Proven Tips to Secure Sponsors for Your Europe Blog Trip
Travelling to Europe? Run a travel blog? This guide can help you find sponsors for Europe and travel for free.
But first things first… I travelled to Europe for 2 months and spent just about 70,000 Rupees, including flights and the Schengen visa fee. And this also includes experiences like my 15000 Rupee VIP Vatican City tour, many segway tours and more. How did I do that? By finding sponsors.
So yea, if you run a travel blog and planning to visit Europe, I can help you save heaps and plan that epic Europe adventure.
Related Read: How I travelled Europe for 2 months in 70k Rupees.
How To Find Sponsors For Europe Trip, As A Blogger
If your travel blog is fairly new and you don’t get invited to media trips or FAM trips on your own, do not worry. Travelling Europe on free media or FAM trips isn’t a big deal.
Europe is like a big fish market for bloggers when it comes to FAM trips.
Because most of the countries in Europe depend on tourism, and almost every tourism board in Europe has a big promotion budget, I find it relatively easier to find tourism boards in Europe wanting to work with bloggers. Hotels are interested in offering a free stay, in return of promotion. Tourism boards are interested in providing free travel in their city, in terms of a free hotel or a mobility ticket or dinner coupons etc.
So yea, in Europe, brands and tourism boards are constantly looking for bloggers in new markets.
Having said that, the first thing you need to do is contact tourism boards, and to do so, you need to prepare your travel blog media kit.
Once you have the media Kit, start writing emails to tourism boards of the country you are visiting. Introduce yourself, tell them about your blog’s efficiency, and how you can help them redirect your blog readers to their website and social media accounts, and eventually, to their destination. Do not forget to share a Media Kit though! It’s crucial!!
To find a relevant email address, just search for their official Tourism Board Website. For example, if you’re searching for Frankfurt tourism website, search on Google with keywords ‘Frankfurt+Tourism’ and contact the relevant media contact on the website.
Here are some more tips…
Contact Local Tourism Boards In Europe
In Europe, local tourism boards actively promote their destination, so write to the tourism board of the city you’re travelling to.
I’ve personally found that local tourism boards (like Frankfurt or Stuttgart tourism board) are often more interested in working with bloggers than the country tourism board (like the tourism board of Germany). And if they do work with bloggers, they work with top bloggers. So start writing to local tourism boards.
Tip: It is not necessary that all countries will have an active tourism board. Italy for one is an ideal example. I couldn’t find any information about Italy Tourism Board while searching for it online (maybe they don’t need one!).
During my recent press trip, I was particularly helped by Bratislava tourism board, Frankfurt tourism board, and Basel tourism board (the only tourism board who wanted to work with an Indian travel blogger, among all other destinations in Switzerland).
Sponsored Transport Inside Europe
Once your stay and activities are sorted, the next challenge is looking for a way to cover your transportation inside of Europe.
FlixBus (an international bus service in Europe) and Eurail (the international railway service in Europe) for example, actively work with bloggers from across the world. I was helped by Flixbus for instance.
What’s better is, when you produce any content on your blog or social media, it even gets a share by these big companies, which means a Facebook post which you shared with your 3000+ followers on Facebook, if shared by Flixbus on their Facebook page, can reach to 1.3 million Facebook fans (of Flixbus).
Contact Local Travel Companies
In popular tourist places like Rome, Paris, Prague, Barcelona, etc. you can contact local tour operators.
Find local tour operators use websites like TripAdvisor to find out about all the local tour operators working in the city. Open their website, find a relevant email and contact them directly.
This is how I did a free VIP Tour for the Vatican City or a Segway tour in Rome. All they ask for is a review on your blog and a few social media posts, which you’re anyway going to do for your travels.
You Need To Work Hard
If you’re in your early days of blogging, don’t sit back and wait for tourism boards and travel companies to invite you. Do your own work. Find out about the local tourism boards and tour companies operating in the region and write to them.
There will come a day when you will be reached out by these companies. It’s just that today is not that day!
