Today’s holiday trivia: Traditionally, the Japanese celebration of Ōmisoka had participants ensuring the completion of important activities before the end of the year in order to start the new year afresh. Activities ranged from house cleaning and repaying debts to purification rituals such as driving out evil spirits and bad luck, and bathing so the final hours of the year could be spent relaxing. More recently, families and friends gather together for one last time on December 31 to have a bowl of toshikoshi noodles—a tradition based on people’s association of eating the long noodles with “crossing over from one year to the next,” the meaning of toshi-koshi.

When we asked what people wanted to see in this year’s holiday specials, there was one thing people universally agreed on: they wanted to know how to land a spot on a press trip!

If you are new to travel writing, there is no doubt one thing that seems the golden goal for marking your successful entry into this work: scoring a spot on a free trip for travel writers.

I’ve seen this as a goal for many folks who joined us for our 5-week annual review and 2018 planning process last winter and with our Dream Buffet and coaching program members in calls this year.

And if this is one of your goals this year, I’ve got great news for you:

Setting up free trips as a travel writer is dead simple.

That’s actually why we don’t write about it so much on our blog! Earning money from these trips is much harder–but don’t worry, we discuss that in-depth too throughout these webinars.

The fact of the matter is that most experienced travel writers either:

  • don’t take a lot of press trips or accept sponsored travel for ethical, legal (for certain publications its a contract violation), or simple logistical reasons (many just don’t have the time to devote that the organized press trips require because they’re too busy writing!)
  • prefer to work directly with tourism boards and venues to engage only in highly-individualized itineraries to ensure their travel time is used to the most advantage . . . leaving spots in regular, organized trips for you

Though the winter and early spring months don’t seem like the best time to travel, this is actually when you’ll find yourself with the most opportunities to snag and attend trips because:

  • destinations don’t have tons of visitors at this time, so it’s easier for venues to host you, because they aren’t taking away from paid bookings
  • in order for stories to hit in time for paying leisure travelers to plan their trips, you need to visit, write up, and publish your stories four to six months in advance of the main vacation season
  • the early months of the year are prime time for expos–from regional events like The New York Times Travel Show and the Seattle Golf and Travel Show to major international events like ITB Berlin–which are some of the easiest and best places to set up free trips for yourself (I’ve long planned my entire year just from the connections at ITB each spring)
  • press trips are readily available for all attendees (or, if not all, then those who ace an easy application process) through the many travel writing conferences that take place in the spring

That’s why, for today’s holiday special offer, we’re giving you a chance to grab all of our six of the webinars from our two series on how to get on press trips and make the most of them for a special price–$36.

You’ll save more than 70 percent on these full webinar packages, which include:

  • streamable high-def video
  • smaller downloadable video
  • streamable and downloadable audio file
  • full transcript available to read on screen or as a PDF download
  • all webinar slides in PDF form
  • any applicable worksheets

For just $36, grab the full webinar packages of:

  1. Setting Up Sponsored Trips 101: Getting on a sponsored trip is the holy grail of travel writing, right? Living a life in which you effortlessly hop from one free trip to another, spending your days enjoying haute cuisine and your nights in the fluffy king bed of your complimentary suite? Here we discuss the basic tenets of free travel as a travel writer, from ethics to minimum barrier of entry to the different types of trips, and their various pros and cons.
  2. What to Expect on Press Trips: The first in our new series of webinars looking at the pre-, during, and post- aspects of press trips so you can get the most of any sponsored travel you have coming up this summer or are planning down the line, this webinar begins with the full gamut of with what you can realistically expect from your press trips–the good and the bad.
  3. How to Prepare for Your Press Trips: In this webinar, we look more about the story side of pre-trip preparation, including how to break your trip into stories, what is safe to pitch based on a limited itinerary or destination you’re not familiar with, and how to handle the catch-22 of pitching when you haven’t yet been accepted on a trip.
  4. How to Get the Most (On the Ground) Out of Your Press Trips: In the previous webinar in this series, we looked at the planning aspect of this process–figuring out what stories you can possibly get from the destination and itinerary site unseen–but this time we focus on how to do it in the ground, where the best, most specific story ideas are found.
  5. How To Set Up An Individual Trip From Scratch: In this section we’re going to dive head first into how exactly to plan your own individual sponsored trips that fits your interests, travel preferences, and schedule. Here we look at where to find these trips and best practices for applying. I pull real press trips, read between the lines, and break down exactly what you would do in each situation of your application.
  6. Getting A Spot On A Group Fam Or Press Trip: In this webinar on Getting a Spot on a Group Fam of Press Trip, in our series on getting free travel as a travel writer, we’ll look at where to find these trips and best practices for applying, and then I’ll pull real press trips, read between the lines, and break down exactly what you would do in each situation in your application.

To take advantage of this offer and grab these six webinars just $36–nearly 70 percent off the normal pricing–head to the webinar library, and load up your cart with the webinars listed above and enter the code freetravel6.

Delivery details:

  • In the webinar library, add all of the webinars listed above to your cart and enter the code freetravel6.
  • You need to have all six webinars in your cart for the coupon code to take effect.
  • If you have previously purchased one of the webinars in the set, that will preclude you from adding that specific webinar to your cart. We set up new test accounts attached to different email addresses to get around this issue, and recommend you do the same if you are running into this issue as it is the only work around.
  • The webinars will be available immediately in your user profile on webinars.dreamoftravelwriting.com, and you will also receive an email for each webinar with the links to the downloadable audio, video, and transcript files.
  • The shopping cart will automatically alert you if it cannot apply the coupon, because the wrong webinars are in the cart.

Don’t forget–this offer expires tonight at midnight EST!​

Important general notes on our 12 Days of Holiday Specials:

  • These offers are exclusively available during the time specified, with any exceptions or limited quantities noted in the individual offer affected.
  • These offers cannot be exchanged, combined, or used in place or partial combination with a previously purchased offer of any time. All sales are final.
  • Each offer includes complete instructions for the delivery of your purchase and answers to any logistical questions about taking advantage of the offer.
  • Since many of these offers take place on weekend or holiday days, the person who handles our customer service emails will not always be available or not able to sign in twice a day to catch your queries, which is why we make the offers very detailed. These are deep discounts on things that cost us money to produce, so if you would like to take advantage of an offer, you are responsible for doing so during the time frame allotted.