For Beckie Nix, the most important fact about the new daily train from Lynchburg to Washington, D.C., is the fact that it comes back.
“We like to (call it) the new Amtrak service from D.C. to Lynchburg,” said Nix, tourism director of the Lynchburg Regional Convention and Visitors Bureau.
This year she wants to use that train to get more people to travel to Central Virginia and spend more money at local hotels, restaurants and stores.
Wednesday morning, Nix explained the local tourism program’s travel marketing plans for 2010 to a crowd of about 50 people representing local hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions and governments.
Tourism is important to the communities because it brings new money into the local economy — $139 million in 2008, Nix said.
To attract new visitors via the train, the regional tourism program plans to continue and intensify advertising efforts in the Washington area this year. That is an important market for people who could visit Lynchburg, and it also is a way to get exposure to international tourists, Nix said.
In April the region will participate in a Virginia Tourism Corporation advertising blitz in D.C. metro stations. Also, Nix has worked with tourism organizations in other cities with stops on the Amtrak line to develop cooperative offerings for visitors.
Nix also hopes to install an interactive kiosk for visitors arriving on the train. “(For) visitors coming in to Kemper Street Station, it’s kind of difficult to know where you’re at and how to find things,” she said. The kiosk would change that by giving users information about local attractions and letting them plan and print custom itineraries.
“Hopefully one of the side effects of giving them more information is that they will … stay longer,” Nix said.
A similar kiosk was installed at Lynchburg Regional Airport in 2009. Nix does not have an official count of how much it is used, but it has used a lot of paper. “There’s a lot of things being printed there,” she said.
Local tourism officials also are preparing for the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, which begins in 2011. An expanded Civil War Chaplains museum will open on the Liberty University campus later this month.
Nix said Liberty University’s Snowflex ski slope, which opened in August and attracted a large amount of media attention, continues to be a great asset for the region.
“Our lodging community has participated with us in making Snowflex packages, and they’re being used,” Nix said. “I’ve talked to people as far away as Florida and even Canada who came here specifically for Snowflex.”
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