Hard hit by budget woes, Virginia is selling naming rights to its 42 highway rest stops. This could be great for travelers and businesses alike.
Tacking business names onto rest stops — “Aflac Travel Plaza,” for instance — would allow businesses to target a clear but diverse audience: drivers. And not just any drivers; rest stop users are not commuters, but travelers. Marketing to this group has long relied on radio ads and billboards; sponsored rest stops (especially with corporate partnerships!) represents a whole new approach to grabbing roadtrippers’ eyeballs.
Rest stops will bear corporate names, so companies will have a sense of proprietorship over the areas. Insurers like Aflac don’t want those eyeballs to fall on messy or poorly-stocked pitstops (or, for that matter, “culturally insensitive” remarks from its duck-voiced mascot). Sponsoring businesses will be incentivized to keep the soda machines stocked and the restrooms clean.
Rest stop users occupy a different “traveler” demographic space from, say, high speed rail aficionados. Products that naturally appeal more to highway users than to urbanites (like beef jerky manufacturers) can tap the surge in ad response that has lately belonged primarily to urban coupons.
When Washington’s Metro authority (WMATA) considered a proposal to sell naming rights to metro stations, it was a terrible idea. Metro stations are all part of a close network, food and drink are prohibited, and the entire system suffers less from lack of amenities and from a top-down union structure that pays employees to shirk rather than to fix fundamental basics like escalators.
Rest stations are separate and distinct, so each station would be more associated with the company than with the state highway system itself. Rest stops can sell all the basics for a good road trip
The WMATA system is for commuters. WMATA shuts down for repair on federal holidays precisely because in this federal District, commuting federal employees drive so much of WMATA’s revenue.
WMATA can sell ad space in stations and trains, but at the margins businesses would gain no advantage from sponsoring an entire station. Corporations could not exert any control over the station’s management. Commuters would still refer to stations by their location names, because it would make no sense to take the extra logical step of connecting a corporate sponsor name with the location information.
Food and drink are permitted on the highway, unlike in metro stations, so businesses can offset sponsorship costs by cooperating with Coke or Pepsi. Sponsors will have more creative and legal control over changes they make to their stations because food and drink and periodical sales are permitted, and more attractive to travelers than to commuters.
Virginia reports that its rest stations service about 33 million customers each year. According to Reuters, Florida, New Jersey and Illinois are considering similar public-private naming rights options.
