FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 12, 2021
CONTACT:
Tamaria Williams
Communications Specialist
(225) 382-3577
BATON ROUGE, La. - Visit Baton Rouge, the official tourism organization for Louisiana’s Capital City, has launched a Friends Pass, a new program that aims to encourage visitors and locals to get out and explore all that Baton Rouge has to offer.
The passport is a free program that all visitors and locals can sign up for. With dozens of local businesses already included within the passport, it showcases the best of the Baton Rouge region in an easy, mobile-friendly way.
“For a while, we’ve been searching for ways to attract more visitors and even get our locals out to explore the city,” said Paul Arrigo, President and CEO of Visit Baton Rouge. “We hope this first pass serves as a start of something new and exciting in Baton Rouge, especially since the pandemic has taken a toll on our hospitality sector. We would love everyone sign up for the pass because when you get out and support local businesses, that also benefits our city as a whole. At the end of the day, we’re all in this together.”
Conversations around getting more visitors and locals to explore the Capital City begin years ago and led Visit Baton Rouge to reach out to a well-known technology company in the travel space, Bandwango. Bandwango technology is designed to support free and paid experiences created by destinations and marketed to visitors and locals.
Using this technology, Visit Baton Rouge began working alongside local businesses to get their offerings loaded into the Friends Pass. Now that the Friends Pass is up and running, visitors and locals can visit our dedicated mobile passport landing page where they can sign up for their Friends Pass by providing their name, e-mail address, and cell phone number. A link is then sent to their mobile phone, which opens the passport and directs the user to add the button icon to their home screen, where they can access it any time. There is never anything to download and no bulky apps take up space on a user’s phone.
Once the user is ready to redeem their pass, they simply hand their phone over at the checkout counter of the business to access the admissions. As the user checks in at multiple locations, different incentives will be offered by Visit Baton Rouge for their participation in supporting local businesses. If a user checks in at 3 locations, they will be given 3 post cards. For check-ins at 5 locations, the user gets a Red Stick pen.
The Friends Pass is the first of many to come. Visit Baton Rouge will be launching more passes over the next few months, including a family-focused pass. Locals and visitors who wish to sign up for the Friends pass can sign up at this link on our website. Businesses wishing to learn more about this or to be a part of the Friends pass or any of our upcoming passes can sign up by contacting Gina Stephens at gina@visitbatonrouge.com.
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About Visit Baton Rouge
The mission of Visit Baton Rouge is to increase visitation to and awareness of the Baton Rouge Area, therefore enhancing economic impact. For more information, log onto www.VisitBatonRouge.com.
