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Up,
up and away
To
raise occupancy, hotels and resorts appeal to special
interests
Related
link:
Many Virginia cities are building
convention centers; are they worth it?
by
Lauren Shepherd
For
Virginia Business
January 2004
Filling
hotel rooms during the off-season has long been a challenge.
Yet, hotel and resort centers may have found the answer
to empty beds in the dead of winter: niche marketing.
To boost occupancy, they’re planning packages
around specific interests such as winter whale watching
or the desire to see a rare bird.
Instead of traditional ski vacations or Colonial Williamsburg
tours, more tourists want a learning experience or at
least a new adventure. “People just are tired
of the run of the mill, cookie-cutter tours,”
says Diane Bechamps, vice president of marketing for
the Virginia Tourism Corp. “They want to do something
participatory.”
To meet this demand, the number of hotels offering “participatory”
vacations is on the rise. “There’s lots
of interest in the state,” says Bechamps. And
not just from nature enthusiasts or extreme sports athletes.
Bechamps and others in the tourism industry say the
new vacations — from strolls in the state’s
Allegheny Mountains, where rare birds make their home,
to hot-air balloon rides — are being marketed
to tourists in Virginia and beyond.
At Mountain Lake Resort in Southwest Virginia, for example,
visitors can walk a portion of the state’s Birding
and Wildlife Trail, which encompasses 43,000 square
miles of natural habitat from the cypress swamps of
the Eastern Shore to the forests of Mt. Rogers in Southwest
Virginia. The resort has been showcased in a Virginia
Department of Game and Inland Fisheries book, which
tells people where to stay and what to do on the trail.
Near the resort, guests interested in birding can see
a variety of species, including hawks and black-throated
green warblers. To help guests navigate the trail, the
resort offers guidebooks. Buzz Scanland, manager at
Mountain Lake, says birding and other nature-based activities
are catching on, particularly among retirees and those
with the time to take on a new hobby. According to a
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report, 46 million people
went bird watching in 2001, spending $32 billion on
hotels and equipment such as binoculars. “I just
think there’s more and more people who are looking
for hobbies,” says Scanland. “People have
got money and are looking for different things to do.”
To attract more winter visitors, the resort is opening
nine cottages year-round. Although the hotel itself
closes during the winter months, the Blueberry Ridge
Cottages are equipped with full kitchens, living rooms,
decks and Jacuzzi baths. Prices range from $135 a day
for a one-bedroom cottage to $400 per day for a four-bedroom
winter getaway, Scanland says. Bookings have been plentiful
so far, but it may be too early to tell whether the
number of winter tourists justifies the cost of the
upkeep. “It’s going to take the whole winter
to find out,” says Scanland.
Meanwhile, at Virginia Crossings Resort outside of Richmond,
hotel guests are offered hot-air balloon rides —
a way to get a new perspective on the state’s
fall foliage and winter icicles. The resort offers a
$429 package that includes a one-night stay, breakfast
and a balloon ride for two by Richmond Sky Tours. The
one-hour balloon trip takes travelers as high as 2,000
feet and offers stunning views of downtown Richmond
and the icy ridges of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
At the state’s beaches, the trend toward developing
niche markets for tourists has sparked the interest
of at least one museum. The Virginia Marine Science
Museum has been taking tourists and beach residents
on whale watching excursions in the Atlantic Ocean since
1991. This winter, the museum arranged vacation packages
for out-of-towners to stay in one of 25 beach hotels
for three days and two nights. The package includes
a two-hour whale-watching boat trip and dinner at Rockafeller’s,
a popular seafood restaurant in Virginia Beach. The
packages start at $89 per person (based on double occupancy),
with costs depending on which hotel a tourist chooses.
On the whale trip, visitors may see humpback whales
and fin whales as well as porpoises, seals and many
sea birds, although sightings are not guaranteed. A
museum interpreter goes along to make the vacation a
learning experience. Trips run from January 2 to March
14, Wednesday through Sunday. The daily trips, without
the hotel package, are open to museum-goers and local
residents for a fee of $15 for adults and $13 for children
ages 1 to 11. About 10,000 to 12,000 people typically
take the whale-watching trips each season, says Alice
Scanlan, the museum’s director of marketing. Many
of the visitors are families. “It’s a great
way to get out on the water in the winter time,”
she says.
Even away from the beaches and mountains there are efforts
to develop niche markets. In Southwestern Virginia the
newly created “Virginia Heritage Music Trail”
is taking shape. It links a handful of concert venues
and other musical attractions between the town of Floyd
and Dickenson County. The region is home to some well-known
names in bluegrass and country music, including Ralph
Stanley, the Carter Family and Jim and Jesse McReynolds.
Stops along the trail will include the Ralph Stanley
Museum in Clintwood and the Birthplace of Country Music
Alliance Museum in Bristol. Bluegrass music already
brings visitors to the region. The annual Old Fiddlers
Convention in Galax attracts more than 40,000 people.
Some places want to develop a niche market for tourism
to fend off overdevelopment. The Eastern Shore of Virginia
is a rural peninsula under tremendous development pressure
from the Hampton Roads region, as well as from those
looking for a second home. Many residents there hope
visitors will come for the pristine land and water and
go boating, fishing or bird-watching. If an eco-tourism
market develops, it would help preserve the environment
and protect the existing farming sector.
For wine connoisseurs and novices alike, some of Virginia’s
wineries partner with resorts or bed and breakfasts
for winter getaway weekends. For instance, the Boar’s
Head Inn in Charlottesville sponsors several vintner
weekends that highlight specific wines from nearby vineyards.
The package typically includes two nights’ lodging,
a welcome gift, wine seminar, cooking class with lunch,
winery tours and reception with the vintners for $613,
double occupancy and $478 for singles.
Tourists taking advantage of the new winter hotel offerings
are hoping to come home with more than a few rolls of
film. Besides new information or a different experience,
Bechamps says tourists are looking for the “bragging
factor,” or the ability to tell friends, neighbors
and co-workers a good story when they get back. “Half
the vacation is telling people what you did and showing
them the pictures,” Bechamps says. For these vacationers,
a weekend away may not mean warm temperatures and winter
tans. With the chance to learn and see something new
a few miles down the road, the Bermuda sunshine may
not look so inviting after all.
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