The two main groups charged with recruiting businesses to Montgomery County will take their message to the sky with this three-minute video that will be shown on 1,700 U.S. Airways and American Airlines flights during April.
The county’s Department of Economic Development and Conference and Visitor’s Bureau produced the video as part of an ad buy through In-Flight Media Associates.
The Washington Business Journal first reported the story. A spokeswoman for DED told the Business Journal the video cost $29,500 to produce and place.
Bethesda figures prominently in the spot. The video cites Bethesda as “home to the nation’s highest per capita concentration of Ph.D.’s,” and references the Congressional Country Club and North Bethesda Marriott Hotel and Conference Center with its 25,000-square foot ballroom, the largest in the county.
In February, the County Council passed a bill to devote a projected $630,000 in additional funding to the County Visitors Bureau, a nonprofit of five full-time staff members, to promote the county to tourists and organizers of business conferences.
It will raise the amount of hotel/motel tax collected by the county and directed to its Conference and Visitors Bureau from 3.5 to 7 percent.
Bill supporters said it was a necessary measure with a casino planned for Prince George’s County National Harbor.
Last year, the county hired a full-time president for the quasi-public Montgomery Business Development Corporation. That organization was created to help bridge the gap between Montgomery and its main competitor for businesses, Fairfax.
Video via Montgomery County Department of Economic Development
