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Hotel Collaboration Email Template: How to Get FREE Hotel Stays

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Are you a travel blogger or social media influencer searching for concrete tips on how to send hotel collaboration emails? Do you want to combine your talent for photography, your love for travel and your unique audience reach with getting free stays in amazing hotels around the world? Well, lucky you – you’re at the right place! In this article, you will learn everything you need to know, as well as get a link to my hotel collaboration email template. Chances are you’ve been wanting to do this a while, but you just don’t know where to start.

Choosing the right hotel for your audience

You have an audience that loves following your travels and lifestyle and now you are finally ready to step up your game. This article will not only help you get a detailed overview of how you should approach hotels and resorts but also includes a hotel collaboration email template to make your life easier.

Before you start sending out your hotel collaboration emails, you need to ask yourself what kind of hotels you want to work with. If your travel blog is all about backpacking and low-budget destinations, then you can see a collaboration with a 5* Luxury resort might be irrelevant to your audience. Once you have a clearer picture of who your readers are, you are ready to start the research.

Hotel Collaboration Email
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About 1-2 months before your travels, go on your preferred hotel booking site (I use booking.com) and start by entering the location, the stars and dates into the search fields. This is very helpful if you have confirmed dates and want to know which hotels still have available rooms. After you get the results, think about what’s important to you personally and what your audience will benefit from knowing. If having a pool and breakfast is a must for your destination, then make sure you tick those options as well. Don’t send emails to everyone – you need to really see the benefit of working with the hotel. At the end of the day, you’ll be the one who has to write about it, so make sure you have something you want to write about!

If you only just started your social media accounts and your blog, then you most probably don’t have a huge following just yet. You should only send these emails if you feel like you can offer something of similar value in return. Remember that the key thinking here is not to ‘get something for free’, you will both be working with each other. And the work should be as fair as possible to both parties.

Hotel Collaboration Email – the content

Who are you?

Always start your email with a short introduction. Tell them your name, blog name, and your most important (ie highest following) social media handle. I usually refer to both my blog and my Instagram account. Then you should try to catch their attention with a short description of your blog niche (travel, style, beauty…) or a huge following number on your social channels. This will help them understand straight away if you are what they’re looking for.

Why this hotel?

Think about why you would love to stay here and tell them exactly that. Is their location amazing? Do they have great amenities that you would love to review? Do they have a restaurant or a bar that would want to test and report on? This doesn’t need to be too long, it can be a simple sentence or two. You want to show them you actually looked at their hotel, have a genuine interest and aren’t just sending mass emails to random hotels.

What are you looking for?

Here you will specify the dates you plan on visiting. Now is a good time to get specific and flexible. Yes, you heard me (or read me?) right! Depending on the hotel you are emailing, you will have different ways of bringing value to them and vice versa. Perhaps they are only interested in social media posts? Or maybe they want an SEO-optimized article on your stay, social media posts, as well as marketing material. Offer your standard deliverables first. If they want more, you will need to weigh if it’s worth it or not. Remember that you can be flexible, just don’t settle for more than it’s worth. Always remember you are both going to benefit from this collaboration.

What can you offer?

This is where you pitch your offer. Tell them exactly what you can create for them. Instagram grid images, stories, Facebook posts, or only blog articles? Are you great at making videos? Make sure you offer something of similar value to them. A well-optimized website will definitely bring more value to the hotel than an average social media following. Specify what you can offer and don’t ask them to tell you what they want. Always make the base offer.

Expert tip: for a 1-night stay, expect to produce at least one fixed grid image with their tags and at least 5+ stories on Instagram. It’s very unusual for hotels to ask for 3 or more posts for a one-night stay. More expensive places will even want an article in exchange for a 1-night stay. I would say it takes at least 2 nights for you to get good quality content on a place, but it’s up to you if you choose to take a different offer. You’ll see this tip used in my hotel collaboration email template.

To conclude…

If you have any previous collaboration examples, then make sure you add the links to those. I have a selection of mine on the Work With Me page.

The process of sending collaboration requests could easily be a full-time job. I’d say for every 30 emails you send, you’ll get on average 1 reply. I hope that my detailed tips, as well as my template, will help you get a hotel collaboration asap!

Remember to never sell yourself short. My very first hotel collaboration was a bitter pill to swallow. They asked me to do about 3x more than I ‘should’ be doing and I accepted it because I had no idea what the industry standards are. No one talks about it. I ended up working about 5 full days for them, in exchange for a two-night stay. Not worth your work or setting these kinds of standards for the entire blogging community!

If you have the audience, the voice and the talent – then they will see value in working with you. If they want to take advantage of you as a creator, then just politely decline their offer. Remember, you should never be disrespectful back – it could hurt you in the long run.

Fushifaru Maldives

Hotel Collaboration Email Template

My hotel collaboration email template is perfect for those of you who want to know exactly what information to put in your email, without needing to guess what works best and sending hundreds of emails in vain. This template is the actual email I personally use when I contact hotels.

The template is available for download both as a word document and a PDF file. In the template, you will also get 2 email subject examples. Then all you need to do is fill in the blanks – it’s as easy as that! I am certain that with all my tips and this template, you’ll soon receive a positive response for your collaboration!

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Julie

Saturday 4th of December 2021

Hi, thank you for this email. I’m wondering if this would still work for micro influencers too. Do I refer to myself as a micro influencer?

Patricija

Sunday 5th of December 2021

Hey Julie! As long as you have something of similar value to give back, the follower count won't matter as much! There are plenty of micro-influencers with high engagement rates out there, so that could be your angle :) Hope that helps!

Shelbs

Wednesday 2nd of September 2020

Hey there! Love this post. What blogging milestones did you hit before you were ready to ask for partnerships?

Patricija

Thursday 3rd of September 2020

Thank you Shelbs! For me, it started with my Instagram following (15k when I first started with collabs) and my photography. Those two were my pitch at first. After my blog got more visitors I pitched as I describe in the article. :) Hope this helps!

Lars

Wednesday 20th of May 2020

Great article. As an owner of a chic and modern vacation rental in Austin Texas, I appreciate travel bloggers reaching out for collaboration ideas and a free stay.

Patricija

Wednesday 20th of May 2020

Great to hear, thanks!

Rachael

Friday 22nd of November 2019

This is great info. I’m not at the point of asking for Collabs yet but this is helpful for when I do!

Albi

Thursday 21st of November 2019

This is definitely an awesome tip. I was thinking about doing something like this for a very long time and your template is definitely super helpful.

Patricija

Thursday 21st of November 2019

Thanks Albi, I'm happy you found it helpful!