Leaf Peeping Season is Big Business in Charlottesville – and UVA is Part of the View

Anna Whitlow is constantly monitoring the weather.

But instead of forecasting when a big storm is approaching her area – a semiregular habit while living in New Orleans – Whitlow, the director of marketing and public relations for the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau since June, is keyed in on a more colorful development.

“We’re always paying attention to when the leaves will change,” Whitlow said.

It’s that time of year again in the University of Virginia’s town, as the scenery pops with vibrant shades of yellow, orange and red among trees and shrubs and becomes a focus for visitors and locals alike.

Leaf peeping season is big business.

According to the Virginia Tourism Corporation, visitors to Charlottesville and Albemarle County spent nearly $1 billion in 2024, with the attraction of fall foliage playing a significant role. Most autumns, Whitlow said, the area’s hotels hover around 90% occupancy, a figure, also aided by home UVA football games, that’s only rivaled during Final Exercises weekend.

“From a brand perspective,” Whitlow said, “we’re certainly saying, ‘Come here, it’s beautiful during the fall!’ From a PR perspective, we’re talking about it. But we’re really not spending a ton of money promoting the fall season because we’re already near capacity.”

 

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Natural beauty, said UVA Darden School of Business professor Luca Cian, provides a unique economic advantage for a particular area. Cian would know. He grew up in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, a small alpine village among the Dolomite Alps that’s lauded for its stunning scenery, accompanied by a luxurious ski resort.

Darden professor Luca Cian’s research area is consumer behavior, with a focus on visual persuasion, psychological response to artificial intelligence, and social identity.

And since 2015, Cian’s lived in Charlottesville.

“The parallels between winter ski tourism and fall foliage are striking,” said Cian, an expert in marketing and visual persuasion, among other topics.

What’s in his hometown and what’s here – from the Pratt ginkgo on Grounds to the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains – can’t be replicated elsewhere.

“People cannot copy that,” Cian said. “So, every region may have different types of beauty, but the beautiful foliage and fall we have in Virginia, it’s very difficult to duplicate. And if you’re not capitalizing on that natural beauty, it’s sort of like leaving money on the table.”

Fall foliage brings color to Darden Grounds in Charlottesville.

 

Charlottesville received an exposure boost last week as Travel and Leisure Editor-in-Chief Jacqui Gifford featured the town in a “Today” show reveal of the magazine’s best road trip destinations for fall foliage.

The segment included references to Grounds as well as the Graduate Charlottesville Hotel, located within the Corner business district.

“Obviously, you have the built-in excitement of home football games that bring people to Grounds, and being able to experience a beautiful campus like UVA is something that we always want to talk about (in the fall),” Whitlow said. “The ease of access from UVA and from events on Grounds to the Downtown Mall or to wineries outside of the city is really something we try to message around.”

Of the 26 posts during September from the visitor bureau’s @charlottesvilleva Instagram account, the two with the most engagement, accounting for a combined 1,800 “likes,” drew a direct link between autumn and the University.

On Sept. 4, over drone footage of the Lawn at peak fall foliage, the account promoted its “fall bucket list,” and on Sept. 22, it ranked its top spots for fall foliage, with Grounds coming in at No. 2.

 

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Continuously promoting the brand in this way taps into a growing trend among a younger audience. Marketing Dive, a business journalism publication, reported in April that “approximately 90% of Gen Z travelers use social media for travel inspiration, and 80% use it for travel planning.”

“This fundamentally changes how destinations must market autumn tourism,” Cian said, “moving from static brochures to dynamic, real-time content that captures the fleeting nature of peak foliage.”

An area’s reliance on nature for revenue comes with its own set of responsibilities, something Cian was cognizant of while living in Cortina.

“It’s a social argument,” Cian said. “Natural beauty is a public good, and sometimes, when the people from a town recognize that a huge source of income is because of their nature, they will put more emphasis on preserving nature, in making sure to not disrupt the beauty and to improve infrastructure.”

In Charlottesville, Whitlow said, devoting resources to preserve natural beauty is a “huge deal” as her office has shifted over the last six years from operating as a “destination marketing organization” to more of a “destination management organization.”

This means constant communication with city partners to ensure needs are met for sustainability along rivers and trails, among other popular outdoor areas.

Mountain bikers go for a spin in Charlottesville’s Heyward Community Forest. (Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau photo)

“We do not want to have overcrowded trails,” Whitlow said. “It’s not a good experience for folks. It leads to destruction and problems. So, we want to make sure we’re supporting things in a sustainable way.”

Anything to keep the leaf peepers coming.

“I think what people don’t always know about the tourism industry and the way that we market it and promote it, it seems like a lot of fun, and it is a lot of fun, but it is economic development,” Whitlow said. “We are looking at ways to continue to support small businesses, to work with local government, local infrastructure, to make sure that we’re making it something that can continue to thrive.”

This story originally appeared in UVA Today.