Meeting of the minds

Inclusive narratives, a post-pandemic restaurant industry and artificial intelligence are just a few of the topics that will feature in this year’s VA1 Governor’s Tourism Summit, an annual gathering of tourism professionals from across the state and beyond.

Scheduled Nov. 13-15, the 2024 VA1 Governor’s Tourism Summit will take place at Hot Springs’ The Omni Homestead Resort, which officially reopened last fall after $150 million in renovations. Last year’s summit took place at the Greater Richmond Convention Center.

“It’s really just a chance for the entire industry, suppliers and vendors to come together for networking and sharing the most relevant ideas, technology and concepts for 2024, looking to 2025 and beyond,” says Rita McClenny, president and CEO of the Virginia Tourism Corp.

Attendees and around 60 listed guest speakers will get the opportunity to discuss such ideas during the three-day event. Organizers say they expect strong attendance this year — approximately 450 state tourism professionals and Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade Caren Merrick.

“Tourism has grown,” says Eric Terry, president of the Virginia Restaurant, Lodging & Travel Association. “Tourism is growing at a pretty good clip. We’re anticipating that growth to continue in the current year.”

Virginia’s visitor spending in 2023 reached a record high of $33.3 billion, an increase of nearly 10% from the year prior. The industry also supported 13,000 more jobs in 2023 — more than 224,000 jobs total — compared with 2022.

The summit will kick off Nov. 13 with networking events and a reception themed around the 20th anniversary of The Crooked Road, Southwest Virginia’s 333-mile driving trail connecting more than 60 venues related to traditional Appalachian old time and bluegrass music.

The day after is when the summit will commence its opening general session. Keynote speakers include Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of the National Restaurant Association’s research and knowledge group, and Hilina Ajakaiye, executive vice president of Meet Boston.

“Despite a host of challenges this year, restaurant industry sales nationwide will reach a record $1.1 trillion,” Riehle says. For the commonwealth of Virginia, he says, 2023 sales were well over $27 billion.

The pandemic shook up numerous in-person activities for much of 2020 and 2021, including eating out at restaurants. And these drastic adjustments for the consumer and the industry have fundamentally altered routines today, Riehle says.

“If you look at restaurant traffic today, across all meal periods, industry traffic is still down for on-site visits compared to pre-pandemic levels,” he explains. “Conversely, what the industry calls off-premises traffic — take-out, delivery, drive-through and curbside — for all three meal periods is up compared to what it was pre-pandemic.”

Almost three-quarters of all U.S. restaurant traffic today is off-premises, a sharp hike from 61% before the pandemic, according to Riehle.

Throughout the summit will be a number of “super sessions,” where presenters each cover a different aspect of the tourism industry. Diversity, equity and inclusion, as it relates to tourism marketing and hospitality, will be center stage at a couple of sessions.

According to the event description, OutCoast.com publisher and LGBTQ+ travel content creator Rachel Covello’s session aims to “[explore] the shift in tourism marketing from emphasizing destination aesthetics to prioritizing emotional and mental safety, particularly for minority groups.”

Although leisure travel recovered after the pandemic in 2021, group travel — defined as people traveling together for some organization, shared purpose or agenda — took a couple more years to rebound, says Dan Roberts, vice president of research and strategy for VTC.

“If you look at overall the recovery of the commonwealth going back to 2020, business and group [travel] have had the highest hill to climb,” he says.

Roberts will take part in three sessions during the summit about the hotel industry, group business, success metrics and the group and meetings market in Virginia.

Also on the agenda is artificial intelligence, a growing influence in tourism.

Nov. 15’s schedule will start with a general session, where Todd Brook, founder and CEO of digital marketing agency Envisionit, will speak about how to use AI tools to increase team efficiency and productivity.

The summit’s exhibit hall opens Nov. 14 and will feature myriad exhibitors from both in- and out-of-state, including Amtrak Virginia, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, Disney Advertising, LeisureMedia360, Tripadvisor and the Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission (VA250).

“It is an opportunity to update especially our tourism professionals from across the state on new things that are happening, things that are new to the industry as well as some statistical updates on what’s happening from a data point of view,” Terry says. 

Editor’s note: This story has been corrected from the print version to reflect that Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade Caren Merrick will be at the event, not Gov. Glenn Youngkin.