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Alisa Bailey is the state’s No.1 tourism promoter
Virginia is for lovers and Alisa Bailey is the matchmaker.
“We’re the No. 1 salesman for the state of Virginia,” said Bailey, the president and CEO of the Virginia Tourism Corp., the state’s tourism promotion agency.
“Virginians sometimes like to hide their light under a bushel basket,” Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said. “But Alisa takes the basket off and lets the light shine.”
Meanwhile, the state would like to fill that basket with money.
“More people, staying longer, spending more money,” Bailey said, quickly outlining her organization’s mission. “Our goal is to create a bigger tax base and make sure businesses are successful.”
It’s been working — even in a recession-pummeled economy.
An estimated 60 million people annually vacation in Virginia, making tourism a $19.2 billion industry for the Old Dominion, employing 210,000 people and generating $1.28 billion in state and local taxes.
Visits to Virginia’s state parks were up 7.8 percent during the peak summer travel month of July, compared with the same month in 2008, and July’s national park visits in the state — more than 3.2 million — were up nearly 17 percent, compared with July 2008.
While hotel demand in Virginia during the first nine months of 2009 was down 2.9 percent compared with the same period the year before, demand at hotels across the U.S. fell more than twice that, according to Smith Travel Research.
Bailey “is a powerhouse at what she does,” said Leighton Powell, director of the Scenic Virginia organization, which works closely with Virginia Tourism. “She’s taken tourism in Virginia to another level.
“She’s done a good job of promoting Virginia to Virginians,” Powell said, “and reminding people of how great this place is, how varied it is, how beautiful it is.”
And, said Powell, “she’s fun to be around. I think that’s why she’s been so successful.”
Since Bailey, 52, took over in 2003 as head of Virginia Tourism:
– The agency achieved an inquiry-to-visitation rate of 48 percent, well above the national average of 31 percent. — Virginia moved up from 10th to eighth-highest U.S. state in domestic visitor spending. “We’re very close to capturing Pennsylvania,” Bailey said happily. — The “Virginia is for Lovers” state tourism slogan was inducted into the National Advertising Walk of Fame last year. — Forbes.com in 2009 ranked the “Virginia is for Lovers” advertising campaign in the top 10 tourism advertising campaigns of all time. — The agency produced the largest promotion in its history with the “40 trips in 40 weeks” campaign, to celebrate 40 years of the “Virginia is for Lovers” slogan. The goal was to get 44,000 people to enter the contest, but the promotion garnered more than 150,000. — Virginia Tourism trained more than 4,500 industry partners in customer service in 2009 alone. — The agency established a tourism micro-grant program, awarding more than $1.7 million in marketing grants, which was matched with $8 million in private-sector money.
Bailey doesn’t take personal credit for these developments.
“We did it as a team. What I’m able to do best is inspire people to do great things,” Bailey said, joking that “it’s challenging running an office with a lot of Type A personalities.”
Dave Arnold with Class IV-Mountain River, an adventure tourism company in Lansing, W.Va., was impressed with her abilities while he served as chairman of the West Virginia Tourism Commission when Bailey was that state’s tourism commissioner. She was responsible for West Virginia’s tourism promotion activities from 1996 to 2003.
“I’ve watched her go into an organization that was sort of just plodding along,” Arnold said, “and turn that organization around, getting people excited.”
Jenny Price went to high school with Bailey in Charleston, W.Va.
Now the vice president for membership and events marketing with Richmond’s Retail Merchants Association, Price remembers Bailey as a leader in high school. She was senior class president.
“People were drawn to her,” Price recalled. “That’s still the case.”
A West Virginia native, Bailey started her professional career in 1979 fielding consumer complaints for the West Virginia attorney general’s office.
“That was when the American auto industry was not making very good cars,” she said.
In one long-running lemon case she worked on, “I wrote a registered letter to Henry Ford. They didn’t want to fix that car,” she remembered.
She also worked for U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., as well as in public relations and communications, before becoming the first woman to be West Virginia’s state tourism commissioner as well as chief of the Bureau of Commerce.
When she interviewed for the job heading Virginia’s tourism operation, “what really turned me on was a passion from the tourism board and the governor’s office to focus on rural tourism.”
“We need to be sure to remember the roots of the region,” Bailey said. “We have to be careful we don’t become a Las Vegas, a Gatlinburg, [Tenn.]. . . . It’s not sustainable. It will homogenize the region. It will cheapen the region.
“I hate the fake stuff,” she said.
One result of that enthusiasm for the state’s authentic heritage was that Bailey changed how the Virginia Tourism Corp. does business, assigning staff members to work directly with localities across the state.
“Now there are two people in Southwest Virginia who work out there and help coordinate and develop marketing strategies,” said Todd Christensen, executive director of the Southwest Virginia Cultural Heritage Commission. “Before she came, there was very little attention paid to Southwest Virginia and rural areas.”
Christensen was one of the founders of The Crooked Road heritage music trail and worked to develop Southwest Virginia’s Round the Mountain artisan network.
“She’s seen the value of things like The Crooked Road and Round the Mountain initiatives,” he said, “providing the marketing which has made them very successful in the realm of heritage tourism.”
Del. Christopher K. Peace, R-Hanover, reached out to Bailey to establish the Road to Revolution Heritage Trail, interpreting the life of Patrick Henry.
“So many times in government, you find people who are ready and willing to tell you so many ways you can’t do something,” Peace said. “She said, ‘That’s a great idea,’ and very quickly offered staff resources.”
But the recession is dogging the state’s ability to promote itself.
Working with 71 employees, Virginia Tourism’s basic operating budget is just $14.4 million for the fiscal year that ends June 30. That’s down more than 31 percent since 2000.
Because money has been so tight, she said, the agency has had to cut five staff members and curtail television advertising outside the state. Virginia also has lost $300 million in potential movie projects in the past three years because of inadequate financial incentives to film here.
The down economy prompted the tourism agency to take another look at its market.
“We have always focused on women baby boomers,” she said, because they primarily made vacation decisions. But Bailey is shifting Virginia Tourism’s sights to a new target: Generation X families.
What Virginia Tourism found is that Gen Xers, people ages 25 to 45, spend 13 percent more on travel than the baby-boom generation, they want to do things with their family and their confidence in the economy is rising faster than the rest of the population’s.
“We’re changing strategy in 2010,” Bailey said. “We want to give a new meaning to ‘Virginia is for Lovers.’
“It’s all about family, loving your family. You know,” she said, “it never seems like a hard sell.”
