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Internet Travel Monitor - Marketing & Research
January 9, 2008
Buckhead Group Joins GA 400 Tourism Campaign
ATLANTA, GA – Buckhead is adding its prestige to the Ga. 400 tourism marketing campaign.
The Buckhead Coalition has announced it will be joining the Hospitality Highway Coalition.
"Buckhead is like Atlanta's second downtown," said Sam Massell, a former Atlanta mayor and the coalition's president. "So it's very important to the economy of Buckhead that our hospitality is represented with the other [Ga.] 400 corridor communities."
When Roswell and Alpharetta tourism officials conceived the plan to designate Ga. 400 as "Georgia's Hospitality Highway" three years ago, the move opened up state funding to market tourism in the cities along the toll way.
The current six member communities, from Sandy Springs to Dahlonega, created a unified advertising campaign to attract would-be visitors. Each town is marked by a green Hospitality Highway sign at the exits.
Now, Buckhead business leaders want to get in on the act.
"As we've gotten publicity and gotten signs up, Buckhead called us and asked to join," said Dotty Etris, Roswell's convention and visitors bureau president and one of the Hospitality Highway coalition founders.
And what an addition the upscale community will bring to the Hospitality Highway's inventory of tourist attractions.
Massell said the more than 5,000 hotel rooms, including five luxury hotels, nearly 1,400 retail stores, more than 200 restaurants and 60 art galleries will help draw travelers to other offerings along the corridor.
"Forty percent of our retail sales comes from more than 100 miles away," he said. "When visitors come here, we're a source of info for everywhere they want to go outside of Buckhead."
Etris said it will be good for all the communities the toll way touches.
"Buckhead will be a real asset to us," she said. "The exciting thing is that this program crosses two of the state travel regions ... from metro to mountains."
Aside from contributing the annual $5,000 membership fee and meeting with the other Hospitality Highway members in January, what's the next step for Buckhead tourism officials?
"Get over the embarrassment of the oversight that we were left out in the beginning," Massell said.
Copyright 2008 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. All rights
reserved. From http://www.ajc.com. By Marcus K. Garner.
To view the Internet Travel Monitor Archive, click http://www.tripinfo.com/ITM/index.html.
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