A last-minute coffee press trip to Jamaica

How press trips work and how I use them to enhance my travels

I sip my coffee as waves crash in the distance, birdsong mingling with Argentinian, Jamaican, and Dutch accents around me. The coffee-themed press trip in Jamaica ended last week, and I’m writing this from a guesthouse in Portland on the northeast coast, having arrived last night on the £20 Knutsford Express coach.

The press trip was a reggae-infused, coffee-flavoured dream. We were whizzed around Kingston on art and music and history tours. Kingston is a city that suffers from pretty bad PR in the UK, but let me tell you something: the streets are cleaner and brighter than most of South London and everyone minds their business. Downtown Kingston invigorated me. I particularly enjoyed a tour of Devon House, a sprawling manor that was home to Jamaica’s first millionaire as well as the musical tour of Bob Marley’s home, too. I also learned about coffee cultivation with a trip to Craighton Estate in the Blue Mountains. Blue Mountain coffee is some of the rarest in the world, and a 450g bag can set you back upwards of £50. I’ve stocked up on supplies for back home.

I also learned a few tricks from other journalists travelling with me. You never know who you’re going to get on trips like this, but it was a good group. Yet press trips certainly have their issues and as a writer, you need to go into them with your eyes wide open. Everything is paid for, everything is shiny and clean. One could argue that as we are presented with a very sanitised version of the place we’ve been invited to, we are unable to write about the country in an “authentic” way. Many newspapers ban their writers from attending press trips entirely (like the New York Times) citing ethical concerns.

The route onto press trips is varied, but usually, I’m invited directly by a tourism board. US companies and global tourism boards have proved more lenient than UK-based agencies in terms of flying you somewhere without a commission. UK teams generally won’t touch you without guaranteed coverage, which, as a freelancer can be tricky to secure before the trip has taken place. Often the best story ideas come to you while you’re there. But UK PR’s don’t give a toss. No commission, no fly. I get it, there’s a lot of trust involved, and some journalists take the piss, but it makes it so much harder for freelancers and writers starting out.

I feel lucky to be able to attend these trips and call it “work” and there’s ways to attend press trips and stay true to yourself. I have my limits. For example, I won’t write for the Daily Fail or anything similar in order to get a spot secured, and I try and pitch stories that interest me, while showcasing some behind-the-scenes stuff on my TikTok and Instagram. For Jamaica I have free reign over what I write, but I’m not getting paid, so that’s the very least they can allow. This invite came from a PR agency. The mania was foreshadowed in the subject line: “URGENT: Jamaica press trip one spot left!” was the heading. I wanted that spot. But the trip was in less than a week! I fired off a pitch, but was told I’d have to secure a commission to attend. I got a lot of hot air in response to my pitches and jettisoned the image of steaming hot joe in the Jamaican hills from my brain.

Then a few days before the trip was due to take-off, I received a message from the PR. “Would you like to attend the press trip and write about it for this magazine? The editor can’t go so you can have her place. But she can’t pay you.” Unpaid labour? I hadn’t written for free in several years. But I reasoned a five-day trip to a country I loved, with a 1000-word commission on a topic I was interested in, would be payment enough. It’s not ideal but I’m happy, and oddly, as I’m not beholden to anyone, it feels as if I can write more freely here, and on my social pages. The travel industry and so many articles within it are the result of paid-for excursions. I can’t see that changing in mainstream media, but I do think there’’s an exciting new batch of content creators, and independent writers on this app who I think we will turn to for travel insights via the subsciber-model.

After a year of solo travel and living remotely in Colombia and Nicaragua in my twenties, I published my book Black Girls Take World in 2021, a solo travel guide for the discerning, adventurous woman. Now I have a mortgage, I am even more appreciative of a press trip when it pops up. I use them to springboard a spate of solo travel. And pop up they do. I had less than 48 hours to get my things together for Jamaica! I drove Jasper, my dog, to my Mum’s the night before, and cut my hand open in a frantic attempt to pack things into a case I didn’t know was broken. But as I am relatively free of dependents I made it work. Who knows how much longer I’ll be able to do this.

My experience travelling around Brazil is a great example of how genuine interest in the country resulted some incredible invites. In 2022, I was already travelling around Rio by myself. I contacted the local tourism board to see if they could me with an article on carnival I had on commission, from Lonely Planet. They obliged and the resulting piece did really well. Rio’s tourism board were so happy with it, that in 2024, Embratur, the national tourism board invited me to an all-expenses paid carnival experience in Rio with other UK journalists. That trip was extravagant.

Previously I’d done carnival twice as a backpacker, staying with friends and making friends with locals who’d show me which blocos (street parties) to attend. But the press trip had as us standing on a float among carnival crowds of 1 million people, rubbing shoulders with Brazilian celebs at the annual Copacabana Palace Ball, and eating Michelin-stared meals in Ipanema. It was the kind of carnival experience I’d never have been able to arrange, or afford, by myself. Was it less “authentic” than my other experiences? Arguably yes, a lot less so! But I enjoyed it and my write-up was on something that interested me, a piece on Little Africa, a chaotic, exciting lesser-known black suburb that is known as the birthplace of samba.

I wish I was being paid to be here but when Jamaica calls… you answer, so I’m still content enough. Hopefully I’ll sell some other stories off the back of this trip, but solo travel around Jamaica is not cheap and I didn’t have any time to arrange media rates or social collaborations with the accommodation spots after my press trip ended, which also means everything after the trip is priced at full whack.

But that’s why rates are so low in travel writing: people know that you’ll do it for peanuts for the privilege of travelling somewhere incredible. It’s why so many travel writers come from wealth, or have a family or spousal support. Yet I feel like I can’t complain because these are amazing opportunities. I am able to travel and work, and that brings me closer to myself and others. The opportunity to spotlight and move through different cultures makes me feel grounded in my purpose as a story-teller. Tracee Ellis Ross put it perfectly on a recent CNN podcast: “Solo traveling for me is not an opportunity for me to see the world, it is an opportunity for me to be myself in the world.”

Exactly that, Tracee.

And as long as I can get the kinds of stories commissioned that I believe matter these journeys still feel very worthwhile.

Have you ever been on a press trip? Or read something and questioned the writer’s integrity? I’d love to know!