Virginia Wins Award for Marketing Wine Tourism

The Virginia Tourism Corporation (VTC) won the ESTO Mercury Award for Niche Marketing for wine tourism promotion. Virginia took home top honors for “Vintage Tweets” – a cutting-edge public relations effort that utilized social media to promote wine travel in Virginia. This was one of only 12 awards the U.S. Travel Association gives out to the top marketing initiatives in the country.

In congratulating the VTC, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell said, “Tourism is one of Virginia’s most powerful industries, generating billions in revenue for our economy. Our wine industry is a key part of what attracts visitors to this state. I am proud of the innovative efforts of our state tourism office to find new ways to market Virginia and keep tourism strong throughout the Commonwealth.”

The Virginia Tourism Corporation organized Vintage Tweets in September of 2009 in Arlington, Virginia to kick off October Virginia Wine Month. Vintage Tweets was the first ever Virginia wine tweetup. The state tourism agency used the social media network Twitter to target media, bloggers and consumers who are passionate about wine travel, live in and around Washington, D.C., and had significant number of Twitter followers. The Virginia Tourism Corporation used Twitter to invite 40 of those consumers to a wine reception, featuring six different wineries from across the state. The guests tweeted about their wine tastings and also took part in Virginia Wine Travel Twitter trivia. In total, Vintage Tweets was able to reach over 43,000 consumers in just 24 hours, providing key facts and travel ideas to potential visitors from across the country.

Read full story via  Clarke Daily News.

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Posted by admin on Aug 13 2010. Filed under Featured, Richmond News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.