Photo credits: Annette Wilson.
Munich, 10. March 2026 – Today, Rupp turns ten. What started in Munich in 2016 as a boutique communications consultancy rooted in traditional PR and media relations has grown into a full-service agency operating across the DACH region, Italy, UK, Spain, and beyond, supporting hotels, tour operators, and destinations that believe the way we travel matters.
The pivot that defined us came two years in. In 2018, following a UN-hosted conference in New York focused on sustainable development and the role of the private sector, it became impossible to look away from the gap between what the travel industry was communicating and what it was actually doing. We made a deliberate choice to specialize and work only with brands for whom sustainability wasn’t a marketing add-on, but a genuine operating principle.
Since then, we have grown from a one-woman operation into a team spanning multiple countries and markets. We have organized press trips, launched podcasts, navigated a pandemic that brought the entire industry to a standstill, and helped our clients tell stories that hold up to scrutiny. What has never changed is the belief that communication is most powerful when it starts with the truth.
To mark ten years, we are sharing ten insights — one for each year. They are drawn from client work, media relationships, industry observations, and a few hard lessons. We hope they are useful to every brand, journalist, and communications professional reading this.
“Ten years in travel PR & marketing has taught me one thing above all else: the best stories are the ones that were already happening. You just have to be brave enough to tell them.”
— Natascha Rupp, Founder
1. Travel is Resilient.
People love to travel and because of this, travel can recover from anything. Despite wars, a pandemic, economic crises, and political upheaval, global travel has continued to grow. In 2025 alone, 1.52 billion international tourists were recorded worldwide – a new post-pandemic record.
The act of travel hasn’t changed and never will, but what has shifted is where people go: regional and local destinations are booming, and travellers are seeking meaningful, authentic experiences over tourist hotspots. An industry that was hit the hardest in 2020 is now contributing over $11 trillion to the global economy. The lesson? Stop planning for travel’s decline, and embrace its transformation.
2. One Story, Told Well, Beats Ten Stories Told Quickly.
The most common mistake travel brands make is trying to communicate too many stories at once. The media landscape moves fast. Trends come and go. But the brands that cut through are the ones with a single, consistent core message that gets ‘recycled’ intelligently across formats and moments. It takes deeper strategic work upfront. It requires someone dedicated to use that creativity. But it builds something that a flurry of disconnected press releases never will: recognition.
3. Sustainability Is Still a Differentiator.
Ten years ago, knowledge of what sustainable travel meant was scarce and today it still remains a niche in this industry. What has changed, however, is the level of the conversation. While people understand carbon reporting and eco-certification, mentioning that a hotel’s sustainability strategy includes hiring people from the local village it sits in, or sourcing ingredients from the farmer down the road, or funding the restoration of the coral reef at the end of the jetty, people view this as ‘going above and beyond.’ It shouldn’t be.
ITB Berlin highlighted that only 1% of companies actually track and report on biodiversity impact, and while the awareness phase is slowly arriving, the action phase has barely begun. It’s time to move the conversation from sustainability to regeneration, from doing less harm to actively restoring what travel touches. There’s a difficult path ahead, but for us, the result is worth it.
4. Marketing Needs a Seat at the Table — and Needs to Know the Product.
Two non-negotiables after a decade of client work. First: whoever leads your communications needs to be at C-suite level — or at least in the room where operational decisions are made. There is nothing more damaging than a beautiful campaign that contradicts the guest experience.
Second: whoever is speaking for your brand — in-house or agency — must have experienced the actual product. Not a brochure. Not a video briefing. The real thing. In the age of AI-generated content, authentic first-hand knowledge is the single most valuable asset in communications.
5. AI Will Not Replace Travel Communications. But It Will Raise the Bar.
There was real anxiety in the marketing world that AI would render press release writing, campaign creation, and content production obsolete. What’s actually happened is more interesting: AI has made it possible to produce more, faster. But it has also made authenticity rarer and therefore more valuable.
Most of us can now detect AI-generated content instinctively. The brands and communicators who will thrive are those who use AI as a productivity layer while doubling down on the things it cannot replicate – the human connection, cultural nuance, first-hand experience, and editorial judgment. At the heart of travel and hospitality are real people and communities.
6. Media Relationships Are Harder to Build — and More Valuable Because of It.
The media landscape has changed dramatically, with editorial teams becoming smaller and freelance journalism being the norm. Journalists are under more pressure with the ongoing struggle to juggle multiple side projects, thus having less time for in-person meetings. Building a genuine relationship with a travel journalist in 2026 takes patience and consistency in a way it didn’t ten years ago.
But here’s what we know: when you do get that coffee, that press trip, that conversation, it’s one of the best parts of this job. Travel journalism, like travel itself, comes alive in person. The connections that are crafted, the stories exchanged, and the bucket lists compared over dinner at a new hotel are irreplaceable.
7. There Is No Universal Playbook for International Communications.
One of the most consistent lessons from working across the DACH region, Italy, Spain and other markets is that communications are cultural in ways that go far beyond language. Germans, for example, tend to value directness, structure, and data-backed storytelling. Italian media operates on relationship, nuance, and warmth.
The DACH region, broadly, is less receptive to ad-hoc trend pieces than UK or US markets, where a fast-moving news hook can open doors immediately. This is also why market-specific expertise matters so much, and why copy-pasting a communications strategy across borders is one of the most reliable ways to underperform.
8. You Cannot Communicate What You Haven’t Experienced.
While this one may sound obvious, in practice, it isn’t. Over ten years, one of the most persistent gaps I’ve seen within agencies, in-house teams, and PR strategies is communication that describes a product rather than feels the product. The difference is immediately apparent to any reader, journalist, or potential guest. When a journalist sleeps in the room, eats the breakfast, and hears the sounds at 6am, that’s what makes it into the story.
No brief, however detailed, replaces being there. And in an era where AI can generate a perfectly serviceable hotel description from a fact sheet in seconds, first-hand experience is the only thing that separates your story from the thousands that sound just like it. When brands make it easy for the people telling your story to actually live it, the investment pays back every time.
9. Europe’s Rail Renaissance Is the Travel Story Nobody Is Telling Loudly Enough.
The EU has committed to cutting rail journey times between major European cities by half by 2030. This would take a trip like Berlin to Copenhagen down from seven hours to four. A new overnight service will link Scandinavia to Germany. From 2026, direct Frecciarossa services will connect Rome and Milan to Munich, with Berlin and Naples added by 2028.
A Berlin-based startup called Nox Mobility plans to launch private sleeper trains by 2027 and connect over 100 European cities by 2035. For travel brands, particularly those in destinations served by these new routes, this is not just an infrastructure story but a sustainability story, a product story, and a marketing opportunity.
10. The Next Decade Belongs to Regenerative Travel.
The shift from sustainability to regeneration, ‘doing less harm’ to ‘actively giving back’, is the most important evolution happening in travel right now. It is also the slowest, because it requires something harder than investment or certification, it requires a genuine change in mindset.
That change starts earlier than most brands can influence, beginning with how we raise children, what we teach in schools, and the values we model at home. But that doesn’t mean the travel industry should wait. The brands and destinations that start building regenerative travel into their DNA now, not as a marketing message, but as a genuine operational commitment, will be the ones leading the industry in 2035. And we will be right there, helping them tell that story.
Ten years in, and we are more energized about our work than ever. If any of these insights resonated or sparked a question or story idea, we’d love to hear from you.
