VCB Executive says-step up for Nights of Lights

Richard Goldman, Executive Director of the Visitors and Convention Bureau, has asked St. Augustine business owners who read Historic City News to join with the VCB and the Chamber of Commerce to be sure that this year’s Nights of Lights is an overwhelming success.

In a joint letter from Goldman and Chamber President Kirk Wendland, they write, “The lighting experience has declined in the last two years due to businesses’ allowing their lighting displays to deteriorate or simply ending their participation (in Nights of Lights).”

The marketing arm of the Tourist Development Council and local association of merchants say that St. Augustine is no longer empty in December and January thanks to the “Nights of Lights” events. “Nights of Lights benefits you, help keep it a success,” Goldman and Wendland wrote.

The first St. Augustine lighting event took place over 18 years ago; when a forward-looking group of St. Augustine officials, business and tourism leaders decided that the seasonal low mark of commerce in our community could be improved by creating a destination experience that would reinforce our city’s unique features and be marketable to new and repeat visitors.

In this month’s issues of Southern Living, National Geographic, Traveler, Florida Travel + Life, and on numerous travel websites, “Nights of Lights” is being highlighted in articles and featured in editorials, which inspire their readers to travel to St. Augustine.

For the second time in the past five years, the American Bus Association named Nights of Lights a Top 100 Event in The USA.

The organizations ask that you help keep “Nights of Lights” working for all of us. You are specifically being asked to look at the lighting displays on your building, find a way to enhance them, or at least keep them looking neat and appealing.

Photo credits: © 2011 Historic City News staff photographer