Visit Alexandria‘s newest marketing campaign is tapping into the stories behind businesses, tourist attractions and unique personalities.
From now until June, the Unlock Your Story campaign will tell stories all over Alexandria, focusing on the city’s history, small attractions, and unique small businesses, artists and entrepreneurs. The promotion follows Visit Alexandria’s Best Kept Shh! campaign, which launched three years ago and positioned Alexandria as the region’s best kept secret.
Three Alexandria museums are participating in a new Virginia tourism campaign to commemorate the country’s 250th anniversary next year.
The new program, called the Virginia 250 Passport, includes Gadsby’s Tavern Museum, the Alexandria Black History Museum and the Alexandria History Museum at The Lyceum as part of a “passport” sweepstakes. The program encourages residents to visit various museums and historic sites throughout the commonwealth.
Alexandria’s tourism impact, economic trends, upcoming business openings and more will be unveiled later this month in Visit Alexandria‘s annual meeting.
Alexandria’s tourism bureau will hold its annual meeting at the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center (5000 Seminary Road) from 5 to 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 25. Tickets cost $40 for Visit Alexandria members and $95 for non-members.
There are only four days left to choose Alexandria in Condé Nast Traveler’s 2025 Readers’ Choice Awards survey.
Alexandria has been consistently ranked as one of the top five small cities in the country for the past six years. Last year, the city got third place nationwide. The voting deadline is Monday, June 30.
Running along the Alexandria waterfront with the Tall Ship Providence in the background (staff photo by James Cullum)[/caption]
Alexandria is welcoming a wave of new developments across the city, from waterfront dining to boutique retail and major upcoming events that promise to draw visitors from around the world.
Claire Mouledoux, Visit Alexandria's senior vice president of marketing and communications, presented the city's latest attractions during the "What's New 2025" event at Virginia Tech Innovation Campus in Potomac Yard on Tuesday.
Get your walking shoes on, because the Alexandria City Council voted Saturday to shut down the 200 block of King Street this holiday season, as well as next spring and summer.
The unanimous vote was made without discussion, and the closure will happen in two phases. The 200 block will first close from Nov. 22 to Jan. 6, and the second phase is from March 14 to Sept. 30.
For three years in a row, Alexandria has held onto its title as the third best small city, according to a reader survey in magazine Condé Nast Traveler.
This year’s Condé Nast Traveler Readers’ Choice Awards, announced today, saw Alexandria hold onto its third-place spot, just behind Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Charleston, South Carolina.
With visitation revenue at an all-time high, Alexandria’s tourism bureau forecasts an “ambitious” agenda for fiscal year 2025.
On Thursday, Visit Alexandria reported an 18% increase (to $941 million) in tourism spending in FY 2024. The city also saw $86 million in consumption tax revenues from sales, meals and lodging, a 6% increase. The largest consumption increase was in lodging, rising from $3 million during the pandemic to $15 million last year.
Patricia Washington has spent the last decade building Visit Alexandria into a major force for tourism and will be honored as The Chamber ALX’s Business Leader of the Year.
The Chamber ALX announced that recently retired President and CEO of Visit Alexandria Patricia Washington is their 2024 Business Leader of the Year.
Travel + Leisure readers still love Alexandria, but the city fell out of the top ten in this year’s Best in the U.S. ranking after multiple years among the elite.
Every year, the magazine hosts a World’s Best awards survey, with over 186,000 readers weighing in. The magazine said cities are rated on criteria like landmarks, culture, food and more.
California wine country marketer Todd O’Leary has been named the new president and CEO of Visit Alexandria.
O’Leary will replace Patricia Washington, who announced her retirement in December after leading the city’s tourism bureau for more than a decade. He was hired by the nonprofit’s board of governors after an executive search with SearchWide Global, and starts work on July 8, according to Visit Alexandria.
