THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, June 26, 1995 TAG: 9506240002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
The latest bulletin from the travel-industry front is the Walt Disney Co.'s disclosure of intention to build a fourth theme park in Central Florida. When it opens in 1998, the 500-acre, $760 million Wild Animal Kingdom will join the Magic Kingdom, Epcot Center and the Disney-MGM Studios at Lake Buena Vista near Orlando to create a more-potent-than-ever magnet for tourists.
How about a strongly financed sustained regional promotion of Hampton Roads' tourism delights? The question has been raised before, but there were no takers.
Visitors now contribute $2 billion a year to Hampton Roads' economy. The region's travel industry employs thousands of people, many in jobs demanding only modest skills. That's a boon, considering the large percentage of the labor force, including new workers, that welcome such jobs.
The current $3 million-a-year Virginia Waterfront travel campaign underwritten by Norfolk and aimed at the tens of millions of Americans within a day's drive of Hampton Roads is the principal effort by a Hampton Roads entity to lure tourists to Southeastern Virginia by touting all of the region's delights. Another effort is the Beach's `Kids Korner'' TV infomercial.
In the Virginia Waterfront campaign, Norfolk heralds Hampton Roads' enticements from Colonial Williamsburg to the aircraft carriers at Norfolk Naval Station and the surf and fishing at the Beach. Virginia Beach spends substantial sums to bring vacationers and conventioneers to the resort city. The Beach Department of Convention & Visitors Development's annual budget is $7.2 million, which includes funding for operations, staffing and maintenance expenses of the Pavilion convention center. The department expects 350,000 calls for its travel information packet this season.
Like Virginia Beach, Colonial Williamsburg and Busch Gardens spend millions to draw tourists and others. The expenditures are manifestly productive.
The second year of the Virginia Waterfront campaign, which began March 19 with TV spots in major Northeastern and mid-Atlantic metropolitan areas has fielded more than 110,000 requests for the colorful information packet describing the region's offerings. The requests exceed the 100,000 that the campaign sought to generate before the season concludes next fall.
A regionally financed promotion - possible if Hampton Roads localities united to finance it - would enable the region to bid for travelers' favor with even greater success in the future against Orlando and Myrtle Beach, S.C. (which gets 12 million visitors yearly).
Hampton Roads' localities would each be strengthened by a well-financed collective marketing of the area. Regrettably, localities still shy from the challenge. The announcement last week that the five South Hampton Roads cities will kick in $140,000 for a joint economic-development effort is a hopeful sign that cooperation on a tourism campaign might eventually come. But time's a-wasting. by CNB