- State gardens to form trail
- BBC film crew blown away by Cheaha State Park’s beauty
- US Gulf State GeoTourism project films in Alabama
- Food Network puts spotlight on Mobile Sunday in ‘The Great Food Truck Race’
- Alabama Journey Proud on APT
- David Hood, the Swampers bassist, talks ‘Muscle Shoals’ film
- Head of the International Travel Writers Alliance on tour in Alabama
- Australian journalist visits Alabama
- International media travel to Prattville for Yokohama Tire LPGA Classic
- Mobile has new blog site
- Trail of Tears commemoration at Lake Guntersville State Park
- Successful sales mission to receptive tour operators
- Marshall County tourism office receives outstanding website award
- Gulf Shores adds overlook to Alabama 59 sidewalk project
- Main Street Music Festival receives Event of the Year award
- Fitzgerald: famous novelist made living with magazines
- Geneva State Forest WMA expands acreage
- Coming soon: Alabama Tourism Workshops
- Alabama Restaurant Week webpage saw more than 138,000 page views
- Alabama Tourism Department (ATD) upcoming events
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State gardens to form trail
Six public gardens will form an Alabama Garden Trail that will be inaugurated next March, state tourism director Lee Sentell announced today at an association of national journalists.
Bellingrath Gardens and Home in Theodore, Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Dothan Area Botanical Gardens, Huntsville Botanical Garden and Jasmine Hill Gardens and Outdoor Museum in Wetumpka, and Mobile Botanical Gardens will be featured in a brochure and website launched by the Alabama Tourism Department next spring, he said.
The agency featured public gardens in 2004 during The Year of Alabama Gardens, the first of the agency’s award-winning annual theme campaigns.
“Visitors often refer to Alabama as a beautiful state and our public gardens are among the best examples we offer,” said the director.
The trail will highlight special events, such as holiday light tours and spring events, he added.
BBC film crew blown away by Cheaha State Park’s beauty
A film crew from the BBC wrapped up their work in Alabama for a TV series called Songs of the American South this month. In reviewing the footage shot at Cheaha State Park, a member of the crew emailed local and state tourism representatives to say, “We had a fantastic time at Cheaha State Park, thank you so much for being so accommodating and helpful. It was such a lovely way to spend a day’s filming, we were all blown away by the beautiful views and the footage looks stunning.”
A crew of 5 with two handheld cameras and a TV presenter was at the park for five hours. Besides the mountain views of Cheaha, the TV project will feature, in part, Muscle Shoals.
The BBC will air their landmark three-part documentary series on Saturday evenings on BBC TWO in January 2015. This is an ideal time for Alabama Tourism efforts as the dreary English winter is a time when people longing for better conditions often book their next vacation.
For more information on the Alabama Tourism Department’s efforts to promote the state as a tourism destination to the UK market, contact grey.brennan@tourism.alabama.gov or della.tully@btinternet.com.
US Gulf State GeoTourism project films in Alabama
A camera crew and on-camera talent traveled across Alabama last week videotaping stories as part of a promotional campaign approved by a four-state regional geotourism council made up of representatives from Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana.
On Sept. 16, the video crew went to Fairhope to highlight dining, retail and culture in a small Alabama town and then to Montgomery to feature the Alley Entertainment District for a segment on historically significant music locations. The following day the crew visited the Little River Canyon National Preserve in Fort Payne for a segment on outstanding nature activities at National Parks.
On upcoming trips, the crew will visit the Hank Williams Museum in Montgomery, FAME studios in Muscle Shoals and the Bartram Canoe Trail in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta.
When completed, the Southern Journeys features will be posted to youtube and www.usgulfcoaststatesgeotourism.com. The videos will also be part of the U.S. Gulf Coast States Geotourism’s social media campaigns and featured on www.VisitSouth.com, an online guide to southern travel from Compass Media.
U.S. Gulf Coast States is one of several National Geographic geotourism websites and includes more than 100 points of interest in Alabama.
For more information on this project, contact grey.brennan@tourism.alabama.gov
To have your location listed on the U.S. Gulf Coast States Geotourism website, apply at: http://www.usgulfcoaststatesgeotourism.com/participate.php.
Food Network puts spotlight on Mobile Sunday in ‘The Great Food Truck Race’
By Lawrence Specker, AL.com, Sept. 21
How did a popular Food Network reality show fare in the Port City? To find out, tune in Sunday night as “The Great Food Truck Race” hits Mobile.
