Watchfire Signs, a leading provider of exterior and interior LED signs, was selected by Louisville Tourism to manufacture a “Welcome Wall” at the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport. The nearly 6-by-27-foot high-resolution welcome wall is viewable by the more than 4.2 million passengers who travel in and out of the airport yearly, as well as anyone visiting the airport to pick up or drop off passengers.

Louisville Tourism purchased the sign as a way to welcome convention attendees to the city, to promote tourist attractions in an area known for horse racing and bourbon tasting, and to showcase accolades the city has received.

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

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

“Programming the board is really easy. We are able to program messages for a full month in just a few minutes, and easily schedule when we want the messages to run,” she said. “If we have to make a last minute change—like swapping out a name in a message—we can do that easily.”

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 Mastin. 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 working well and was difficult to program.

About Watchfire

Headquartered in Danville, Illinois, Watchfire has manufactured electric signs since 1932 and LED displays, using meticulously sourced components from around the world, since 1998. The company has more than 60,000 Watchfire LED displays in operation worldwide. For information, go to http://www.watchfiresigns.com.