).

The order matters. A media request means the journalist sees a possible story. A supplier request often means the destination wants a particular outlet, regardless of whether the journalist is working on anything relevant. Putting media requests ahead of supplier requests protects the journalist’s time, and that keeps journalists coming back. The minimum of 40 requests has a practical purpose: with that many requests, the system can still fill each diary when some requests do not match.

IPW follows similar principles. Journalists may request up to 25 show floor appointments, of which up to 14 are scheduled, the schedule is generated after the request window closes, and press appointments are arranged so they do not clash with official press activities. A manual round afterwards fills open slots (IPW, 2024 edition).

Picture a freelance writer from Munich who covers cycling holidays. She requested three destinations with new long-distance routes. If the system instead fills her afternoon with a cruise line and two city hotels because they requested her outlet, she will spend those appointments being polite. A request-based system makes sure her diary starts with the destinations she asked for.

For your own marketplace, set the rules before the request window opens:

• the priority order between mutual, media and destination requests
• a minimum number of requests per participant
• a cap per destination, so that large exhibitors cannot fill every diary
• filters for market, topic and language

Travel South keeps its window open for a little over three weeks and does not accept late requests. Publish your deadline just as clearly.

Solution: In Converve, journalists and destinations can register as separate participant groups, each with its own registration questions such as source market, topics and languages. A configurable meeting matrix then schedules one-to-one appointments according to rules you set, and requests, acceptances and held meetings are recorded per participant. See how destinations and tourism trade shows use it on our tourism solutions page.

Step 3: Set slot length and the shape of the day

Once the matrix is filled, the length of each slot decides how many diaries fit into one day. Published formats range from 10 to 15 minutes. That sounds short, but the aim of a media appointment is a story lead, not a finished story. The journalist needs one good angle, a contact and a reason to follow up.

The 2024 IPW schedule shows how 20 appointments fit into one day:

That adds up to about five hours of appointment sessions for each journalist, of which a little over three hours are actual conversations. A few rules help both sides stay focused:

• Plan appointments in blocks of six to twelve, as IMM UK and IPW do, with a break after each block.
• Set the changeover time according to your venue. One minute works in a compact room of pods; larger halls need five.
• Keep press conferences and official media activities out of appointment blocks, as IPW does.
• Make attendance mandatory for every scheduled appointment, as Travel South does, and record no-shows on both sides.
• Schedule press trips before or after the marketplace, never during it. Travel South runs 12 pre-event press trips with no more than five journalists each, and GoMedia Canada adds tours before and after the main programme.

Ten minutes is enough to start a story.

Step 4: Brief both sides before the first appointment

Short slots only work when both sides arrive prepared. Send each schedule a few weeks before the event, as IPW does, together with the profile of every appointment partner. The journalist should see what each destination wants to pitch. The destination should see each journalist’s outlet, market and current topics.

Then ask destinations to prepare one or two story angles for each journalist rather than a general presentation. Tourism Kelowna described this approach after the International Media Marketplace in New York in 2024. Its team chose media by interests, location and fit with its marketing priorities for the year, then pitched topics such as wine and harvest, cycling, accessible travel and slow tourism (Tourism Kelowna, February 2024). That is a destination’s own report, not an independent evaluation, but the method is easy to copy.

A good preparation sheet for each appointment fits on one page: the angle, two facts the journalist cannot find online, a link to an image library cleared for editorial use, and the name of the person who can arrange a visit.

Picture a journalist on the flight home with twenty brochures in her bag and no clear angle. She will remember the one destination that offered a useful story idea. Brochures add weight to the bag without adding a story.

Bring angles, not brochures.

Step 5: Follow up and measure each appointment

The appointment starts a story, and the following weeks decide whether it gets written. After the event, give each destination its list of held appointments, with the contact details journalists agreed to share when they registered. Ask destinations to follow up within a few days with the material they promised.

Then measure what the PR manager will ask about. Define these records before the event, so that every destination collects the same data:

• Appointments held: compared with appointments scheduled, including no-shows on either side.
• Follow-up actions: material sent, interviews arranged and press trip invitations issued.
• Visits agreed: journalists who accept a press trip or a research visit. After IMM New York 2024, Tourism Kelowna reported trips for that year already in planning.
• Published pieces: counted over six to twelve months and linked back to the appointment that started them.
• Cost per published piece: table fee, travel and staff time, divided by the pieces that appeared.

Collect the published pieces from destinations twice: after three months and after a year. Travel features have long lead times, so a report sent one week after the event will mostly show intentions. Avoid advertising value equivalents in that report; measure published pieces in the markets you targeted. Our KPI framework for tourism trade shows shows how these media outputs can sit alongside trade figures.

Your own report as organiser adds the event view: share of mutual matches, confirmed requests per journalist, no-show rate and the number of published pieces reported back by destinations. These figures help you sell the next edition, because they show that the marketplace was designed around the journalist’s time.

If your show also runs trade appointments, keep the two matrices separate but report on them in the same way. The trade side has its own slot design and follow-up rules, which we set out in our playbook for tourism buyer-seller meetings.

Conclusion: design the day around the journalist’s time

A media marketplace is a short, intense format. Journalists give destinations about ten to fifteen minutes each, and their time is limited. The organisers who get repeat bookings from destinations and journalists build the programme around that fact: they qualify media by current work, let journalist requests lead the matrix, keep slots short and measure every appointment until the coverage appears.

Do that, and the PR manager at the regional tourism board gets a clear answer to her question: which journalists she met, what she sent them, who travelled and what was published. If you plan a media programme alongside your tourism trade show and want to see how journalist and destination appointments can be scheduled in one platform, get in touch with Converve.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a media marketplace in tourism?

A media marketplace is a session of pre-scheduled one-to-one appointments between travel journalists and tourism boards, DMOs, hotels and other travel suppliers. It runs inside a trade show such as IPW or as a separate event such as TravMedia’s International Media Marketplace. Journalists move between tables on a fixed schedule and collect story ideas.

How long are appointments at a media marketplace?

Usually 10 to 15 minutes. IPW’s Brand USA Media Marketplace used 10-minute appointments plus 5 minutes to change tables (IPW, 2024 edition). Travel South Global Week uses 11 minutes plus one minute (Global Week FAQs, 2027 edition), and TravMedia’s IMM North America uses 15-minute slots (TravMedia, 2027 edition).

Who can attend a media marketplace as a journalist?

That depends on the organiser’s criteria. IPW requires several articles about US travel in accredited outlets within the past 12 months or a masthead listing, and excludes publishers, advertising and sales staff (IPW media information, 2024 edition). Many marketplaces are invitation-only and review applicants individually.

How are media marketplace appointments scheduled?

Most large marketplaces use request-based scheduling. Journalists and destinations submit requests online, and a system builds the diaries after the request window closes. Travel South schedules mutual requests first, then media requests, then supplier requests, and confirms nearly all mutual requests (Global Week FAQs, 2027 edition).

What is the difference between a media marketplace and a press trip?

A media marketplace brings many journalists and destinations together for short appointments in one place. A press trip hosts a small group of journalists on location for several days. Marketplaces often lead to press trips: a ten-minute appointment can start the conversation that becomes an invitation.

How do you measure the results of a media marketplace?

Record appointments held, follow-up actions, visits agreed and published pieces, and count the pieces over six to twelve months because travel features have long lead times. Dividing the full cost by the pieces published gives each destination a cost per piece that it can compare with other media activities.