Watchfire Signs, a leading provider of exterior and interior LED signs, was select by Louisville Tourism to manufacture a welcome wall at the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport in Kentucky. The prominent 6 foot by 27 foot high-resolution wall can be seen by the 4.2 million passengers who travel through the airport yearly, as well as those visiting the airport to pick up or drop off passengers, or for other kinds of business.
Louisville Tourism purchased the sign for several reasons; to welcome convention attendees to the city, to promote tourist attractions in an area known for horse racing and bourbon tasting, and to showcase accolades the city has received. The sign strengthens the city's brand and helps educate people about the area.
“The welcome wall has been a great tool for us to create excitement for Louisville and to welcome visitors to the area,” said Rosanne Mastin, marketing communications manager at Louisville Tourism. “It provides value to convention and meeting organizers because we’re able to personalize it for their events using logos and convention information.”
Mastin programs the board herself along with two others on the Louisville Tourism staff, and describes the process as “set and forget.” For their busy department, this is a huge plus.
“Programming the board is really easy. We are able to program messages for a full month in just a few minutes, and easily schedule when we want the messages to run,” she said. “If we have to make a last minute change—like swapping out a name in a message—we can do that easily.”
To showcase the capabilities of the welcome wall, Louisville Tourism cleverly uses it to welcome a prospective conference planner by name during a site visit.
“Seeing your name and event on the welcome wall is pretty impressive,” said Mastin. In fact, people get so excited that they often take a selfie in front of it and post it to social media, providing even more exposure for Louisville tourism.
The new welcome wall is a much-needed replacement for an aging sign that wasn’t working well and was difficult to program.
