Your Press Release is Getting Deleted
1 hour 9 minutes
Season 6
Episode 1
In This Conversation
Hotel press releases mostly get deleted, and the reason is almost never the writing.
CJ Arlotta spent his career on the other side of the desk — a journalist covering hospitality, healthcare, politics and government, and technology, with bylines in Forbes, the Saturday Evening Post and The Fiscal Times, and senior editor at Hotel Business before he opened his own B2B hospitality PR agency in 2019, months before the industry stopped moving. So when he tells you what happens to your announcement when it hits an editor's inbox, he's not guessing. His answer is uncomfortably simple: everybody thinks their news is news. It might matter enormously to your company and not at all to anyone else — and the fix isn't better adjectives, it's tying your news to something actually happening in the industry.
From there it gets honest. Why "we don't have a big story" is good news rather than a problem, and why PR is a 50-50 relationship instead of a magician you hire. Why conference panels have gotten so boring, and the case that a lot of the people on them are there because of a sponsorship, not expertise. CJ's prep formula for anyone about to get on a stage — it has almost nothing to do with the questions you keep asking for. The GM appointment release nobody reads, and the 20-year-old headshot still going out with it. And on crisis: the holding statements you should already have written, who at the property is actually allowed to speak, and why the worst time to hire a PR firm is the moment you need one.
Then we put him in the hot seat for No Comment — five questions, one get-out-of-jail-free card. He didn't use it. You'll hear how he got out of it anyway.
This is the Season 6 premiere, and it's the conversation you'd normally only get after the recorder goes off.
Key Topics
"Everybody thinks their news is news" — how to tie an announcement to something the industry actually cares about
Overexposure is real, and sometimes the right advice is to sit down for a month
Crisis: an attorney AND a PR firm on retainer, prepared holding statements, and the GM whose answer became the headline
In This Episode:
From journalist to agency owner — and launching a PR firm right before COVID
Why keeping roughly 30% of the portfolio outside hospitality kept the lights on
"Everybody thinks their news is news" — how to tie an announcement to something the industry actually cares about
PR is 50/50: what owners think they're buying versus what they're signing up for
Proving ROI on a service with no physical product
Overexposure is real, and sometimes the right advice is to sit down for a month
GM appointments, recycled awards, and the case for paying for real headshots and high-res photography
Conference panels: why 80% of the work happens before you walk into the room
Crisis: an attorney AND a PR firm on retainer, prepared holding statements, and the GM whose answer became the headline
GAME — No Comment: five questions, one card, never played
CJ Arlotta
Founder, and Chief Propagandist
CJ Media Solutions, LLC
About Our Guest
Christopher Joseph "CJ" Arlotta is the founder of CJ Media Solutions, LLC, a B2B public relations agency based in Stony Brook, New York. Since launching the firm in 2018, CJ and his team have provided media relations, content writing, ghostwriting, executive thought leadership, and crisis communications for hospitality and technology companies. A journalist for most of his career, he has covered hospitality, healthcare, technology, and politics and government, with bylines in Forbes, The Saturday Evening Post, Hotel Business, ChannelE2E, The VAR Guy, and elsewhere. He has hosted and produced several podcasts of his own and regularly moderates panels and speaks at industry conferences and trade shows. Before journalism, he worked in communications on political campaigns and for elected officials in New York State. He is an associate member of ISHC.
