When Rafat Ali launched Skift on July 30, 2012, he explained to Poynter that the company would be built on what he called a “four-legged stool” of content, and that curated stories would each carry a box labeled “Skift Take,” the editor’s own explanation of why the story mattered. Fourteen years later, the Skift Take is still at the top of the publication’s stories. It is also the single most useful clue for anyone trying to get coverage there.
Skift does not publish news because it happened. It publishes news because of what it means for the business of travel. A hotel opening, a new loyalty tier or a destination campaign is not a Skift story on its own. The reason behind it, the data that explains it, or the shift it signals might be. Here is how to get featured in Skift with seven pitch types that fit, and a test you can run before you send anything.
What Skift is and why the industry reads it
Skift was founded in 2012 by Rafat Ali, who had earlier founded paidContent and sold it to Guardian News and Media in 2008, together with Jason Clampet, who came from Frommer’s, and Dennis Schaal, who remains executive editor. The name comes from a Scandinavian word for shift. Ali has described his early ambition as building the Bloomberg of travel: news, research and conferences across every sector of the industry.
That is what it became. Skift runs daily news coverage, a research arm, a set of paid subscription products and a calendar of events. Its flagship conference, Skift Global Forum, has been held in New York since 2014, with European and Asian editions added later. The publication also operates specialist products, including Airline Weekly, Skift Meetings for the events industry and the Daily Lodging Report for hotels.
The readership is the industry itself: airline and hotel executives, online travel agency teams, tourism boards, travel tech founders, investors and analysts. They read Skift to understand what competitors are doing and where the market is moving. That shapes everything about how you pitch.
Who to pitch
The first practical step in how to get featured in Skift is finding the right name. Skift publishes a Media Resources page that lists its editorial team by role, with direct email addresses for each person. It is one of the most useful pages any publication offers PR teams, and most people never find it. Use it.
Sarah Kopit has been editor-in-chief since September 2023, after leading The Block and spending 14 years at Bloomberg News. Lex Haris is managing editor, and Dennis Schaal, Skift’s first employee after the founders, is executive editor and covers online travel. The beat reporters on the Media Resources page include Sean O’Neill as senior hospitality editor, Adriana Lee covering travel technology, Meghna Maharishi covering airlines, Bailey Schulz covering global tourism and Tasmin Lockwood covering climate and experiences. Peden Doma Bhutia is Asia editor, and the page lists reporters focused on the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Airline Weekly is edited by Gordon Smith with senior analyst Jay Shabat, and Skift Meetings is led by head of content David McMillin.
Skift’s team works across offices in New York, London, Washington, Paris, Cape Town, Chandigarh and several other cities. Match your story to the beat and the region. A hotel distribution story goes to the hospitality desk. A Gulf airline route story goes to the airline reporter or the Middle East reporter. Sending everything to the editor-in-chief slows your pitch down instead of speeding it up.
Pitch 1: Data the industry has not seen
Skift built its brand on data-backed analysis, and original data is the strongest pitch you can send. Booking windows, cancellation rates, average daily rates by segment, loyalty redemption patterns, search demand by destination, corporate travel spend by industry. If your company sees aggregate behavior across many travelers or businesses, you have something Skift’s readers want.
Package it for a reporter, not a marketer. Lead with the single most surprising finding, then two supporting ones. Include the sample size, the time period and a one-line description of method. Say clearly what the data does not show. Offer the full data set or a call with the analyst who built it. A 40-page gated report with a form in front of it will not get read.
Skift also runs its own research arm, which publishes industry reports and data products. That raises the bar for outside data. Your numbers need to be clean, recent and clearly sourced, because reporters there are used to working with analysts who know the difference between a sample and a census.
Timing helps. Data that explains something already in the news, such as a slowdown in transatlantic bookings, a shift in hotel rates during a major event, or a change in corporate travel policy, is far more likely to be used than data released into a quiet week.
Pitch 2: The executive interview with a real number
Skift interviews executives constantly, on its site, in its podcasts and on stage at its events. The interviews that run are the ones where the executive says something specific. Strategy shifts, direct booking numbers, distribution costs, AI adoption with measured results, decisions to enter or exit markets.
Skift’s reporters also ask hard follow-up questions, and they often know the competitive set as well as the executive does. Prepare your spokesperson with the numbers behind every claim, the competitors they will be compared with, and a clear view on the issues of the moment, such as distribution costs, AI search or regulatory changes. An executive who can answer “how does that compare with Marriott” or “what did that do to your cost per booking” without hesitating earns a longer story.
