Visit Alexandria marks 30 years as city's tourism economy tops $1 billion for second straight year

This story was updated at 2:45 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 17 to include videos that were shared at the meeting.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Visitor spending in Alexandria topped $1 billion for the second straight year, Mayor Alyia Gaskins announced Wednesday night as Visit Alexandria marked its 30th anniversary.

The city also collected a record of nearly $91 million in consumption taxes, which cover sales, meals and lodging, in the fiscal year that ended June 30, according to the organization. That's up from $88 million the year before.

Tourism saves each Alexandria household $846 a year in taxes, according to a video Visit Alexandria showed during the meeting. That's up from $832 last year. Visitor spending also supports more than 5,700 local jobs, the video said.

A year ago, at its 2025 annual meeting, Visit Alexandria announced that visitor spending had crossed $1 billion for the first time, reaching $1.016 billion in 2024. The total for 2025 came in at $1.014 billion, essentially flat, according to Visit Alexandria's annual report, which cites Virginia Tourism Corporation data. Growth in retail and restaurant spending made up for a tough year for hotels, the report said. Counting indirect and induced effects, visitor spending reached $1.55 billion.

"When you stop and reflect on the power behind Visit Alexandria, the people behind Visit Alexandria, the impact of Visit Alexandria, and then the potential of Visit Alexandria, it's not simple at all," Gaskins said. "In fact, for the past 30 years, it has been transformative." Gaskins also sits on Visit Alexandria's Board of Governors.

Visit Alexandria's annual meeting, held in the Edison Ballroom of the Westin Alexandria Old Town, brought together about 200 city leaders, founders of the organization and members of the local hospitality industry under the theme "Celebrating Our Past. Unlocking Our Future." Members of the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra performed before the program began, and each speaker took the stage to a song from 1996, the year Visit Alexandria was founded.

Among those in attendance were Gaskins and Council members Canek Aguirre, Abdel-Rahman Elnoubi and Sandy Marks; Del. Kirk McPike (D-5); Del. Gretchen Bulova (D-11), who is also director of the Office of Historic Alexandria; City Manager James Parajon; and Clerk of Circuit Court Greg Parks. Representatives of the Virginia Tourism Corporation, the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership, the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce and Destination DC also attended.

The program also included remarks from Paul Zalocha, director of sales at the Westin Alexandria Old Town and an incoming member of Visit Alexandria's Board of Governors, and Richard Irons, senior vice president of business banking for Burke & Herbert Bank's Virginia region. Irons said Burke & Herbert, one of the event's partners, has worked with Visit Alexandria for 12 years and has been based in Alexandria for 174 years.

'Not just the numbers'

Gaskins said the $1 billion figure means jobs, sales for local businesses and revenue for city services. "But I also think, if you know me, what's most important is not just the numbers, it's about the people," she said.

She pointed to the summer, when Alexandria served as base camp for the Croatia National Football Team during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Gaskins said she received hundreds of messages a day, both from people planning trips to the city and from people in Croatia following their team's stay.

One woman wrote that she had never been to Alexandria but now couldn't wait to visit because of how the city welcomed her team and embraced her country's culture, Gaskins said. Another told her Alexandria felt like a little place in Croatia.

Alexandria also briefly hosted Ghana's national team as it traveled to its host city. When she greeted the team, Gaskins said, its representatives told her they stopped in Alexandria because the city is safe, and because the area around their hotel felt "like a little Ghana outside."

Gaskins said that when she and Parajon presented to the bond rating agencies a few weeks ago, she borrowed a line from Visit Alexandria's Unlock Your Story campaign to open each presentation: "Our city may be historic, but we are not static."

'The memory-making business'

Parajon, who called the annual meeting one of his favorite events, set aside his prepared remarks to describe families around kitchen tables planning trips and asking where to go to make a lasting impression.

"We are in the memory-making business," Parajon said. "If you don't think that, you're in the wrong room."

The revenue visitors bring is fantastic, Parajon said, but none of it happens unless Visit Alexandria is "sitting at that kitchen table with the people who want to come to our great city."

The year in numbers

Much of the fiscal-year data was first presented to City Council last week, when Visit Alexandria reported that hotel revenue had swung from down 9.9% to up 3% after a 2025 marked by double-digit declines tied to federal budget uncertainty.

Visit Alexandria President and CEO Todd O'Leary said the 2026 fiscal year "was unlike anything we've experienced before." He pointed to two once-in-a-generation events, America's 250th anniversary and the World Cup, along with the launch of the Unlock Your Story campaign earlier in the year.

The organization credited those three factors with a strong finish to the fiscal year, after hotel revenue had been running 9.9% behind the prior year as of January.

Hotels: Revenue per available room, a key industry measure, reached a record $119, up 3% for the year. Occupancy and average daily rate also grew, and a video shown during the meeting said no other municipality among Alexandria's regional competitors grew in all three measures.
Statewide rankings: From March through July, Alexandria ranked first or second each week in growth in revenue per room among Virginia's 25 hotel submarkets.
Visitor stays: From February through June, the average stay rose from 2 days to 2.3 days, and the share of overnight visitors who traveled more than 50 miles rose from 77.1% to 82.2%.
Return on advertising: Each dollar Visit Alexandria spent on advertising produced $58 in additional visitor spending, according to a Tourism Economics analysis of advertising that ran from April 2025 through March 2026.
The campaign: Unlock Your Story generated 46 million impressions and 3.7 million video views on streaming platforms. It also drove 114,000 referrals to members' websites, and was covered by publications including Vogue, Southern Living, Afar and Philadelphia Magazine.
Sales: Visit Alexandria's sales team booked $5.5 million in new business, filling just over 31,000 hotel room nights.
Visitor center: The center at Ramsay House greeted 44,762 visitors from all 50 states and more than 45 countries.

