Paid admission at Colonial Williamsburg dropped 9 percent last year from the previous year, because of the souring economy and volatile gas prices, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation reported today.
"The economy just hit everybody," foundation spokesman Tom Shrout said. "This goes to show nobody is immune."
The foundation reported 707,000 people paid for general admission to the historic area in 2008 compared with 780,000 in 2007. The drop-off also showed in the "visitor gate count," a formula designed to reflect whether people bought tickets for one day or multiple days in the historic area. That "gate count" fell from 1.5 million people to 1.3 million.
Shrout said foundation officials had been tracking attendance throughout the year and were not surprised by the totals. He said CW's prospects for this year are difficult to gauge, partly because it's unclear whether gas prices will stay as they are or zoom back up to $4 a gallon.
Colonial Williamsburg cut costs in November by laying off 140 employees and announcing it would leave an equal number of vacant jobs open.
On the brighter side, the foundation's fund-raising went up 2 percent in 2008, to $42 million, despite the state of the economy, Shrout said.
The foundation announced that Colin G. Campbell will stay on as president and CEO through 2010. Campbell had planned to leave but agreed to remain after the board said it needed his experienced leadership, Shrout said.
Also today, Colonial Williamsburg also announced a partnership with Google by which Google will scan selected books published by the foundation so that those pages will pop up when their topic matches a user's request on Google's search engine. CW officials said the partnership will give the foundation more exposure.
Contact Bill Geroux at (757) 498-2820 or wgeroux@timesdispatch.com.
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