Tourism effort targets weddings, ECU football

Published 8:19 pm Tuesday, August 26, 2014

APP HAPPY: www.littlewashingtonnc.com, Washington Tourism and Development Authority’s new website was launched last year. The website includes downloadable apps to help visitors decide where to go and what to do when they come to town.

APP HAPPY: www.littlewashingtonnc.com, Washington Tourism and Development Authority’s new website was launched last year. The website includes downloadable apps to help visitors decide where to go and what to do when they come to town.

 

In the coming months, Washington’s tourism marketing efforts will focus on two distinct areas — having East Carolina University football fans stay in Washington during weekends of home football games and enhancing the city’s growing wedding market, according to Lynn Wingate, the city’s tourism development director.

Wingate explained city’s latest tourism marketing strategies to the City Council on Monday.

The marketing effort involving ECU home football games is titled Paint Your Weekend Purple and Gold.

“We want to remind people who are traveling to East Carolina, to Greenville you can get to the stadium from Washington just as easily as you can from the other side of Greenville. So, why not spend the weekend in Washington and paint it purple and gold?” Wingate said.

As for the burgeoning wedding market, the city will produce a wedding guide the provides information concerning holding weddings in the city at various venues, including Festival Park on the city’s waterfront, Wingate said. Weddings involving local residents and out-of-town residents usually result in some members of the wedding parties staying at local lodging establishments, generating revenue for the establishments and the city, she said.

Using the analogy of the difficulty a plate-spinner (think the “Ed Sullivan Show”) faces when trying to keep many plates spinning at one time, Wingate said the city would focus on spinning just one or two plates (marketing strategies) at a time.

Wingate reminded the council the Washington Tourism Development Authority is charged with marketing Washington primarily outside a 50-mile radius of the city.

“Our mission is to enhance the economy of Washington and Beaufort County through promotion of this area as a destination for business and leisure travel. So, that’s something we’re trying to do in our day-to-day efforts,” Wingate said.

She also told the council that during the city’s branding initiative about two years ago, “We came up with the idea that people saw our community as a quaint, charming, little waterfront community to sum it up in a few words. So, that’s what we’ve tried to incorporate into our messages.”

Wingate said a new brochure touting Washington as a destination is available at all state-operated visitors centers. Although that brochure provides just basic information about Washington, it directs people to visit the city’s recently updated award-winning tourism website to learn more specific information about what the city has to offer.

Councilman Doug Mercer expressed concern with the city’s tourism effort focusing on just one of two “spinning plates.” He suggested that a broader market effort might be the way to go when it comes to promoting the city.

For now, Wingate responded, the WTDA prefers to use the rifle approach rather than the shotgun approach in its efforts to market the city.

 

 

About Mike Voss

Mike Voss is the contributing editor at the Washington Daily News. He has a daughter and four grandchildren. Except for nearly six years he worked at the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., in the early to mid-1990s, he has been at the Daily News since April 1986.
Journalism awards:
• Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service, 1990.
• Society of Professional Journalists: Sigma Delta Chi Award, Bronze Medallion.
• Associated Press Managing Editors’ Public Service Award.
• Investigative Reporters & Editors’ Award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Public Service Award, 1989.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Investigative Reporting, 1990.
All those were for the articles he and Betty Gray wrote about the city’s contaminated water system in 1989-1990.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Investigative Reporting, 1991.
• North Carolina Press Association, Third Place, General News Reporting, 2005.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Lighter Columns, 2006.
Recently learned he will receive another award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Lighter Columns, 2010.
4. Lectured at or served on seminar panels at journalism schools at UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Maryland, Columbia University, Mary Washington University and Francis Marion University.

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