Posted on 09/03/2018 4:21:17 AM PDT by Drango
LEXINGTON — Rockbridge Regional Tourism approved a recovery plan to boost its marketing after The Red Hen restaurant controversy brought a slew of negative national media coverage this summer.
The regional tourism board, with members from Lexington, Buena Vista and Rockbridge County, met with the Lexington City Council on Thursday for an update on tourism initiatives and numbers.
The board had initially approved the recovery plan soon after news of The Red Hen controversy was spreading across the country. At the end of June, the restaurant’s owner declined to serve presidential press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders when she visited the restaurant.
Sanders tweeted the day after the incident that she had been asked to leave because she works for President Donald Trump. Soon after, Lexington was flooded with protesters who stood outside the restaurant, chanted and held signs. Others posted both positive and negative reviews of the restaurant online.
All three localities met and decided to pull together emergency funds to increase digital marketing and spread positive messages of the area, especially Lexington, which brings in the largest number of tourists.
Rockbridge Regional Tourism agreed to spend an additional $5,000 per month from the office’s emergency fund from July through September.
The tourism office receives 0.8 percent of the lodging and meals tax collected from each locality. About 20 percent of its annual budget, which is around $800,000, is put into a reserve for emergencies.
Typically the money is saved. But each locality agreed the region was in desperate need of positive coverage after The Red Hen incident.
Director of Marketing Patty Williams said the area is still feeling effects from the controversy — the tourism office received a letter Thursday from a family in Georgia who said they would never come back to the area because of what happened. And during the immediate aftermath of the incident, the tourism office received thousands of phone calls and emails.
“For a town our size, it was a significant impact,” Williams said.
The tourism office also decided to conduct a perceptions survey in its top four markets — Roanoke, Richmond, Norfolk and Washington, D.C. The office is working with a survey company to find frequent travelers living in those areas to answer questions about whether they recall the incident, where it took place and whether it would affect their decision to travel there. A total of 400 people will be surveyed.
The responses will help indicate where marketing money should be spent and what kind of messages need to be sent out, Williams said.
“We would certainly try to portray ourselves as a friendly, welcoming place,” she said. “And focus our marketing toward accomplishing that goal.”
The tourism office is already working toward that goal with a new video in the works that will feature that message.
In addition to the perceptions survey about The Red Hen, the office is also conducting three surveys that focus on the types of groups that stay in hotels in the area, the activities and spending patterns of visitors, and people who request information on Lexington, but never visit.
These surveys, which are typically done about every five years, provide the basis for tourism and marketing decisions. The last time the surveys were done, in 2011, the research showed baby boomers were the largest segment visiting the area looking for natural beauty and historic sites.
Williams said the office doesn’t think those numbers are as accurate now that baby boomers have gotten older. Now, the tourism office is focusing on attracting younger generations and has switched its marketing to focus more on outdoor recreation.
“For years we’ve used history as our hook,” Director of Tourism Jean Clark said. “But as visitors change, we have to change with them.”
City of Lexington is Commie RED.
If you pass by Lexington again, stop and see the Lee chapel where Lee is buried, on the Washington and Lee University campus...has a beautiful recumbent statue of Robert E. Lee. His office downstairs is kept just as it was when he was president of the college after the war. When I stopped there last year there was a docent doing an excellent job of explaining everything. All free. The cemetery where Stonewall Jackson is buried is maybe a mile away, maybe less...has an equestrian statue of Jackson over his grave.
They should pay for the consequences of defending and supporting this and similar businesses. The area deserves continued boycott. Consider that the restaurant is still in business, same owners, same policies. The property owner defended her as well. They own this. Let them suffer.
I hear that the “Red Hen Restaurant” is going to reopen under a new name, “The Cooked Goose Restaurant and Gulag”.
Antifa members get a 10% discount on all food and hate signs.
#12. Proud parents saying “Our son’s a pussy just like us”.
[That won’t get him many real girl dates in the future, which could be a plus for society. He can’t breed more stupids.
[Director of Marketing Patty Williams said the area is still feeling effects from the controversy]
Excellent job, Communist Red Hen restaurant in Lexington.
“They are home to one patriotic university, Virginia Military Institute and a much larger one, Washington and Lee which is not.”
I’m a little sad to see so much criticism of Washington and Lee that this scandal has caused. The people who run it and the professors there are increasingly on the left, but W&L still has one of the most conservative study bodies in the country. Considering what a bastion of Cultural Marxism and socialism higher education is today, a majority polite, well-dressed, right-of-center study body is a welcomed novelty.
“Lexington is not exactly a small town. It has two universities and should’ve had someone available who was more capable of reading x-rays, even from a distance, I thought.”
You should have went to the hostipal behind the confederate cemetery rather than the clinic. You always take a chance with quality in clinics.
* I meant “student body” in my last post of course, not “study body.” Oops.
“Sanders tweeted the day after the incident that she had been asked to leave because she works for President Donald Trump. Soon after, Lexington was flooded with protesters who stood outside the restaurant, chanted and held signs. “
YAY!!!!! MAGA!!!!
Any clinic worth its salt could have made us a copy of the x-ray for about $3.00 and sent us over to the hospital rather than tell us to wait until Monday rather than leave me to make the diagnosis which I ultimately (and correctly) made as the son of a veterinarian. Idjuts!
Did the town business group ever condemn the Red Hen’s actions?
Some like the Blue Phoenix publicly SUPPORTED them. https://www.yelp.com/biz/blue-phoenix-cafe-lexington
it just goes to show that conservatives are the only ones who spend money. Where is all the liberal support flocking to the red hen?
Nike is next.
It’s a fairly scenic area, but not up to the level of other mountain communities up and down the southern Appalachians (Gatlinburg, Asheville, Cherokee, etc.). It’s smack in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains, very pretty especially in the fall, with easy access to Roanoke (an hour south) and the upper Shenendoah Valley—Staunton, Waynesboro, Harrisonburg—45-60 minutes north. And my tiny speck of a hometown 45 minutes east over the mountain, but that’s neither here nor there. :)
Growing up near there, it was always more known as a place to stop and eat along Interstate 81 and a historical location. Yes, they might be able to make a go of outdoor recreation because there’s good hiking and some tubing in the vicinity, but generally Lexington has been where you go to pay respects to Marse Robert and Stonewall, maybe tour VMI and wander the quaint little downtown, then drive a couple miles back onto I-81 and keep going or spend the night at a chain motel.
}:-)4
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