Ignoring Substack is Ignoring Half the Travel Media Picture

If your media list still starts and ends with legacy outlets, trade pubs and a handful of freelancers on Instagram, you’re looking at an increasingly incomplete map. Substack is the latest and most disruptive player offering opportunities to hospitality and travel public relations professionals.

Substack is no longer a side hustle platform. It boasts around 5 million paid subscriptions and roughly 35 million active subscriptions, with traffic up 40% year-over-year and ranking among the top 30 news sites globally.

A growing number of travel writers, editors and creators are building their own platforms on Substack. They publish newsletters, essays, reported features, listicles, podcasts and even events, all under their own mastheads.

An entire travel category of top-performing newsletters on the platform is filled with voices shaping how people think about where and why they travel. 

If you work in travel PR and you aren’t monitoring what’s happening on Substack, you’re missing emerging voices, early trend signals and real-time conversations that won’t show up in your traditional clip reports. Here’s why.

1. Substack Hosts the Next Generation of Travel Media

Substack has become a “lab” for journalists who want more independence, deeper relationships with readers and more freedom to cover what they really care about. 

On Substack you’ll find former staff writers from major travel outlets running their own newsletters. There are also niche experts talking about disability travel, slow travel or regenerative tourism with highly engaged communities.

Substack isn’t beholden to SEO-driven content or 10 best lists. It features long-form essays and critiques about tourism’s impact that tell deeper stories. And it’s not only consumer-driven topics. Industry-facing newsletters even exist on the future of travel media itself.

The PR takeaway: The byline you used to pitch at a magazine may now have a bigger, more loyal audience on Substack than they did in print. Some of the most interesting travel commentary you’ll see in the next 12–24 months will debut in a personal newsletter, not a traditional outlet.

2. Freelancers Use Substack as a Reporting Hub

Muck Rack has already called out how Substack is changing the way freelancers work with PR pros. Journalists use their newsletters to workshop ideas, post call-outs for sources, test story angles and build relationships with communications people who actually read their work.

Common patterns include:

• “Here’s what I’m working on” posts where writers outline upcoming themes and invite pitches.
• Behind-the-scenes dispatches from press trips on what worked and how they really feel about jam-packed itineraries.
• Q&A issues about how to pitch them effectively, what they want from PR and what they’ll ignore.

The PR takeaway: If you’re not subscribed, you’ll miss when a writer is shifting beats as they post invitations to pitch a theme before it’s fully formed. You’ll also miss candid feedback on press trip formats and other media intel.

3. It’s a Trend Radar for How Travelers Feel

Substack newsletters are often more personal and reflective than traditional travel coverage. Writers are wrestling with questions like who benefits from tourism, how to travel more responsibly and what “authentic” means in 2026 and beyond.

Because newsletters go directly to a self-selected audience, the comment sections and reader replies are often as valuable as posts themselves. 

The PR takeaway: For a destination or hospitality brand, this is qualitative gold. You can spot narratives that might hit your destination before they do. Substack also allows you to sense which storylines are gaining traction months ahead of formal research reports.

4. Mini-Media Brands Can Become Strategic Partners

Some Substack publications now function like full-fledged outlets: they have staff, editorial calendars, ad products and event strategies. It’s giving Huffington Post vibes from twenty years ago, except driven by journalists’ autonomy instead of a media mogul. Top newsletters can command serious influence.

Substack authors are often open to creative collaborations like co-hosted events, reader trips, AMAs with destination leaders and private webinars for subscribers.

But you can’t evaluate or approach these opportunities if you don’t know which newsletters actually align with your travel brand, your traveller markets and your values. Monitoring helps you sort “must-watch” from “nice-to-know.”

The PR takeaway: Substack creators are generating bookable media opportunities, not just personal blogs. Some sell sponsorships, native content, trip partnerships or reader offers. Their ad products can be tightly targeted. For instance, women’s adventure, sustainable travel, solo travel, digital nomads or specific geographies.

5. Reputation Management Includes Newsletter Layer

We’re used to tracking what’s said about our destinations on major news outlets, social media and review platforms. But destination critiques, negative experiences and nuanced controversies are also being unpacked in long-form Substack posts. 

If a well-followed travel newsletter publishes a thoughtfully critical piece about overtourism or a safety issue in your destination, it may not show up in traditional media monitoring. It will, however, still shape perception among a valuable slice of travelers and journalists.

The PR takeaway: By monitoring Substack, you can catch these narratives early and decide when and how to respond. As a listening tool, Substack allows you to feed real traveler concerns back to your internal and stakeholder teams.

The TLDR Summary

Substack isn’t replacing traditional travel media. Instead, it’s reshaping who has influence, how stories travel and where the most engaged conversations are happening.

For travel PR teams, monitoring Substack is no longer a “nice-to-have.” It’s:

• A talent pipeline for the next wave of travel journalists and creators.
• A trend radar for how travelers feel about tourism, not just where they’re going.
• A reputation lens that sits between social chatter and front-page news.

If you want to see around corners for your destination or brand, look beyond the usual channels. Add Substack to your media monitoring mix now before your next big opportunity (or crisis) shows up there first.