MHC Tourism Receives $10,000 Grant from VTC "Crush Friday" Program Marketing Fund

Martinsville-Henry County Tourism announced that it has received a $10,000 grant from the Virginia Tourism Corporation (VTC) “Crush Friday Program” grant fund. “Crush Friday” is part of VTC’s ongoing efforts to support U.S. Travel’s “Project: Time Off” initiative, encouraging citizens to utilize unused vacation days. In total, VTC awarded $250,000 to 25 tourism marketing projects across the Commonwealth to help increase visitation and revenue for Virginia’s localities through tourism. More than 155 partners will participate in this cross-state marketing program effort.

“We are thrilled to be supporting U.S. Travel’s Project: Time Off with our brand new Crush Friday campaign. The Crush Friday initiative is an engaging, creative, and collaborative way for Virginia localities to leverage critical marketing dollars to attract more visitors to the Commonwealth, increasing the economic impact of tourism,” said Rita McClenny, president and CEO of Virginia Tourism Corporation. “This program will also help to change the way millennials think about vacation and the importance of time off not only to their quality of life, but quality of work.”

“We are so grateful for this opportunity to broaden our efforts and help promote all of the great ways to spend your Fridays in Martinsville-Henry County,” said Sarah Hodges, MHC Tourism.

The $10,000 grant will be used on marketing projects with Rooster Walk Inc., Philpott Lake and The Sustainable Homestead Institute. While each of these entities already have marketing campaigns in place, “this grant opportunity will help expand their marketing reach, increase visibility and hopefully impact local revenue in other ways,” said Hodges, MHC Tourism. “The plan for this project will include a lot of digital marketing to reach high volumes of potential travelers in a very trackable forum. “

"We're really excited about the Crush Friday grant that our local EDC Tourism office received. Their marketing of Rooster Walk 10, especially in the last few weeks leading up to the festival, will absolutely help raise awareness of the festival and Martinsville-Henry County, as a whole. We're very lucky to have the support of our local EDC Tourism staff, and we can't thank them enough for including us in the grant proposal," said Johnny Buck, Rooster Walk, Inc.

American workers left 662 million vacation days on the table last year. Of these workers, the millennial sub-set is the most likely to want to be seen as work martyrs. In an effort to be seen as valuable to the company a work martyr is the most likely to forego taking vacation days. The VTC Crush Friday Program is designed to encourage the millennial work martyr to give vacation a try. VTC and its industry partners aim to change that mindset and show the benefit that even one day of vacation can have. Virginia and Martinsville-Henry County Tourism offer a call to millennials to take a well-deserved Friday and crush it in MHC.

Tourism is an instant revenue generator for Virginia. In 2016, tourism generated $24 billion in revenue, supported nearly 230,000 jobs and provided $1.7 billion in state and local taxes. Dollars invested in tourism are proven to provide a 7:1 return in tax revenue for Virginia, and the grant awards and matching funds provide a stimulus to localities seeking to increase tourism visitation and revenue.