Offer the executive and the number together. “Our CEO will explain why direct bookings rose from 31% to 44% of revenue after we cut commission to two online travel agencies” is an interview a reporter can picture. “Our CEO would love to share her vision for the future of hospitality” is not. Executives who will discuss trade-offs and mistakes, not just wins, are the ones who get invited back.
Pitch 3: The regional story
Skift covers travel globally, with editors and reporters dedicated to Asia, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and a tourism beat that follows destinations and governments. That creates an opening many brands miss: a strong regional story told with enough context that a global reader understands why it matters.
A tourism board that changed its visa rules and measured the effect, a regional airline that opened routes into an underserved market, a hotel group expanding in a fast-growing secondary city. Each can work if the pitch explains the bigger trend it represents. Pitch the regional editor or reporter directly, and include local data alongside the global comparison.
One more point about regional stories: they are often where smaller companies have the best chance. A boutique hotel group in Southeast Asia or a tour operator in the Gulf may never compete for attention with global chains on a general beat, but on a regional desk, a well-documented story about a market shift can stand out. The key is context. Explain how your market compares with neighboring ones, what the government or regulators changed, and what global players are missing.
Pitches 4 to 7: Airlines, hotels, meetings and climate
Pitch 4: airline economics for Airline Weekly. Airline Weekly covers the business of airlines in depth: capacity, yields, fleet decisions, partnerships and earnings. Analysts, airport executives and airline strategy teams with route-level or market-level data should pitch here. Keep it numerical and specific. Readers are airline professionals who will check your math.
Pitch 5: hotel distribution and hospitality technology. The fight between hotels, online travel agencies and technology platforms over distribution and guest data is one of Skift’s core subjects. Hotel groups, revenue management firms and hospitality tech companies with clear before and after results have a strong case. Name the system, the hotels involved and the measured change.
Pitch 6: meetings and events for Skift Meetings. Event planners, venues, destination organizations and event technology companies should look at Skift Meetings. It covers attendance trends, venue economics, hybrid formats and the business of conferences. Stories with attendance figures, cost data or planner survey results fit best.
Pitch 7: climate and sustainability with measured outcomes. Skift has a dedicated climate reporter, and the subject matters to the whole industry. The pitches that work describe a measured change, such as a reduction in emissions per guest night, a sustainable aviation fuel purchase with stated volumes, or a destination’s visitor management results. Pledges and targets without data are much harder to cover.
What Skift will not cover
Some pitches almost never work at Skift, and recognizing them saves time on both sides. Award announcements, partnership releases without terms or numbers, destination marketing campaigns described only by their creative, and executive hires below the C-suite at mid-sized companies rarely get picked up. Neither do product launches whose only news is that the product exists. If the release would read the same with your competitor’s name swapped in, it is not a Skift story.
Keep the commercial side separate in your head as well. Skift sells sponsorships for its events and newsletters and has a branded content studio that produces work for advertisers. Those are legitimate ways to reach the audience, and some brands use them well. They do not influence editorial coverage, and mixing the two in a pitch, such as mentioning that you are considering a sponsorship, will hurt rather than help.
Finally, respect the news cycle. Skift reporters cover breaking industry news, earnings and deals at speed. If a major airline merger or a big online travel earnings report lands on the day you planned to pitch, hold your email for a day or two unless your story connects directly to the news.
Write your own Skift Take first
Before you send any Skift pitch, write the Skift Take yourself. We call this the Skift Take test, and it is the simplest way to judge whether a story fits. In two or three sentences, explain why your news matters to someone running a travel business. Not why it matters to you, why it matters to them.
If you can write a Skift Take that a hotel CEO or an airline strategist would find useful, the pitch has a chance. If your take sounds like “this launch reflects our commitment to innovation,” the story is about your brand, not the industry. Rework the angle until the take describes a shift, a risk or a decision the reader faces.
Then put that take, almost word for word, in the second paragraph of your email. It shows the reporter you understand the publication, and it gives them the framing they will need to sell the story to their editor.
What happens after you send?
Keep the email short. Muck Rack’s 2026 State of Journalism survey found 69% of journalists prefer pitches under 200 words and 78% want them before noon, and Skift reporters across time zones are no different. Account for location: a London-based reporter’s morning is your night if you are on the US West Coast.
Follow up once after several days if you hear nothing, ideally with something new: a fresh data point or a confirmed interview slot. If the reporter writes the story, share it with credit and make yourself available for follow-up questions. If they pass, ask whether there is a different angle that would be more useful next time. Reporters remember sources who take a no gracefully.
The brands that show up in Skift again and again are not always the largest. They are the ones who consistently bring data, candor and a clear reason the industry should care. Learn how to get featured in Skift by writing for the reader the Skift Take was built for, and you will find the publication’s editors start treating you as a source rather than a sender.