Triangle's Tourism Heavy Hitters Preview 2011 Season

Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Dancers from Busch Gardens' revamped Oktoberfest. Photo courtesy of Greater Williamsburg Chamber and Tourism Alliance.

This year, highlights included a sharp focus on attracting Generation X parents with children, new collaborations and partnerships, diversification and increasing the focus on social media and smart phone applications. Some members also revealed sneak peeks of new attractions and events for the upcoming tourist season.

Vice President of Marketing for Busch Gardens Europe and Water Country USA Dan DiPiazzo told the audience Tuesday that 2010 was a great year for both parks. Offering visitors new experiences is really important to the parks, he explained, and 2011 will see one new ride at each park and new shows, as well as a revamped Oktoberfest area at Busch Gardens.

Mach Tower, the new drop ride to be located in Oktoberfest, will lift riders nearly 240 feet, rotate them a few times, then drop them at breath-taking speed to the ground. The ride isn’t for the faint of heart, DiPiazzo joked.

Oktoberfest has been overhauled, with gourmet pretzels, a beer garden and more performers outside the traditional Festhaus location. Some of the new performers were on hand to sing, dance and play for the audience Tuesday, even taking time out to grab some good-natured participants to dance the polka in the aisles.

Vanish Point, a similarly thrilling new water ride at Water Country, is a new drop slide that is completely unique to the area, DiPiazzo said. “It will separate the chickens from the dare devils,” he said.

Also part of their effort to rejuvenate the parks are some new kids’ shows at Busch Gardens, which will include visits from Hip Hop Harry and Yo Gabba Gabba’s DJ Lance for the younger kids and an extended Ramp Jam skateboarding program for older kids.

Christmas Town and Howl O Scream will also have some new surprises, but DiPiazzo wouldn’t elaborate on what those might be.

Busch Gardens will be launching a new website on April 1, he told the audience, which will look nicer and make the park’s booking engine and package deals more prominent.

Social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter are tools Busch Gardens will continue to focus on in 2011. The attraction has 180,000 fans on Facebook, and about 140,000 of them are from outside the Hampton Roads area, DiPiazzo said. “This is a huge communication vehicle,” he said. “We can reach more people this way than with a newspaper ad.”

WADMC and the VTC discussed their new partnership, which will help draw visitors to the Triangle and to the state as a whole. Using about $447,000 from the VTC, the two were able to make a leveraged media buy that will feature combinations of back-to-back WADMC and VTC television spots.

The two organizations both have individual ad campaigns for 2011 that focus on Generation X parents with kids roughly between 7 and 14 years of age.

WADMC has refreshed last year’s campaign towards a more “mom-centric” style, with lots of pictures and footage of kids having fun.

Diane Bechamps of the VTC said her organization is targeting the same demographic. Though still focusing on the “Virginia is for Lovers” theme, the VTC’s ads are also incorporating iconic tourism scenes (from CW, Virginia Beach and other state attractions) with lots of focus on kids and families having fun across the state.

Colonial Williamsburg’s Director of Brand Strategy and Marketing Communications Sally McConnell shared a few new areas the organization will focus on in 2011.

“Live After Five” is a new program that aims to offer visitors something to do in the evenings, with dining and entertainment planned around the historic area through the summer. Chownings Tavern will also open as a Beer Garden in the evenings. Visitors will find out, McConnell said, that “when the lights go down, we don’t go dark.”

Colonial Williamsburg is also working on attracting more families with children. As part of that initiative, CW has created “REVQUEST,” a history scavenger hunt for kids ages 8 to 12 that begins online and ends in the historic area. The historic area will also see more junior interpreters to engage kids.

Another change in 2011 will be a renovated regional visitor center,which will have one area solely designated for all the local attractions and businesses.

CW’s will diversify its message in order to draw visitors at different times, starting with spring offers for Historic Garden Week. After the summer season, the campaign will aim to draw Christmas visitors, McConnell said. The ad campaign “Be a Part of the Story” will continue for a second year with television spots airing in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and various parts of Virginia and North Carolina.

Partnerships are also a key focus this year, she said. Colonial Williamsburg is aiming to extend its partnership with the Virginia Arts Festival, and will continue to promote the new Historic Triangle Ticket and Bounce Ticket, which gets visitors to multiple attractions with one ticket.

The Alliance’s Vice President for Tourism Bob Harris shared some of his organization’s plans for 2011, which include a continued aim to diversifying marketing by advertising gardens, sports, the civil war, Christmas and the arts.

The Alliance’s new Sports Williamsburg group so far has secured nine sport-related visits to the area for the year, with future leads that could result in up to 86,000 room nights and an economic impact of $23 million should they all pan out.

A family will spend an average of $789 per participant at a sporting event, Harris said, which is one of the reasons the Alliance has been working hard to promote sports.

While many of the new marketing initiatives haven’t kicked in yet, the Alliance’s Christmas plan started last year, so Harris was able to share some of those results. For example, the Christmas in Williamsburg website the Alliance created had more than 20,000 visitors in 2010, he said, and already people are looking to see what’s happening in 2011.

The Alliance also saw 850 percent growth in website visits from folks in the Washington, D.C. area, as well as over 7,000 visits to the “events” tab on the website.

Harris pointed out that the Alliance markets the area by going to various consumer shows, making visits to AAA offices, hosting familiarization tours and setting up different welcome center exhibits.

Jamestown Settlement and Yorktown Victory Center are aiming to get visitors to both sites by reminding them through the ad campaign that each site is a different experience, according to Susan Bak, director of marketing and retail operations.

Funding has been approved for a new, 80,000-square-foot Yorktown Victory Center, but construction won’t begin until it’s certain that there’s sufficient debt capacity in the state.

Meanwhile, the Jamestown Yorktown Foundation will continue to offer its standard favorite programming such as Military Through the Ages and Jamestown Day, along with new programs such as Court Day, a kid-friendly and entertaining program that looks at what sorts of fun things happened on court day in the 18th century.

Jamestown Yorktown Foundation will be launching its mobile site this year and will continue to focus on online advertising and social media, Bak said. Her organization will also offer diverse packages for visitors including a Year Round Shopping package in conjunction with Premium Outlets and the America’s Historic Triangle ticket package for all three historic sites.