The show follows a competition between eight food trucks as they meet a variety of challenges on the way from Santa Barbara, Calif., to Key West, Fla. This season’s stops have included Tucson, Austin, Oklahoma City, St. Louis and Mobile. The video below features scenes from St. Louis, the stop that preceded Mobile.
By the time the show reached Mobile in late May, only three trucks remained in the running, and at the end of Sunday’s episode one of them was eliminated in an announcement made on the deck of the USS Alabama. Ultimately, the winning team gets to keep a brand-new food truck and $50,000 to start a business with it.
Host Tyler Florence later described the visit to Mobile as a highlight of the season, thanks to local interest in the trucks. Titled “Shrimpin’ Ain’t Easy,” the episode challenges the teams to use local seafood, and to come up with some brunch dishes.
“It was one of our most exciting stops,” Florence said. “I think it’s going to edit out really, really well,” he said. “Amazing turnout, everybody supported the show, and I think Mobile’s going to look like a million bucks. A few million, actually.” (Click here to read the full interview with Florence.)
The episode also features an appearance by coastal Alabama restaurateur Pete Blohme, owner of Panini Pete’s in Fairhope. It premiered Sept. 21, and repeats will air at 4 p.m. on Sat., Sept. 27, and 5 p.m. Sun., Sept. 28, according to www.foodnetwork.com.
To read the entire article, go to: http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2014/09/food_network_puts_spotlight_on.html
Alabama Journey Proud on APT
Journey Proud is Alabama Public Television’s new documentary series highlighting the people, customs, and traditions of Alabama. Hosted by Joey Brackner, Director of the Alabama Center for Traditional Culture, Journey Proud canvases the state documenting Alabama’s diverse cultural heritage.
The on-air schedule for Journey Proud Seasons 1 & 2 is as follows:
Re-airing of season 1:
Sundays, Sept. 26-Nov. 23 at 12:30 pm
Season 2:
Premiere on Oct. 26 at 6:00 & 6:30 p.m.
These two episodes will re-air at 9:00 p.m. & 9:30 p.m. Oct. 27
Premiere of episodes 3 & 4 on Nov. 16
These two episodes will re-air at 10:00 p.m. & 10:30 p.m. on Nov. 17
To view the website for Journey Proud, go to: http://www.aptv.org/series/1915/Journey-Proud
David Hood, the Swampers bassist, talks ‘Muscle Shoals’ film
By Matt Wake, AL.com, Sept. 17
“When you’re standing outside of a room where music’s playing you hear the bass first,” David Hood says. “And that’s thrilling to me. That’s what I always liked. When people ask what I go for on a bass line, I try to do something that you’ll recognize what it is, standing outside the room.”
Of course, Hood figured out how to do that long ago. He’s the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (aka The Swampers) studio ace responsible for indelible, singable bass lines such as those on The Staple Singers’ gospel-soul jam “I’ll Take You There,” Bob Seger’s rock ballad “Mainstreet,” Paul Simon’s strummy hit “Loves Me Like A Rock” and Jimmy Cliff’s reggae-flecked “Sitting In Limbo.”
“Muscle Shoals” chronicles the legendary music created at Alabama recording studios FAME and Muscle Shoals Sound, by artists ranging from Aretha Franklin to The Rolling Stones. The documentary includes interviews with stars including Franklin, Mick Jagger and Alicia Keys. But the storyline pivots on FAME owner/record producer Rick Hall and the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, who left FAME to start their own Muscle Shoals Sound Studios, much to Hall’s chagrin.
The “Muscle Shoals” screening is being held in advance of Boom Days, a free live music festival featuring more than 30 acts on four stages to be held in Ft. Payne Sept. 20.
For more information, go to: boomdays.org.
Head of the International Travel Writers Alliance on tour in Alabama
Ashley Gibbins, Chief Executive of the International Travel Writers Alliance is in Alabama for almost two weeks to research the state’s tourism destinations. The Alliance, based in the UK, is the world’s largest association of professional travel writers, editors, broadcasters and photographers. The alliance provides 9,050 travel journalists with key tourism information.
Gibbins is joined on the Alabama trip by photographer Ann Mealor. Both Gibbins and Mealor supply information for AllWays traveller an online travel site that provides independent travelers with information from travel experts.
Gibbins and Mealor will visit Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile, Gulf Shores, Huntsville, Muscle Shoals, Florence and Fort Payne on their journey across the state that started on Sept. 16, and will end Oct. 1.
Grey Brennan and Della Tully met with Gibbins at WTM London, a tourism trade show, where he was invited to visit Alabama.
