Holiday Cottages: Strategic PR

Raising awareness of staycation hidden gems to avoid overtourism.

Over the past year, our PR campaigns targeted staycationers by celebrating the UK’s natural beauty and tapping into the brand’s theme of ‘Joy’, with a core focus on promoting hidden locations to combat overtourism.

By aligning our strategy with these values, we significantly smashed our client targets. We delivered 128 high-impact backlinks, exceeding our campaign KPI by an incredible 113%, securing coverage across high-tier new domains like Marie Claire with an average Domain Authority of 62.

Client

Service

Digital PR

Year

2025

+115 %

Over campaign KPIs

194

Total brand mentions

266 %

Increase in brand searches

Average DA

The client

Travel Chapter is a leading UK staycation brand and a longstanding client since 2020, spanning both Holiday Cottages and Canine Cottages. As a premier UK holiday letting agency, they specialise in high-quality, self-catering holiday properties. With a diverse portfolio of thousands of properties across England, Scotland, and Wales, the brand helps holidaymakers find the perfect staycation, ranging from coastal cottages to rural retreats.

The challenge

We were up against a fair share of challenges:

Combating overtourism: Managing the negative impact of viral social media spots on local infrastructure and the environment, requiring a shift toward promoting responsible tourism.
PR campaign concurrency: Navigating potential media contact overlap and coordination conflicts with Holiday Cottages internal ‘Happiest Places’ campaign.
Media seasonality and competition: Overcoming intense competition during peak UK travel windows (Summer, Easter, Christmas) and maintaining coverage during off-peak periods when standard media hooks are less effective.
Balancing promotion with editorial value: Ensuring pitches aligned with specific commercial focus categories and locations without coming across as overly commercial or advertorial to journalists.

Cornwall and Lake District Holiday Cottages locations V2

The strategy

The focus of holidaycottages.co.uk’s strategy was “Joy”, every tactic showcased the beauty of the UK and the positive impact of staycations and finding lesser-known locations and things to do to avoid overtourism.

Cornwall and the Lake District were target locations, so we ensured our concepts focused on these areas.

Our strategy combined:

Data-led and expertise-led planned campaigns looking into the behaviours of British holidaymakers and locations to explore
Reactive outreach based on location search uplifts, new properties and seasonal/cultural events that inform travel trends

Data-led campaigns

We worked alongside our regional experts to promote hidden gems whilst offering unique travel alternatives.

Focusing on our audience’s interests (family/outdoors) and knowing that nostalgia remains a key media trend, we surveyed Brits on their favourite childhood holidays.

We outreached to travel, national and regional press, encouraging off-peak travel to these popular spots. We developed an additional angle around the best UK nature breaks, drawing on our data, which showed 35% of staycationers appreciate local landscapes.

Brand campaign support

Additionally, we supported Holiday Cottages’ internal ‘Happiest Places’ brand campaign by taking their core dataset and transforming it into multiple targeted media pitches.

First, we identified the top-ranking spots and activities, intentionally layering in alternative, lesser-known destinations within those areas to drive mindful, sustainable tourism. Next, we segmented the data to build specific hooks tailored to families and pet owners, showcasing the most dog-friendly locations. Finally, we partnered with a professional dog training expert to secure authoritative commentary, adding the expert credibility needed to maximise editorial pick up.

Reactive outreach

Finally, we combined fast-paced reactive commentary with community partnerships to secure relevant coverage and product placement:

Reactive commentary and product placement focusing on search uplifts and seasonal entertainment events. Tied into the culture theme, we ran a castle reactive linking back to the Traitors and uncovered beach dupes and multi-generational family holidays.
We partnered with local communities and businesses, creating concepts that sustainably uplifted them while encouraging responsible tourism: The best bird watching spots where we worked with the RSPB and our emerging 2026 destinations piece, with commentary from locals and utilising internal booking data.

The results

We went above and beyond for the client, smashing our overall backlink KPI by 113%. In total, we delivered 194 brand mentions and backlinks, which included 69 links directed straight to key category pages. We also secured 9 new domain backlinks from high-profile sites like Marie Claire, Travelling for Business, The Manc, The Hoot, Discover Rutland.

Last but not least, this activity also boosted organic performance, driving high-value keyword rankings forward, pushing “places to stay Cornwall” from position 7 to 2 in Q4 2025. Crucially, the campaign sparked a massive 266% increase in brand searches for Holiday Cottages.

194

Total brand mentions

Links directed to key category pages

Average DA

266 %

Increase in brand searches