9 minute read
Meet Mary Quinn Ramer
The mission of VisitLex is to market and sell Lexington’s Bluegrass region by driving economic impact through tourism and meetings to enhance the quality of life for Lexingtonians. and for the last eight years Mary Quinn Ramer, as President of the organization, has been making sure the agency does exactly just that.
by Kate Savage | photo courtesy VisitLex
Mary Quinn is a native of Danville and after a transfer from Meredith College NC at the end of her freshman year back to home turf, she graduated from Centre with a double major in History and French. Growing up with a mother who was a French teacher, meant that this language wasn’t so “foreign” to her, and Danville, with it’s rich and significant past had given her an early love of especially American history.
She had always assumed she would progress to law school, but as is so often the case, life had other plans. Part of her financial aid packet required an assigned work study program. This could have been in any one of the various aspects of college life; the library; the athletic complex, but she was assigned to the communications office. “This was really where I first started to get the sense of what it meant to be in the communications and marketing industry,” she said.
Finding that she loved this work, Mary Quinn did an internship the last semester of her senior year with Preston Osborne, a public relations agency in Lexington. At the time Mary Quinn joined the firm, it was evolving and getting out of just politics and public affairs and doing mass consumer campaigns in various industries. It was towards the accounts that were hospitality related that Mary Quinn kept sensing a gravitational pull. “I never once had thought that there was this whole industry, and so in many ways when I reflect back, I realize there was a tremendous amount of serendipity along the way” she said.
In 2005 Mary Quinn made the move to tourism full time and cut her teeth at the Danville, Boyle County Tourism office which not only was her hometown but also the site of the Battle of Perryville. “I had spent a lot of time in college as part of my history major studying this battle and could appreciate it from a tourism product perspective. I knew what a gem the battlefield was and how authentically it had been preserved. Not much has changed in Boyle County in the ensuing 100 years,” she said.
The opportunity to work with David Lord who was at the time President of The Lexington Convention and Visitor’s Bureau in Lexington, presented itself in 2007 and Mary Quinn took it. “This name didn’t mean much to people and was a bit of a mouthful, so in 2013 the switch to VisitLex was made, she said, “there are fourteen other Lexingtons around the country, so it made perfect sense to lean into the call letters of our airport,” she explained.
David Lord decided to retire in 2010 after 20 years of service and immediately following the first Three-Day World Equestrian Games. Then, after a short stint by the subsequent president, upon his retirement, Mary Quinn decided to apply for the position. “Okay, I said to myself, if you’re going to make a run for this you probably should do it now, because if you don’t, you may well have to wait a decade or maybe two for this opportunity to come around again.”
At this point Mary Quinn had evolved into the Vice President of marketing having started originally on the tourism side which was much more focused on local Lexington attractions and the restaurant scene. Nervous about her lack of experience with the convention aspect of the business she diligently went about studying and learning everything she could about this very important component of tourism. Her conscientiousness paid off and in January 2015 the board of commissioners appointed her as President of VisitLex.
Since then she has steered the agency through an office relocation to the beautiful renovated Old Courthouse – itself a tourist attraction with a restaurant owned by Nationally known Chef Ouita Michel, welcomed a new state-of-the-art Convention Center with unique amenities into being, and, most challenging of all, guided the local industry through a devastating global pandemic.
All of a sudden in March 2020 Mary Quinn found that instead of finding ways to invite and convince people outside the community to come and visit Lexington, she was talking to the people inside the industry and trying to support those who were dealing with the fall out from covid travel imposed restrictions and the evisceration of the tourism market. “We spent a lot of our time just trying to do the best we could to nurture those in our industry that were dealing with people losing their jobs. GMs of hotels doing everything from engineering to the maintenance to the changing of the beds because they were working with a skeleton crew” she said. They spread the word among local residents encouraging them to support the restaurants they loved by ordering carry-out. Everyone was scrambling.
In addition, Mary Quinn found she had to become a champion for the industry at the legislative level. “There were so many questions that I didn’t have an answer for. Obviously, I wanted to put on a brave face, but I also wanted to advocate for the industry when Congress was meeting and determining what types of assistance would be available at the federal level. I wanted tourism to have a seat at that table,” she said. “I think it’s fair to say that our industry was by far the hardest hit and will be the last to recover. Really, they’re not expecting travel to make a full recovery until the end of 2024,” she added.
Mary Quinn is passionate about her industry, not just the joy it brings to visitors but also the opportunities that it provides for people who want to get a start, work hard and rise through the ranks. She tells stories of people who started as bellhops or at the front desk who have risen to be GM’s of international hotels. One of the things laid bare by the pandemic has been the critical necessity of service industry workers. Every restaurant, hotel or convention center needs someone to wash dishes and put up the chairs. Someone to cut the grass, provide transport, repair the fences. It’s easy to overlook all the ancillary services that feed into the overarching designation of tourism.
Post-pandemic Mary Quinn considers her advocacy work has become even more significant. Much of what she has to do is to raise awareness of how travel is an economic engine that works hard for the commonwealth and employs tens of thousands of Kentuckians, from entrylevel workers to entrepreneurs and executives, but also she is anxious to make sure that the people in Lexington feel really proud about their city and excited about the visitor economy growth and supportive of VisitLex’s endeavors. Data and research VisitLex can provide is often critical input at the local government level when it comes to thorny issues such as regulating Airbnbs or the Urban Services Boundary. In Kentucky tourism generates $11.2 billion in annual spending, $823 million in state and local tax revenue and more than 92,000 Kentucky jobs.
No secret are Lexington’s signature industries of bourbon and horses, both unique to the Bluegrass. But Mary Quinn is quick to point out that there is a package that goes with the branding. It’s not just the horse in a stall but it’s the horse within the context of the landscape – the rolling hills, the beautiful blue sky, the white fences, the races, the spectacular farms. Similarly the bourbon industry with its tours, trails and tasting rooms. Both industries owe their successes to the land and limestone.
The completion of the convention center – Central Bank Center, has given VisitLex a new shiny coin to add to its purse of offerings. The design is really different and meeting planners are intrigued by the space as well the walkability of downtown, the fact that every major hotel has a complimentary shuttle from the airport, and Town Branch Park will come online in 2025 providing an adjacent green space and outside opportunities and programming that will be readily accessible.
When asked about where she sees Lexington growing in the future, Mary Quinn cites the great potential of the Manchester Street area and the Distillery District. She is excited about how much of it has evolved organically and the many future opportunities that still exist along that corridor.
Whilst she is passionate about her industry, Mary Quinn is also as committed to the community. “I want to find the sweet spot and I absolutely want our brand awareness to grow. I would love for people to talk about Lexington the same way they talk about Ashville, Savannah and Charleston – that’s aspirational for me,” she said.
However that said, she remains anxious that this not be such a commercial exploitation that it’s attained at the price of Lexington’s identity. “I want the community to grow alongside us. If there is one thing that keeps me up at night, it’s that 20 years from now I’ll wake up to realize Lexington has lost its soul,” she said. But surely, with these driving sentiments in her heart, she should rest easy. •