For more information on the Alabama Tourism Department’s efforts to promote the state as a tourism destination to the UK market, contact grey.brennan@tourism.alabama.gov or della.tully@btinternet.com.
Australian journalist visits Alabama
Australia-based writer and journalist Mark Juddery spent three days in Alabama last week gathering information for travel stories. Juddery spent time with Alabama Tourism Director Lee Sentell visiting important tourism sites in Birmingham. Among the sites visited were Vulcan Museum and Park, Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. He also visited The Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville and music sites in Muscle Shoals.
Juddery writes for several publications including The Age, Melbourne’s daily newspaper established in 1854 and online giant The Huffington Post, which has more than one billion page views monthly.
Juddery and Sentell first met at a Travel South Australian Sales Mission where Sentell invited Juddery to visit. His visit was assisted by Brand USA and Travel South.
International media travel to Prattville for Yokohama Tire LPGA Classic
By Bethany Davis, WSFA-TV, Sept. 19
The Yokohama Tire LPGA Classic was a rare opportunity for the whole world to get a glimpse of Prattville.
The players in the tournament represented 22 different countries. The tournament was broadcast around the globe with the help of our foreign counterparts.
There were about 100 members of the media from all over the world at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail at Capitol Hill for the tournament. The ones who traveled the farthest were from Japan.
“We are a country of a lot of people playing golf, we have a lot of golf courses, it’s pretty popular leisure for all the people, we are pretty much a golf country,” said freelance reporter Reiko Takekawa with Kyodo News. “This is a news agency like AP, we do cover the tournament, PGA tour, LPGA tour, whatever the Japanese players are in.”
Japan had five players in this tournament, and she’s keeping close tabs on every one of them. In Japan, golfers are superstars.
“People in Japan want to know how the Japanese players are doing, and look at all the quotes every single day,” Takekawa said. “Especially for the golf, nowadays the PGA tour is pretty popular, and the LPGA tour because Ai Miyazato was pretty famous in Japan, and she won nine times here, and that’s pretty good, and then Mika Miyazato did it in contention for the majors, and we are so excited about that.”
Takekawa is a seasoned journalist. She’s covered a variety of sports all over the world for more than 15 years. The atmosphere here is a little different than other places.
“Unfortunately, we need more fan here, don’t you think. In Japan, the ladies tournament is more popular than men’s, so we have more people come to watch the ladies’ tournament,” Takekawa said.
We asked Takekawa what she thinks about Alabama.
“Oh! I’ve been here quite a bit, the one down in Mobile, and the food is great! I love food here, food, yeah,” Takekawa said. “And the people are nice too.”
To see this item online, go to: http://www.wsfa.com/story/26581013/international-media-covering
Mobile has new blog site
The Mobile Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau has launched its newest initiative, a blog intended to be a first-hand experience of Mobile straight from the people who know it best, the locals.
Targeted to both visitors and locals, Mobile Bay Blog will feature various local guest bloggers and will always be tweaking, fine-tuning and adding great new content. Readers are interested in the latest information, such as upcoming/recent events, local tips, highlights of something unique to the destination, interviews, pictures, recipes, contests and that is exactly what they will get in the blog.
Mobile Bay Blog will tell the many great stories of the people, places and traditions that make Mobile so unique.
To access the blog, go to: Mobile Bay Blog
Trail of Tears commemoration at Lake Guntersville State Park
Lake Guntersville State Park is commemorating the 176th anniversary of the Trail of Tears, Sept. 27.
This free educational event will begin at 9:00 a.m. at the Trail of Tears area with a special commemoration by John Stanton, a member of the Alabama Trail of Tears Association.
The walk on the actual Trail of Tears area will begin at 10:00 a.m., as well as games such as stickball and chunky stones for children.
The Trail of Tears National Historic Trail encompasses over 800 miles of 14 land and water routes that begin in North Carolina and end in Oklahoma. Visitors to Alabama’s state and national parks are encouraged to bike, hike, and paddle the routes taken by the people from the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Choctaw, and Seminole nations when they were pressured in the 1830s to leave their homeland and settle elsewhere.
For more information, please contact the Lake Guntersville State Park at (256) 571-5445, visit www.alapark.com , or email amanda.glover@dcnr.alabama.gov.
Successful sales mission to receptive tour operators
Alabama Tourism part of meetings with receptive companies conducting more than $1 billion tourism business
The Alabama Tourism Department just completed a successful sales mission to key receptive tour operators in the Orlando, Florida area. These companies book hotel rooms in Alabama for tour operators from around the world.
