Coming into 2020, Visit Henry County, Georgia was celebrating a successful 2019 tourism campaign.

Lodging tax and site traffic growth were up significantly. Henry County was poised to continue that success with a digital campaign designed to focus on the county’s four major cities (Hampton, Locust Grove, McDonough, and Stockbridge) and the unique tourism opportunities found in each of them. Then the world took a detour.

So how was Visit Henry County able to adjust their strategy and account for the impact of a global pandemic?

• Goals transitioned from driving lodging interest in the short term to a more high-level brand awareness campaign for four cities.
• We still focused on four target markets (Birmingham, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Knoxville) research showed match with the personas of Henry County Visitors.
• But we also incorporated a close-in market effort (Georgia markets primarily south of Henry County: Albany, August, Columbus, Macon, Savannah) capturing more regional travelers that were open to road trips, but closer weekend getaway travel.

Results

Being a destination close to a major interstate and just outside of Atlanta, Henry County hotel occupancy rates during the pandemic continued to trend higher than other DMOs in Georgia.