Louisville International Airport, Louisville, KY

Louisville Tourism purchased the Watchfire display for the airport location as a way to promote tourist attractions in an area known for horse racing and bourbon tasting and to showcase accolades the city has received.

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 Rosanne Mastin, marketing communications manager at Louisville Tourism. “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 replaces an aging sign that wasn’t reliable and was difficult to program. The new, high-resolution display is viewed by more than 4.2 million passengers who travel in and out of the airport annually, as well as anyone visiting the airport to pick up or drop off passengers.

“The welcome wall has been a great tool for us to create excitement for Louisville and to welcome visitors to the area,” said Mastin. “It provides value to convention and meeting organizers because we’re able to personalize it for their events using their branding and convention information along with sponsors’ logos.”

Mastin programs the board herself along with two others on the Louisville Tourism staff and describes the process as “set and forget.”

“If we have to make a last-minute change—like swapping out a name in a message—we can do that easily,” said Mastin.