Tourism recently attended The Pennsylvania Bus Assn and Maryland Motorcoach Assn Group Leader show in York PA. Over 1,000 group leaders were in attendance.
Small World
While Mike Eason (left) was enjoying a round of golf in Florida, he ran into George Efstathiou, FAIA RIBA, (center) the managing partner of SOM, lead architects of Virginia Beach Convention Center. George was largely responsible for VBCC’s project as well as a number of world-renowned projects in the Middle East, most notably Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest structure pictured below.
Tourism on the Road
Tourism recently attended Travel South Domestic Showcase in Biloxi, MS with representatives from the Best Western Oceanfront and Military Aviation Museum.
National Wildlife Refuge System Birthday Event
Photos From The Nutrition Seminar
Karen Ovalle is one of the BeWell Champions for the CVB. One of her responsibilities is to educate co-workers on leading a healthier lifestyle. She coordinated a nutrition lunch & learn seminar on Tuesday, March 6, 2018. The seminar was sponsored by Jim White Fitness & Nutrition Studios and Saladworks. Jim White Fitness & Nutrition Studios provided a wonderful speaker – Karen Bremenstul – Registered Dietitian. Karen educated the attendees on how to live a healthier life style through nutrition. In addition, Saladworks provided sample salads that were delicious.
Photos from The Cavalier Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony
Resort Advisory Committee (RAC) Presentation
Notes from City Manager Dave Hansen’s Department Leadership Team Meeting 2/28/18
Deputy City Manager (DCM) Tom Leahy opened the meeting with a discussion of sea level rise and the impacts to Virginia Beach. The group was polled on their knowledge of sea level rise on the web site www.publicinput.com/2383 You are encouraged to take this survey yourself to determine your knowledge. This Public Input application is an enterprise solution and is available for departments to use. It was recently used for the Dome Site public survey. Do you know what the average elevation of Virginia Beach is?
David Bradley, Director of Management Services (the budget office) presented findings of the bi-annual Citizens’ Satisfaction Survey. This telephone survey polls 500 citizens of Virginia Beach once every two years. Compared to other cities nationally, the results were very favorable.
Survey Highlights:
- 94% of citizens very satisfied with living in Virginia Beach
- 2% overall satisfaction rating for value as a taxpayer
- 94% say Virginia Beach is a good place to live
- 7% of citizens use public beaches
- 8% reported City Employees are courteous (down 5.2% in two years)
Full survey results are on Beachnet: Survey Results
Dave stressed that we all need to be cheerleaders for the great thing the City does.
Warren Harris, Director of Economic Development, introduced Chris Lloyd, Sr. VP of McGuire Woods Consulting who presented the state of economic development. Chris helps businesses with public private partnerships and is a lobbyist in Richmond. He introduced the topic with a discussion about the disrupters in the economy like Lyft, Uber, Amazon, AirBnB and Pandora. He noted the demise of travel agents, insurance agents and stockbroker’s whose store fronts have become web based services. Virginia Beach added 2,508 new jobs last year, had $240M in investment and added 1.5 million new square feet of buildings. The public generally has a negative view of developers. They want more transparency, less backroom deals, less silos in government and to see returns on investment.
Dave presented results from City Council’s recent retreat. Each year the Council sequesters to discuss upcoming priorities for the City. The results can be found here on Beachnet: 2018 City Council Priorities
Note that on slide 4, Policy Agenda, that the Sports Center, Dome Site and Pier Place Development Agreements are top priorities. Of particular interest are the private investments associated with two of the projects. While the City may contribute $24 million (M) for a pier, private investors are slated to add another $250 M in surrounding projects. The Dome site may need $66 M and another $24 M for parking from the public, but it gains $250 M in private investment. Dave reminded everyone that in order to remain competitive as an east coast resort destination that we needed state of the art attractions.
Announcements from the group –
- Virginia Beach Human Services will be presenting a Mental Health Forum April 12 at VBCC. The goal being to provide a coordinated and holistic response to citizens in need of mental health services and their families.
- A new session of the City’s Mentoring program will begin soon. For information on applying to become a mentor or mentee, call 385-8807
- Police Chief Cervera said farewell to a 29.5 year veteran of the force who is retiring. He was thanked for his service.
When you’re talking to Bryan about NTTW
Popular Reality Series Show ‘The Bachelor’ Creates a Global Buzz about Virginia Beach
With a viewer base of 6.4 million, it’s no wonder that traffic to the city’s tourism website experienced a huge surge following Monday night’s showing of “The Bachelor” featuring a contestant from our coastal city. The show’s crew was in town this past November to film bachelorette Lauren Burnham of Virginia Beach and this season’s bachelor, auto racer Arie Luyendyk, Jr. In Monday night’s episode, the couple visited Virginia Beach so Luyendyk could meet Burnham’s family. They were filmed enjoying horseback riding on the beach, climbing the lighthouse and having dinner.
Using Google Trends, we are able to measure interest in a particular topic across Google search in real time. The visuals below represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart worldwide for the chosen timeframe. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the search term during the chosen timeframe, while a value of 50 means the term is half as popular as the peak.
So how did people react to seeing Virginia Beach on “The Bachelor?” As you can see from the following graphs, from Feb. 15 – Feb. 20 interest in the search term “Virginia Beach” peaked on February 19 during the airing of the show. Likewise, if you look at the data on the day of airing, you can see interest in the search term “Virginia Beach” peaking around 9:16 pm and then spiking slightly again three hours later when the show aired on the West Coast. Not only did the destination see an increase in search interest, but looking at “Virginia Beach horseback riding” as a search term we can clearly see the positive effects of being featured on a show with viewership like that of “The Bachelor.”
