PORTSMOUTH — With a casino hotel on the way in Portsmouth, city leaders are using grant funding to help market the city as a destination stay in hopes of boosting tourism-related revenue.
Portsmouth received two state grants totaling $42,500 to help broaden marketing efforts to areas across North Carolina and Virginia.
The grants will help the city build on the success of 2023, when the city saw one of its best years for local tourism numbers thanks to increased bookings at the Renaissance Portsmouth Waterfront Hotel and the opening of Rivers Casino Portsmouth. The Virginia Tourism Corporation reports that Portsmouth saw $138.3 million in direct visitor spending in 2023 — a 118% increase from 2022. Direct local tourism-related taxes totaled $5.6 million.
Portsmouth Tourism Director Keith Toler previously said the success highlighted the need for more hotel rooms. Rivers Casino Portsmouth announced this year it would break ground on a new hotel expected to open by 2027 — presenting a new opportunity for a city that struggles to raise local tax revenue due to around 40% of Portsmouth’s land that cannot be taxed due to government ownership.
Toler said the city has received similar grants in the past few years but that this chunk will help the city boost fall and spring marketing campaigns to draw in more families as well as young adults.
Toler said the city typically budgets about $350,000 for tourism efforts, primarily local campaigns to draw in more visitors from across Hampton Roads. Money has also been spent in recent years to target visitors from Raleigh, Washington and Richmond. But Toler said recent data shows a significant number of tourists coming from other areas in North Carolina including Greenville, New Kent, and Washington County — so that area will be included in the targeted marketing efforts.
The state Marketing Leverage Tourism grant of $22,500 will be used in the spring to focus on attracting families to Portsmouth’s outdoor activities, including the Children’s Museum, LeMans Karting, Paradise Creek Nature Park and City Park.
The $20,000 Destination Marketing Tourism Organization grant will be used to market Portsmouth’s history to adult visitors, particularly for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence next year, which the entire region is expected to celebrate in some fashion, Toler said.
“We’ll use things like TikTok and YouTube to increase awareness and increase our reach for the video messaging,” Toler said. “And then we’ll use the Meta products — Facebook and Instagram — really to try to drive traffic to the website. There’ll be a history landing page that focuses on all the historic information that we have.”
Toler said the city has also been advertising with streaming services such as Hulu.
The goal is to keep people staying overnight or multiple nights to further boost local tax revenue.
“People say, ‘Well, why are we spending all this money to bring people in here?’ And that’s because it creates jobs. It creates payroll and it really helps the tax cooperation,” he said. “Takes money away from (what) the local taxpayers might have to pay because we’re doing a lodging tax and meals tax and other taxes that the tourists are paying.”
Natalie Anderson, 757-732-1133, natalie.anderson@virginiamedia.com
