THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504210021
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
Visitors to Hampton Roads pump about $2 billion a year into the regional economy. There's gold in them thar travelers.
Luring more of them is the mission of Norfolk's multiyear, multimillion-dollar ``Virginia Waterfront'' promotion.
Initiated a year ago, the campaign touts Hampton Roads' array of vacation and convention opportunities from Williamsburg to the Virginia Beach shoreline.
The tens of millions of Americans living within a day's drive of Hampton Roads are the promotion's targets.
Why would Norfolk cough up $3 million a year to herald Jamestown and Yorktown, Colonial Williamsburg, Busch Gardens, the Hampton Air and Space Museum, the Virginia Marine Science Museum, the Dismal Swamp, the oceanfront and sportfishing, as well as its own Nauticus, Botanical Garden, zoo, Chrysler Museum, Waterside festival marketplace and supercarriers at the Naval Station?
Because it's in Norfolk's best interest to tell potential travelers - especially families - about all the attractions bunched in Hampton Roads, which contains the region's three best-known cities: Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Williamsburg.
These are Hampton Roads' ``brand names,'' as retired advertising executive Dan Ballard put it. Mr. Ballard, volunteering his services to Norfolk, guided the city onto the travel-promotion track.
Hampton Roads, designated ``The Virginia Waterfront'' in the promotion, competes for travel dollars against the likes of Orlando; Myrtle Beach; Washington, D.C.; Gettysburg and Hershey, Pa., the Pennsylvania Dutch country; and the New Jersey shore.
Each year, upward of 6 million tourists/ conventioneers and other travelers (it's difficult to count them) come to Hampton Roads. Millions more would be coming if this area's local governments had agreed a year ago to a joint, continuing promotion, as they had a chance to do.
Norfolk is doing what the region will not - and could do with greater effect if the localities pooled resources, as they should.
Using radio, newspapers and magazines, The Virginia Waterfront campaign in its first year fielded 53,000 requests for travel brochures and a gold card entitling users to discounts at Hampton Roads restaurants, inns and sundry attractions. Nauticus daily collected scores of gold cards during its first season.
Now the campaign, financed by taxes on restaurant meals and hotel/motel rooms, enters its second year. The campaign has moved into television with a sprightly 30-second commercial that will be shown in Washington, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Northeastern regional markets and an advertisement in an array of national magazines' East Coast editions. Anyone calling 1-800-FUN IN VA gets a handsome 40-page brochure and a list of accommodations.
On April 18, the day before Norfolk disclosed the second-year Virginia Waterfront promotion plan, The Wall Street Journal reported how ``promoters and developers have transformed a low-key family-resort area into a tourism powerhouse'' - the nation's No. 3 tourist destination. Myrtle Beach draws 12 million visitors annually. Construction has boomed, jobs have proliferated.
Unlike Myrtle Beach at the start of its tourism drive, Hampton Roads is flush with hotel/motel rooms, restaurants and entertainment options, and its transportation network and public services are well-developed. Tourism is not the mainstay of the region. But expanding tourism will be a bonanza. Don't believe it? Check back in five years. by CNB