Some amount of our tax dollars are going to a Virginia Tech-Virginia Tourism rollout of a “Virginia is for Hokie Lovers” promotional campaign, which will accomplish, what exactly?
The release from Virginia Tech sent out today tells us that the campaign will “showcase Blacksburg as a tourism destination,” which, sure, but, pretty much for in-staters, right?
According to the release, that’s the thrust.
“The Virginia is for Hokie Lovers initiative encourages both visitors and residents of the Commonwealth to explore what Virginia Tech, Blacksburg and Montgomery County have to offer,” per the release.
Shocker, but there’s no way to get a breakdown of how much of the tourism industry, such as it is, beyond Virginia Tech Football, comes from out-of-state visitors – the data breaks things down for us as local travel and then people who have to drive 50 miles or more, which is pretty much everybody in Virginia outside of the Blacksburg bubble.
Not just with this one, but across the board, so much of what we have Virginia Tourism doing anymore is putting our tax dollars to the effort of getting people from one part of the state to visit another part of the state.
And, just saying it out loud, it’s about getting people from the part of the state with money, ahem, Northern Virginia, to travel to parts of the state without money, you know, the Shenandoah Valley, the New River Valley, Southwest Virginia.
Even louder: our tax dollars are being put to incentivizing people from the part of the state with money who vote Democrat to visit the parts of the state without money who hate the part of the state with money because they vote Democrat.
Does anybody else see the flaw in the reasoning behind this approach here but me?
On top of that, then, yes, again, referring back to the release from Virginia Tech, “(t)his marks the first university brand collaboration for the Virginia Tourism Corporation’s iconic Virginia is for Lovers slogan, which was introduced in the late 1960s.”
So, now, on top of wasting our tax dollars trying to lure hated NoVa Dems to spend their money among the good MAGAs down in the New River Valley, we’re putting our tax dollars toward promoting the fan base of one of our state universities at the expense of the others.
Virginia Tourism appears to have outlived its usefulness, if this is among its brighter ideas.
Update: Friday, 10:49 a.m. A representative of the Virginia Tech media relations office wrote to us this morning “to kindly request you remove this piece from your website” because the information in the release was sent out under a media embargo.
Full disclosure: I missed the note at the top of the release about the info being under an embargo.
Obviously, we’re not removing the piece, because the thrust of what we have to say here is a criticism of Virginia Tourism, for wasting our tax dollars on initiatives aimed at getting visitors from one part of Virginia to spend their dollars in locations in other parts of the state.
The PR folks at Tech have been persistent in their stance that we remove the article.
I’m noting that so that their bosses can know that they’re really, really working hard on this.
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Chris Graham