Alexandria also remained on Travel + Leisure's list of the 10 best U.S. cities and rose to No. 3 on Condé Nast Traveler's list of the best small U.S. cities.

The video credited the Croatia bid to a partnership among Visit Alexandria, the city, Episcopal High School and the team's hotel, then known as AKA and now the Satire. Croatia picked Alexandria in January from more than 60 possible base camps.

Thirty years

A video tribute featured founders and past leaders of the organization and the city, including Charlotte Hall, David Speck, former City Manager Mark Jinks, and former Visit Alexandria leaders Stephanie Pace Brown and Patricia Washington. Hall, Jinks, Brown and Washington were also in the audience.

O'Leary also recognized Joanne Mitchell, Visit Alexandria's first executive director, and Barbara Barton, former director of the Alexandria Convention and Visitors Bureau, which preceded the organization. He honored former Mayor Kerry Donley, who was mayor when Visit Alexandria was founded and died in 2022.

"Thirty years ago, a group of visionary Alexandrians believed this city's story was worth sharing with the world," O'Leary said in a statement. "Today, that belief has grown into a billion dollar-plus tourism economy that supports small businesses, employs thousands of people, funds city services and welcomes millions of annual visitors to experience Alexandria for themselves."

Hall, a founding leader of the organization, received the first Visit Alexandria Tourism Champion Award. Board Chair Kate Ellis said the Board of Governors chose the winner from 17 nominations, and introduced her as someone who has been called "a queen of King Street."

What's next

The 2027 fiscal year, which began July 1, has no World Cup or America 250 celebrations. In June, O'Leary said the central marketing question for the year was how to keep the momentum going without them.

"Our past gives us credibility, but our future gives us opportunity," O'Leary said Wednesday. "Now the question becomes, what's next? How do we build on this momentum?"

He brought Claire Mouledoux, senior vice president of marketing and communications, and Mary Rinaldo, senior vice president of operations and finance, on stage to outline the year's plans. O'Leary noted that meetings business had "taken it on the chin" over the past 18 months. Group business took the worst of the 2025 downturn, with group hotel revenue down about 27% year over year in March 2025.

Meetings campaign: A new campaign will market Alexandria as a destination for small and midsize meetings, including to the many associations based in the region. More details will come at Visit Alexandria's What's New event early next year.
Unlock Your Story: The campaign will add a holiday version aimed at retailers and restaurants, tell visitors' stories alongside members' stories, and expand its neighborhood content.
Artificial intelligence: Rinaldo said the staff will get an organization-wide AI platform with governance and security controls. "We don't want this to replace the human touch," she said. Mouledoux said the organization is also adapting its website for travelers who get information from AI summaries on Google and chatbots, and is using AI-powered contextual targeting for some ads.
Accessible travel: Mouledoux said Visit Alexandria will offer members free accessibility training through a partnership with Visitable. She called travelers with disabilities a market of more than $50 billion. "It's not only the right thing to do, it's a smart business decision," she said.
Revenue: New co-op marketing and email advertising opportunities for members, plus a tiered community partnership program, will be explained at a webinar next week. The annual report also lists a goal of building a program to sell experiences and tickets at the visitor center. Co-op marketing was one of the goals in the five-year strategic plan Visit Alexandria released last year, which set a deadline of fiscal 2027.
Members: The organization's 415 members, down from 456 a year ago, will get more research and data through the member portal, and an expanded library of photos and video.

That plan also set targets of keeping visitor spending above $1 billion by fiscal 2027 and pushing consumption tax revenue above $100 million by fiscal 2029. At nearly $91 million, the city is about $9 million short of that goal with three fiscal years to go.

O'Leary also introduced Juan Carlos "JC" Rivera, the organization's new director of sales.

The '90s theme carried through the night. Mouledoux and Rinaldo took the stage to the Macarena, the No. 1 song of 1996. "If you thought the three of us were going to dance to the Macarena, you would also be mistaken," O'Leary said. "Sorry, that's the afterparty."

That afterparty filled the foyer with '90s music, a photo booth, classic arcade games and a "Taste of Alexandria," with bites from Bastille and Maison Breizh, Fabled Ice Cream, Ted's Montana Grill, The Majestic by chef Santiago Lopez, The Spice & Tea Exchange and The Wharf Fine Seafood.

'The real story'

Before the crowd headed out, O'Leary returned to the point Gaskins had made at the start of the night.

"As the mayor reminded us this evening, the real story is how tourism impacts people," he said. "Behind every visitor's experience and memorable moment is a business owner, a server, a hotel associate, a retailer, a tour guide, a local entrepreneur."

A video of Visit Alexandria members followed. In it, the owner of a member gift shop, The B.E.S.T. Gift Shop, described what happened after the organization posted about the shop and the people it supports. The phones started ringing, and a woman came in with her son, who had a traumatic brain injury and a talent for art. The shop is now bringing him on as a volunteer and one of its resident artists.

"It's just such an amazing impact," the owner said.

Then O'Leary closed the program.

"For 30 years, Visit Alexandria has helped tell the story of one of America's most remarkable destinations," he said. "But the most important story is not our history. It's what comes next."

Ryan Belmore is an Alexandria resident and the founder and publisher of The Alexandria Brief. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas to ryan@alexandriabrief.com.