Visitors and locals already "EatLafayette" and "Fly Lafayette." And a new holiday season campaign hopes they’ll also "ShopLafayette."
This initiative is a bit different from the previous eat and fly campaigns, both of which have enjoyed tremendous success, as it aims to increase top-of-mind awareness for Lafayette as a travel destination.
ShopLafayette promotes shopping at Lafayette area stores while increasing business at hotels and bed and breakfasts. The campaign targets out of market media to encourage new dollars and overnight stays, especially during the weekends when hotel occupancy is at its lowest.
“It is a natural extension of our marketing efforts,” Ben Berthelot, executive director for the Lafayette Convention & Visitors Commission, sponsor of the lafayette.travel website, says in a press release announcing the campaign. “When people travel they usually include shopping as part of their activities in a new town or region. ShopLafayette will promote the diversity of retail, overnight accommodations and events during the holiday season.”
The visitor to Lafayette is on average 45 years old, has an annual income of more than $77,000, and is married with children, according to the release. The top two activities Lafayette visitors enjoy is visiting with relatives and shopping, according to the Calendar Year 2011 Louisiana Travels America Visitor Profile Report.
The history, culture, food and music have been the central core of the Lafayette .travel efforts since its inception. The success of its EatLafayette campaign inspired the development of the Shop Lafayette initiative.
“We are launching a website, shoplafayettela.com, to be the central warehouse for listings,” says Berthelot. “This season it is free to all retailers so we can plant the seed for a bigger rollout in 2013.”
The campaign expects to increase overnight stays and help raise retail sales for local hoteliers and retailers. It promotes the various districts throughout the parish that showcase the variety and diversity of retailer establishments.
Social media, including Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, will be leveraged to increase visibility for the campaign. The website and all social media will be maintained year round.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
Philip deMahy Sr., a once respected New Iberia ad exec, was sentenced May 2 to spend the next two years (he faced up to 100 years) in a state penitentiary after state and federal investigators found dozens of images depicting children engaged in lewd sexual acts on his personal computer.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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