Grey Brennan of the Alabama Tourism Department joined several other state tourism representatives on this Travel South USA organized sales mission.
During the mission, Brennan addressed key employees of targeted receptive companies Tourico Holidays and Hotel Beds USA as part of two one-hour presentations by the Travel South group.
Tourico Holidays is a high-volume global receptive company with revenues of more than $1 billion dollars with a goal of reaching $2 billion in the next two years. Hotel Beds is equally as large, with contracts with 50,000 hotels in 147 countries selling 14 million room nights a year.
In addition to the two formal presentations, the Travel South group held two other events in Orlando. At those events, Brennan met with representatives of Allied T Pro, American Tours International, City Tours, Japan American Tours, JTB International, Meeting Point North America, Miki Travel, New Creative Tours, North American Destinations, and TUI Specialist Holiday Group, which comprises Jetsave, Hayes & Jarvis and Travelmood.
Joining Alabama on the Sept. 15-18, sales mission were representatives from the tourism offices of Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia as well as Liz Bittner and David Kemp with Travel South USA.
In total, Brennan and the Travel South group met with 29 employees from the 12 receptive companies.
For more on the Alabama Tourism Departments efforts to recruit business from international receptive companies contact grey.brennan@tourism.alabama.gov
Tourism office receives outstanding website award
The Marshall County Convention and Visitors Bureau website received an “Outstanding Website” award in the 2014 Web Marketing Association’s WebAwards, an international competition designed to judge top websites. More than 1,500 websites in 96 industry categories from 40 different countries were submitted.
“This is fantastic news,” said Katy Norton, President, Marshall County CVB. “We are so proud of Marshall County, and enjoy promoting it. That is obvious in this website. Red Sage Communications, Inc. helped us bring our vision for Marshall County to the Internet.”
The Marshall County Convention and Visitors Bureau website, www.marshallcountycvb.com, features a project portfolio, blog, image rotator banner, and social media timeline.
Gulf Shores adds overlook to Alabama 59 sidewalk project
By John Mullen, GulfCoastNewsToday.com, Sept. 19
Dan Bond, recently hired by the City of Gulf Shores as an environmental grants coordinator, has been busy getting a new amenity for the city’s Alabama 59 sidewalk project.
Gulf Shores has received numerous matching grants from the state and other agencies in the past few years to upgrade sidewalks and walking paths around town. One of those includes improvements and additions to those along Alabama 59 from the beach to County Road 4.
Bond went to work pouring over those projects when he came on board this summer and found another grant to enhance part of the Alabama 59 project.
“We are going to construct an overlook structure on the west side of Alabama 59, just south of 12th Street up close to Little Lagoon,” Bond told the City Council in a work session on Sept. 8. “This will enhance the sidewalk improvement going on now, provide a place, a rest stop for pedestrians to get a sip of water and some shade and a nice view of the lagoon as they pass.”
The addition to the project will cost about $91,000, Bond said, with the city having to pay about half that amount.
“It will be a match that we requested from the Land and Water Conservation Fund and 50 percent is the amount requested,” Bond said. “The highway 59 sidewalk project was budgeted for $325,500. These funds will also cover the matching cost of the grant if awarded.”
City Administrator Steve Griffith said the application has already been sent in prior to getting the council’s OK because the deadline to apply was fast approaching.
“We apologize for bringing this to you after the time that it needed to be turned in but Dan presented this opportunity to the mayor and I and we thought we’d turn it in and ask for the council’s endorsement of this and if you so choose, we will have this follow our application that we’ve sent in already,” Griffin said. “Thanks to Dan for already finding his first grant opportunity.”
Public Works Director Mark Acreman said the city had planned to look at adding amenities to the project from its inception and Bond stepped into his new role to help find ways to get those amenities implemented.
“This is part of what we were looking to for aesthetics to the base project,” Acreman said. “It’s part of the master plan. Dan took part of the master plan and going ahead and looking for grant money to fund we want to include for our sidewalk project.”
City Planner Andy Bauer announced in October the city received a grant through the Alabama Department of Transportation to construct new sidewalks along Alabama 59 from Windmill Ridge on the south end to Fort Morgan Road.
“We recently received a $400,000 grant from the Alabama Department of Transportation, Transportation Alternatives Program,” Bauer said. “The City will match the grant with $159,460. The grant will replace the existing five-foot wide sidewalks and construct new eight-foot wide sidewalks along the east and west sides of Highway 59.”
