Bagpipes, kilts and crowds in red-and-green plaid. The 53rd annual Alexandria Scottish Christmas Walk Parade is around the corner.
Here’s your guide to one of Alexandria’s most celebrated and well-attended weekends of the year. Hundreds of costumed musicians, dancers, performers and thousands of spectators are expected to attend the free event, which is produced by Visit Alexandria, the Campagna Center and the city.
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.
Get the lederhosen and Bavarian hats ready, because Oktoberfest is coming to Alexandria this month.
The annual folk festival celebrating German culture, food and beer, starts at Atlas Brew Works (2429 Mandeville Lane) on Friday, Sept. 20.
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.
Alexandria’s Summer Sidewalk Sale is returning to Old Town and Del Ray next month, followed shortly by Alexandria Restaurant Week.
The annual Alexandria Summer Sidewalk Sale is scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 10, according to Visit Alexandria. The streets around Old Town and Del Ray will likely be lined with local boutiques setting up shop outside of their storefronts and offering discounted summer merchandise. A list of participating shops is available online.
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.
Alexandria is one of the best small cities in the U.S., an argument bolstered by being listed in the top five for the last six years in Condé Nast Traveler’s 2024 Readers’ Choice Awards survey.
Staff from Visit Alexandria just got the city nominated for the seventh year in a row.
Update at 3:35 p.m. — The Interstellar Influencer commemorates the Chesapeake Bay impact crater, not the Chicxulub crater 35 million years earlier that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs
Earlier: The asteroid collision 35 million years ago will be the latest public art at Alexandria’s Waterfront Park.
Alexandria’s 29th annual First Night celebration is just around the corner. Here’s what you need to know before the family-friendly event.
First Night runs from 2 p.m. until the fireworks show at midnight at the waterfront on Sunday, Dec. 31.
After a decade running Visit Alexandria, the organization’s president and CEO Patricia Washington announced today that she’s retiring in June.
Washington took over the tourism agency in 2012 and has overseen a growth in city tourism pre-pandemic and a difficult rebound after Covid. Visit Alexandria receives funding from both the city and state sources.
With Alexandria’s consumption tax revenues hitting an all-time high in fiscal year 2023, Mayor Justin Wilson says that the city has emerged from the economic spiral created by the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.
The city’s consumption tax revenues (sales, meals and transient lodging) peaked at $81 million in fiscal year 2023, a 7% increase over the $76 million collected in FY 2022 and 23% more than the $66 million in FY 2019, according to figures presented at Visit Alexandria‘s annual meeting on Tuesday night.
