Boycott threats to positive press: How Alabama's Senate election swung state tourism

Democrat Doug Jones celebrates his Election Night victory on Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2017, at the Sheraton Hotel in Birmingham. State tourism officials claim his victory over Republican Roy Moore ended social media calls for a tourism boycott of the state, replacing them with positive press and punditry rarely seen in the state after a political election. (Joe Songer | jsonger@al.com).

In the days leading to Tuesday's special Senate election, Lee Sentell and his staff at the Alabama Tourism Department were inundated with snarky tweets from people threatening to boycott vacations in Alabama.

"If Alabamians choose (Roy) Moore ... Major Boycott of Alabama should ensue" one tweet said.

"If Alabama sends Moore to DC, Americans of conscience should boycott Alabama tourism," said another.

"We had been averaging about 100 aggressive and threatening comments a day on Twitter the last three weeks of the campaign of people saying they would not come here to vacation again," said Sentell, the state's director of tourism. "When Tuesday's nights results came in and it was obvious Jones was going to win, it was like someone taking a switch and the aggressive messages stopped."

Positive headlines

Literally overnight, the social media anger directed at Alabama ended. In its place were national and international media headlines screaming "Thank you, Alabama" or, in the case of one center-left publication in Germany, "the miracle of Alabama."

Now, tourism officials in Alabama are embracing a rare swath of mostly positive punditry in the aftermath of a bitterly contested Senate race in which voters elected Democrat Doug Jones over Republican Moore.

Much of the boycott threats stemmed from the potential of voters electing Moore after accusations surfaced last month that he allegedly molested or had inappropriate relations with teenage girls when he was in his 30s decades ago.

The positive press came mostly from publications appreciative of deep red  Alabama voting for a Democrat and against Moore. Jones's victory marked the first time in 25 years that Alabama voters elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate.

"It's free publicity and its good publicity," said Dilcy Hilley, vice-president of marketing at the Greater Birmingham Convention and Visitors Bureau. "We don't always have that luxury."

Meg Lewis, director of brand development and special projects with the Montgomery CVB, said "you cannot deny" the positive attention from outside the state. She said the election could spark interest among travelers looking to visit Alabama and learn more about southern U.S. history, and visit Civil War and Civil Rights era attractions.

"The combination of the Senate election that raised the visibility of Alabama over those same (Civil Rights era) issues paired with the state's bicentennial anniversary events last year and the opening of the Equal Justice Memorial ... all of those things stack up," said Lewis.

The memorial is part of a complex that will open in Montgomery in April devoted to showcasing the consequences of slavery and racial tensions.

Said Lewis, "If you look at the headlines across the country, they are saying positive things. That's a good situation the state wants to be in. It's not what you see every day. It also tells people that not only are things unexpected here, they are unexpectedly delightful."

Alabama's image

Kimberly Severt, an associate professor and hospitality program director with the College of Human Environmental Sciences at the University of Alabama, said the post-election coverage is going to help Alabama's overall image, which could spinoff with a tourism bump.

Severt and a colleague recently wrote a paper, "The importance of destination marketing on image and familiarity," in which they asked visitors and non-visitors on their image of Alabama. For visitors, the No. 1 response, she said was "beaches."

For non-visitors, Severt said "they couldn't think of anything."

In addition, Severt said the study shows 54 percent of people who have never visited Alabama reporting that they have "not heard or seen" an information source about the state. For visitors to Alabama, the information sources were through "family and friends."

Said Severt: "I think we need to redo the study as far as finding out if the political impact changed the people's image of Alabama. Now that we've been in the limelight, I would say that it is actually going to help our image and because it's out there in the news, people are going to hear about us. It's a positive."

Sentell, in his view, doesn't believe the press coverage will affect tourism much. Alabama, for the sixth year in a row last year, set a record in annual tourism expenditure for 2016, and for the number of visitors coming into the state.

Sentell said the massive media attention on the Alabama Senate race will not equate to more visitors such as what the state experiences following hurricanes.

"After hurricanes, on the Gulf Coast, people see our beaches from the television coverage and after seeing that things were rebuilt, more people come," Sentell said. "They'd say we had no idea that Alabama had beaches."

With the political coverage, Sentell said, "this was all politics and not about tourism. I think Alabama will be last week's news."

Joanie Flynn, vice-president of marketing with Gulf Shores & Orange Beach - the tourism arm of coastal Alabama - said in her 30 years working in the industry, she's never seen a political election impact a region's tourism in either a positive or negative fashion.

She said her agency wasn't overwhelmed with negative comments ahead of Tuesday's election, though there were some. Orange Beach and Gulf Shores are the top two tourism cities in Alabama, and the state's beaches are its biggest draw.

"We were concerned we might and we monitored it, but we did not see a major outcry," Flynn said.

Now that the election is over, Flynn said it's "hard to tell" what impact may arise from the Jones win.

"If it makes people willing to look at Alabama as a vacation stop to travel to, I think we will compare very favorably," she said.

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