Acreman said the city received a separate grant for work on the same stretch of road, but also extending south to the beach.
“We’ve also received a $150,000 grant to upgrade our sidewalks from Fort Morgan all the way down to Highway 182 to make sure they are current ADA compliant,” Acreman said. “We have some cross slopes and some ramps out that cross some streets and we’ll be able to address that and piggyback that with the grant Andy got.”
The total amount of the project is about $190,000 with the city contributing more than $38,000 plus the design fees.
Another grant Bauer is working on would improve the current trail/sidewalk that extends west on Fort Morgan Road from Alabama 59.
“The Fort Morgan pathway grant would expand the pathway from five feet to 10 feet from Highway 59 to West Fairway,” Bauer said. “We made it through the first review process. Now this has been forwarded to the second and final review. Hopefully we’ll know something before the end of the year.”
This grant is through the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs Recreational Trail Program and is for $100,000. The city could have to put up $40,000 in matching funds to get the grant.
Lastly, the city is receiving state funding to replace a bridge on West Fourth Street with money through the Alabama Transportation Rehabilitation and Improvement Program. The state department of transportation will provide $160,000 for the project and Gulf Shores will contribute $40,000 plus design fees.
“We’ve gotten a slew of grants from DOT and we really appreciate their cooperation,” Acreman said. “They’ve been a great partner on all these projects.”
http://www.gulfcoastnewstoday.com/area_news/article_33e57df8-3f5a-11e4-9d8f-2ba8ef8246ed.html
Main Street Music Festival receives Event of the Year award
The Alabama Mountain Lakes Tourist Association named Albertville’s Main Street Music Festival “Event of the Year” at their 2013-2014 Annual Meeting and PEAK Awards luncheon in Decatur recently. PEAK Awards honor individuals and organizations that have had a major impact on tourism in North Alabama.
With an average of 30,000 attendees each year, the festival continues to attract large name artists and musicians from across the country to perform, as well as providing a fun atmosphere for all ages to enjoy the many vendors and activities. The fact that it has been kept a free concert for attendees for many years from the help of sponsors and donations, as well as attracting growth and revitalization for downtown businesses and restaurants, and being a successfully growing event for locals and tourists alike, sets it apart as a worthy recipient.
“On behalf of the Steering Committee, we are very honored and thankful for this award because it validates our belief that Main Street Music Festival is truly a tourist attraction for the City and it acknowledges the many contributions of our volunteers and sponsors,” said Melody Whitten, event organizer of Main Street Music Festival.
Fitzgerald: famous novelist made living with magazines
By Teri Greene, Montgomery Advertiser, Sept. 21
By the 1930s, F. Scott Fitzgerald had become a famous writer, riding the waves of success from his first two novels. But at the time, readers didn’t love him for his long works.
“I think one of the greatest ironies of Scott Fitzgerald is that he was not known as a popular novelist,” said Willie Thompson, director of the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum. “‘Gatsby’ was a flop. ‘Tender is the Night’ was a flop. He was known as a short story writer.”
The magazines that showcased those stories have faded away with time, seldom seen even by his most avid fans.
The collection, the first of its kind to be put on display, was put together by Shawn Sudia-Skehan, a major museum benefactor. Sudia-Skehan, who lives in Atlanta, obtained a reference of Fitzgerald’s works and then purchased the individual magazines through online auctions.
“She began the painstaking process of putting this collection back together,” Thompson said. “It is the only one that exists in the world.”
The entire collection of more than 30 magazines will only be on display in total for the four-hour event. After that, seven Esquire magazines will be on a permanent, rotating exhibition in the museum’s display cases.
The Saturday Evening Post published many of his early short stories, but they also appeared in Collier’s, which in 1922published his “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”
By the early ’30s the men’s magazine Esquire became Fitzgerald’s main outlet. That was the period the Fitzgeralds briefly spent living in Zelda’s hometown of Montgomery.
Discussing the lack of tangible items left behind by the couple, Sudia-Skehan and Thompson reached the same conclusion: Scott and Zelda were vagabonds.
They left their accomplishments — Scott’s writings, Zelda’s visual art and her own writing — but, outside the Fitzgerald Museum, there is a dearth of artifacts. There are also the couple’s three surviving grandchildren, who never met their famous grandparents, and are not likely to part with the few belongings they own, Thompson said. That makes tangible pieces of Scott and Zelda’s lives, like this collection of magazines, even rarer.
