Despite a shaky year, the Greenbrier Valley Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) has continued to promote the area to potential tourists and customers all over the country.
CVB Executive Director Kara Dense appeared before the Greenbrier County Commission on Tuesday, October 12, to give her annual report. To begin, she celebrated a milestone.
“We are very proud to be the destination marketing organization for Greenbrier County,” said Dense. “One of the things in our report is that we are celebrating our 20 year anniversary this year. Time flies when you’re having fun – it’s hard to believe our organization has been around that long. Of course, we’d probably have something more to celebrate if it hadn’t been for our friend COVID that’s still hanging around.”
The tourism industry has had a rough time over the past year and half, one of the largest impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Of course, probably one of our biggest challenges to date is figuring out how to deal with COVID and what it’s done to the industry,” Dense said. “Everything has truly been turned upside down. We have found ourselves very fortunate here in Greenbrier County because all of the national studies are showing [people] want to go to places with small towns, outdoor recreation, places that aren’t crowded, places that are safe, and we have all of that here in the Greenbrier Valley. We’ve really seen an influx in visitors. That’s been a blessing and created some issues.”
Employers finding workers and employees getting adequate compensation remains an issue for the industry writ large. Nationally, according to statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “employment in leisure and hospitality is down by 1.6 million jobs, or 9.4 percent,” since February of 2020. The same report also notes that the average weekly earnings from these jobs is $496.49 as of September 2021, a slight increase from $446.31 in September 2020.
This issue extends to the Greenbrier Valley.
“It’s not just with us, this is an issue all across the country in the hospitality industry. Restaurants and hotels are just struggling for workers. We started a conversation about a month … ago with Dr. Bonnie Copenhaver at New River Community and Technical College and her staff there. We’re going to be partnering with them to work with their program to make some enhancements to develop some training so that when we get people in the industry, they’re not just walking in cold onto the job. We also want to market the fact that these jobs are out there – they’re not all just low paying jobs. They might be entry level and places to start but they’re definitely careers in the hospitality industry. I’m an example of that. … We also know that not everyone is meant to go to a four year college, so we’ve got to make sure that that these opportunities in our industry are out there.”
Marketing during the pandemic was initially pointed at residents, calling on them to do their holiday shopping locally, rather than through online retailers. As vaccinations allowed for more mobility, the CVB expanded marketing back out.
“We did locally, then regionally, then back out to our drive markets. We’re really seeing some great success with that. We just completed a marketing program that I don’t have the final report on. … This marketing can actually track the people that we reached with our ads, … whether they came here, and the money they spent in the area. It’s pretty nifty if you think about it. … It’s not private information, it’s what people can opt out [of]. … It shows where our marketing dollars are going and if we’re spending them in the right way.”
Another issue is transportation. Dense explained that once visitors get into town through the Greenbrier Valley Airport, their choices on how to get around from there can be limited.
“We’ve got a huge transportation issue. We’ve had people that fly here but don’t really have a way to get around once they’re here. We’ve established a committee. Our board member Brian Belcher, who is the new airport director, is the chair of that.”
Dense, however, remained optimistic about the recovery, highlighting one huge positive the area had for increasing tourism.
“The freelance society of American travel writers came to our area and we partnered with the Fairfield Inn and The Greenbrier to host them. There were over 40 travel writers [here], these are people who, on their own dime, go out and do freelance articles for different magazines to talk about different destinations. It was a huge success.”
The resulting coverage, according to the report, resulted in articles in nine different publications, including the New York Times. Between these publications and other efforts of the CVB, 442 million people saw or read coverage of the Greenbrier Valley.
The CVB is even helping influence law – over the past few years, Dense has helped West Virginia lawmakers design new laws around AirBnB, online overnight and short term rentals.
“As of January 1, AirBnB, BRBO, and all of these other companies that handle the rentals of vacation homes are going to be required by West VIrginia law to collect the hotel/motel tax,” Dense said. “[AirBnB-type rentals] have grown tremendously. We’re going to be working to see that we get that money in. … We at the CVB, as is the county and the municipalities, are missing out on a lot of hotel/motel tax revenue just because they weren’t being forced to collect the tax. We were finally glad to get that legislation passed this past spring. … It’s not a tax on anyone that owns anything, it’s strictly a tax on the visitor.”
Now going on its 20th year, the organization started after the County Commission enacted a 3 percent hotel/motel tax, after receiving the support of then-president of The Greenbrier Ted Kleisner. Before the CVB was created, Kleisner called the Lewisburg CVB “one of the finest CVBs I have seen in my career.” That organization was then absorbed into the Greenbrier County Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Since then, the CVB has done several notable things for the industry in the Greenbrier Valley.
“We did some rebranding back in 2008 to valley instead of county because people don’t really visit counties, so we added valley to it – it’s made us much more recognizable,” Dense noted. “We opened up the visitor’s center here in downtown Lewisburg back in 2010. We made the Southeastern Tourism Society’s office of the year twice, … back in 2006 and again in 2017. We were responsible for Lewisburg’s campaign to become the coolest small town in America back in 2011. We worked really hard after the flood of 2016 to do some reach out to let people know we were still here.”
Commission President Lowell Rose thanked Dense and the team for their efforts and celebrated the county’s moving forward from several organizational clashes over the past few years, such as the debate over forming a second CVB specifically to expand air travel in the area spearheaded by former Greenbrier Valley Airport Director Stephen Snyder.
“One thing that I think is a big change over several years ago is the fact that the CVB and the airport and economic development, all these groups that are aligned, are working together,” Rose said. “That’s a good thing for everybody.”
To see the entire report, with the cover page omitted, see below:
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