Norfolk built it, but they didn’t come. In recent years the number of overnight visitors has declined. In 1999, hotel room bookings dropped 4 percent and occupancy numbers for 2000 — down 30 percent through October — are expected to be worse. In January the Rainforest Cafe closed. The trend frustrates Norfolk native Arthur Diamonstein, chairman of the city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau. "It’s really been a grand renaissance," he says, but "you’ve got to make known what you have, and you’ve got to sell your assets to the world."

Spend and sell. That mantra is becoming a hopeful prayer as convention and tourism planners across the Old Dominion try to draw visitors to the state’s natural beauty, central location, and unique historical spots. However, it’s easier said than done. From Old Town in Alexandria to the banks of the Elizabeth River in Tidewater, planners must overcome challenges such as building new projects in questionable inner-city neighborhoods or areas far from heavily traveled roads. They have to find funds to build attractions that actually can draw people from beyond their region or the state. If too many nearby localities put up too many projects, the local market may become saturated, hurting them all. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, after projects are erected, they must sustain clever marketing programs to create and keep public interest.

The battleship Wisconsin graces Norfolk's waterfront as a tourist attraction.

In Norfolk, for instance, the spate of big projects over the past decade wasn’t enough by itself. Diamonstein says he’s confident that Tony DiFilippo, the new director of the Norfolk Convention and Visitors Bureau, can get bookings back on track. But both men add a cautionary note that other Virginia localities now undergoing a similar construction craze should heed: Don’t bet on buildings alone.

Given the current volume of capital projects around the state, it’s a lesson many localities may learn the hard way, even in Diamonstein and DiFilippo’s Hampton Roads. The city of Suffolk, for example, has approved financing for a $21 million riverfront hotel and conference center despite Norfolk’s woes and a plethora of projects in the region. Suffolk’s Hilton Garden Inn, expected to open in September 2002, will boast a marina, boardwalk, and space for restaurants, shops, and galleries.

The project comes on the heels of Portsmouth’s $48 million Renaissance Portsmouth Hotel and Waterfront Conference Center, which opened in January. This year Portsmouth also expects to unveil a 6,000-seat outdoor performing arts theater and park. Not to be outdone, Virginia Beach leaders are contemplating a $500 million package of infrastructure improvements, including an enlarged convention center and marine science museum and a new entertainment complex.

Muzzo Uysal, professor of hospitality and tourism management at Virginia Tech, wonders if the building boom is putting the cart before the horse. Visitors are drawn by attractions, not accommodations, he says, and it’s not clear that the conventions and meetings market can support significant expansion of Virginia’s facilities, at least in the near term. "You need to do more than add a few hundred rooms," he says. "You need to have a major attractor or class of attractors. You really need to put the package together."

It’s not clear that Virginia’s stock of attractions is keeping pace with the new hospitality facilities. Facilities large and small are emerging, from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum’s $238 million annex at Dulles International Airport to the $20 million Museum of the Shenandoah Valley in Winchester. Even state government is getting into the act with expanded, high-tech visitor centers along Virginia’s interstates that will offer traffic and weather updates as well as hotel and golf tee-time reservation systems. Trouble is, the new museums aren’t located anywhere near where the new meeting and hotel capacity is being added. Elsewhere, projects are running into opposition from residents over tax and financing issues. Virginia Beach’s plan to add a dolphin tank to the Virginia Marine Science Museum, for example, has aroused the ire of local animal rights activists.

Richmond faces a tremendous challenge as it approaches the completion of its $162 million convention center expansion in January 2003. While city leaders have high hopes for the new Richmond Centre, they also worry about the need for more attractions and accommodations within walking distance and the fact that the facility sits in the midst of a blighted retail corridor. "The convention center will not be successful unless we’re able to improve the Broad Street environment and add more hotel rooms downtown," says Jack Berry, executive director of Richmond Renaissance, a downtown-revival group. He and others estimate at least 1,000 more rooms are needed. "So much is going well downtown … but Broad Street is a disaster, and I think city government and the business community recognize that the center of downtown must be redeveloped."

Richmond Centre

Key to the effort is a proposed performing arts complex with a price tag of between $70 million and $100 million. Some wonder where cash-strapped Richmond will get the money, but the head of the Metropolitan Richmond Convention and Visitors Bureau, also named Jack Berry, is confident: "With all of the infrastructure being poured into downtown, it’s a matter of when, not if," he says.

Hampton Roads and Richmond aren’t alone. Major projects are cropping up all over Virginia — Roanoke, for example, is in the midst of a $5 million renovation of its key hotel and conference center — and projects aren’t limited to convention facilities.

While the rest of the state builds, Norfolk now finds itself in a selling mode. DiFilippo, who became director of the Norfolk Convention and Visitors Bureau in February, has been out touting that his city can host meetings for a third of the cost of competitors such as Charleston. He also hypes the city’s cultural and military history assets, including the recent arrival of the battleship Wisconsin, and its growing cruise ship industry. But DiFilippo knows he’s got his work cut out for him — that just because Norfolk built it, it doesn’t mean they’ll come. "In our focus groups, the general perception remains ‘an old Navy town,’" he says. "People have to know you’ve built it."

 Return to Virginia Business - April 2001