Title: PR Manager, Hospitality
Type: fulltime
Onsite: 5 days/week
Location: NYC
Salary: $75-80k
About the role:
As PR Manager, Hospitality, you will oversee day-to-day strategy and execution across multiple accounts, cultivate meaningful media and tastemaker relationships, guide junior staff, and serve as a trusted partner to clients. You should be equally comfortable developing long-range campaign strategy, managing openings and launch moments, hosting media, and spotting the cultural hooks that turn a good story into a great one. This is a highly visible role for someone who is energized by being out in the world, immersed in the hospitality landscape, and committed to producing standout results.
Responsibilities:
- Lead day-to-day public relations efforts across a portfolio of hospitality clients, ensuring strong execution, responsiveness, and quality control.
- Develop and implement annual and seasonal communications strategies tailored to each client’s goals, brand positioning, and business priorities.
- Create integrated PR calendars that align launches, openings, menu rollouts, partnerships, awards timelines, and cultural moments.
- Build and maintain strong relationships with key media across food, beverage, travel, lifestyle, business, and local market outlets.
- Pitch a wide range of stories including restaurant and hotel openings, chef and leadership news, partnerships, seasonal programming, and trend-driven narratives.
- Manage press outreach across traditional media as well as digital-first platforms including newsletters, podcasts, Substacks, and emerging editorial channels.
- Oversee critic strategy, press hosting, and awards submissions with discretion, organization, and a long-term view of brand positioning.
- Coordinate individual media visits, group press trips, tastings, preview events, and hosted experiences from planning through follow-up.
- Position chefs, founders, hoteliers, general managers, and beverage leaders as compelling spokespeople through thoughtful media strategy and narrative development.
- Draft and refine high-quality written materials including press releases, media alerts, bios, talking points, briefing documents, and client recaps.
- Lead influencer and tastemaker initiatives across paid and organic campaigns, including sourcing, outreach, execution, and performance tracking.
- Concept and manage experiential activations such as openings, launch events, preview dinners, collaborations, takeovers, and press-facing moments.
- Handle timelines, budgets, vendors, logistics, and run-of-show details for events and campaign initiatives.
- Monitor industry trends, competitor activity, editorial movement, and cultural conversations to identify timely opportunities for clients.
- Provide thoughtful support during reputation-sensitive situations, including reviews, social media issues, and other high-pressure communications moments.
- Track and report on coverage, influencer performance, campaign metrics, and client KPIs, helping connect PR activity to broader business impact.
- Manage and mentor junior team members, offering guidance, feedback, and support in their day-to-day growth and development.
Qualifications:
- 4+ years of public relations experience in an agency or in-house setting, with significant hospitality exposure.
- Demonstrated success working with restaurants, hotels, bars, chefs, or hospitality lifestyle brands.
- Strong media relationships across food and drink, travel, lifestyle, and city or regional dining press.
- Experience supporting launches, openings, media hosting, and awards or critic-focused communications strategies.
- Ability to manage multiple accounts and competing priorities with strong organizational discipline.
- Excellent writing, editing, and verbal communication skills.
- Polished client-facing presence and confidence representing the agency in high-touch environments.
- Experience mentoring junior staff and contributing to a collaborative team culture.
- Comfort working with industry tools such as LaunchMetrics, Cision, Meltwater, Muck Rack, Microsoft Office, and Google Workspace.
- A genuine passion for hospitality and the cultural landscape surrounding food, beverage, and travel.