An exhibition of the complete collection of Esquire magazines that featured F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories in the 1930s will be displayed Wed., Sept. 24, 10 a.m.-2 p.m., with a noon 118th birthday commemoration ceremony at the Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum, 919 Felder Ave., Montgomery.
The event is open to the public and free of charge.
For more information, call 334-264-4222, or visit www.fitzgeraldmuseum.net
To read the entire article, go to: http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/life/2014/09/21/fitzgerald-famous-novelist-made-living-magazines/15919841/
Birthday bash for Joe Wheeler
DecaturDaily.com, Sept. 6
Pond Spring celebrated Gen. Joe Wheeler’s 178th birthday Saturday.
In addition to re-enactors firing Civil War-era cannons the Alabama Historical Commission gave tours of the general’s historic home and buildings that were constructed shortly after Alabama gained statehood, site director Kara Long said.
Re-enactors on site included Dave Stevens who plays a washboard as he performs with the band Lost Cause on the porch of the Joe Wheeler Home.
To read this article online, go to: http://www.decaturdaily.com/news/article_0b27c7c8-363a-11e4-aaf2-001a4bcf6878.html
Geneva State Forest WMA expands acreage
The Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division (WFF) has purchased 3,649 acres that will be added to the state’s Wildlife Management Area (WMA) system in south Alabama. The land is located in Covington County and will become part of the Geneva State Forest WMA. The WMA addition will be managed for wildlife and will be open to hunting during the upcoming seasons.
The land included in this WMA addition was previously part of the Geneva State Forest WMA before being managed by a private land management company. With this purchase, the additional acreage has become a permanent part of Alabama’s WMA system. Hunting opportunities include seasons for a variety of small game, turkey and white-tailed deer.
In addition to being managed for game animals, the Geneva State Forest WMA is home to threatened and endangered species such as the Eastern indigo snake, red-cockaded woodpecker and gopher tortoise. The area is also a magnet for migrating birds.
Hunters will need a hunting license and a WMA permit to hunt within the WMA. Hunting licenses can be purchased online at outdooralabama.com or at various outdoors retailers throughout the state. WMA permits can be downloaded for free from the hunting section of outdooralabama.com. For more information about hunting in the Geneva State Forest WMA, contact the WFF District 4 office at 334-347-9467.
Additional recreational activities are available within the Geneva State Forest including hiking, fishing, primitive camping and horseback riding. For more information about the Geneva State Forest, visit forestry.alabama.gov.
Coming soon: Alabama Tourism Workshops
The Alabama Tourism Department will host two tourism workshops for new tourism industry members, event organizers and anyone interested in enhancing tourism in their area. These workshops, which are free of charge, will be held Oct. 7, in the Alabama Center for Commerce, 7th floor auditorium, 401 Adams Avenue, Montgomery; and Oct. 9, at the McWane Science Center in Birmingham. Come learn about the many programs and services the Alabama Tourism Department offers.
For registration information, contact Rosemary Judkins at 334-242-4493 or e-mail: Rosemary.Judkins@Tourism.Alabama.Gov.
Alabama Restaurant Week webpage saw more than 138,000 page views
There were more than 18,000 sessions on www.AlabamaRestaurantWeek.com during the month of August during which time visitors viewed 138,223 webpages. Those are the numbers from Google Analytics in a review of website activity for the third annual Alabama Tourism Department’s Alabama Restaurant Week promotion that was held last month.
Two hundred thirty-two restaurants in Alabama participated in the campaign and offered special fix-priced meals during a 10-day period between Aug. 15 and 24. The website listed the restaurants and their special meals.
The restaurants were located in 55 Alabama cities and towns. Peak viewership to the website were Aug. 1, and again on the first day of the promotion, Aug. 15.
More than 75% of the website visitors were new to the site.
For more information, contact Grey Brennan at grey.brennan@tourism.alabama.gov
Alabama Tourism Department (ATD) upcoming events
Oct. 7 Tourism Workshop, Center for Commerce, Montgomery
Oct. 9 Tourism Workshop, McWane Science Center, Birmingham
Nov. 3 – 6 World Travel Market, London, England
Dec. 2 – 4 Travel South International Showcase, New Orleans
Dec. 5 – 8 Travel South International Super FAM to Alabama
Tourism Tuesdays is a free electronic newsletter produced by the Alabama Tourism Department. It contains news about the state tourism department and the Alabama tourism industry.
The newsletter can also be accessed online by going to: www.tourism.alabama.gov
To subscribe to the weekly Alabama Tourism News, please contact Peggy Collins at: peggy.collins@tourism.alabama.gov
Alabama Tourism Department