Public Relations Manager
Are you ready to take the next, best step in your career? Would you like to join a team of excited, dedicated, incredibly talented professionals?
You’ve found your opportunity! Visit Wichita is looking for a Public Relations Manager to join our expert team.
A little about you…
You must have a strong desire to help the world know that Wichita is a great tourist destination. You must love creating and sharing the unique stories of Wichita, and have a strong desire to generate local, regional, national and international media coverage.
You must be goal and detail oriented and have a proven track record of success in public relations. You are a team player and love working with others.
A little about us…
Visit Wichita is a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing visitors to Wichita. Our mission is to show the world just how great Wichita is, to bring visitors to our city, and ultimately to create jobs and make Wichita an even better place to be. We love what we do, and we are great at it. If you’d like to learn more about us, check us out at visitwichita.com.
For more information about this role go to visit www.visitwichita.com/careers. If this sounds like the job for you, please send us your resume and cover letter.
Role:
Responsible for supporting the organization in growing leisure, group and sports visitation, thereby enhancing the economic development of the city, county, region and state.
The Public Relations Manager’s primary responsibilities are to elevate Wichita’s tourism brand to consumer audiences and to implement and enhance the organization’s communications plans and public relations efforts. The Public Relations Manager reports to the Vice President of Marketing in the marketing team.
Responsibilities:
- Develop relationships with media and pitch stories to travel, lifestyle and entertainment writers, as well as to writers in the meetings and sports trade sectors. Writes and distributes press releases and fulfills media inquiries to these audiences as required.
- Responsible for monitoring department media goals and assisting in selection of media monitoring vendor(s). Provide input to the process to evaluate and report results, distribute to staff and partners as needed, and review/assist coordinator with monthly media board reports.
- Act as Visit Wichita’s representative for domestic and international travel writers and pitches story ideas and fulfills requests from these writers. Attends national and international travel writer conferences as required.
- Act as main contact for coordinating domestic and international press tours (FAMs), including arranging itineraries, managing contractors and partners, escorting writers and follow up.
- Manage maintenance of domestic and international media lists.
- Serve as a key communications department contact with individual stakeholders and groups including Downtown Wichita, Wichita Area Chamber of Commerce, Kansas Tourism and others.
- Prepare written content for speeches, presentations, media interviews, newsletters, press statements and other projects as assigned.
- Assist the sales team on bids to host travel writer conferences.
- Work with local media to secure weekly and/or monthly interviews about things happening in Wichita. Prepare talking points, video and photo assets to support the story for broadcast interviews.
- Write blogs for www.VisitWichita.com.
- Serve as spokesperson both on and off camera as needed.
- Assist with agency management and coordination as assigned.
- Assist with internal communications/PR needs, including coordinating with other departments on their needs (media lists, press conferences, news release distribution, editorial content requests, etc.).
- Responsible for making sure public relations efforts are tracked in organization’s database.
- Other duties as may be assigned.
Basic Expectation, Skills and Abilities:
- Strong time management skills
- Excellent relationship building ability
- Excellent writing skills
- Strong organizational and planning skills
- Strong public speaking ability
- Content management and creation a plus
- Photography skills a plus
Qualifications:
- Four-year degree in a relevant field of study including Public Relations, Communications, and Journalism.
Experience:
- Minimum five (5) years Public Relations and Media Relations experience; travel and/or tourism industry experience is a plus.
To apply for this role, send cover letter, resume to careers@visitwichita.com
