A region reimagine striving, thriving, innovating, collaborating, elevating and accelerating.

The Greater Lehigh Valley.

It's home to businesses that are booming and game changers that are forging the future.

This is Lehigh Valley Rising.

BSI Corporate Benefits is a proud supporter of Lehigh Valley Rising.

Additional support provided by Adam's outdoor advertising.

Providing customers with an enjoyable experience is at the heart of the hospitality industry.

In 2019, just prior to the pandemic, the Lehigh Valley hospitality industry generated $1.9 billion of this country's gross domestic product.

Hotels, public markets and recreational activities will be our focus as we explore hospitality in the Lehigh Valley.

As one of the Valley's oldest industries, landmark hotels will rank first on tonight's show.

Two hotels that represent the early history and elegance of Bethlehem with a heritage that dates back to colonial America and boasting famous guests like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Sir Winston Churchill.

In the Moravian settled here in 1741.

And the first thing they did is make a place to live and a place to meet.

And this was the place where they met, where they worshipped, where they taught and made things.

They were creating things to sustain the community.

And then those things, I'm sure, were an attraction for others who were passing through.

The Sun Inn is a restaurant, distillery tasting room and a museum.

This building was built in 1758 by the Moravian the Sun Inn became pretty well known as a place to stay.

Every town has the place where George Washington stayed.

This is ours.

Martha Washington was here at a different time.

Benjamin Franklin, Marquis de Lafayette, Baron von Steuben.

Then when Marquis de Lafayette was shot at the Battle of Brandywine in the leg, he was here at the sun for a time.

Ten signers of the Declaration of Independence all came through here.

Through the years, it's gone through multiple iterations.

There were a bunch of different levels built on top of this to where it didn't look like a Colonial Inn at all anymore.

It looked like a giant hotel because it was.

When they restored it, they restored it back to what it looked like in 1758.

People come here, namely for the food and for our spirit.

We also have some pretty unique outdoor spaces, our patio and our beer garden.

We have a traditional American menu.

We try to take a little twist on some of the things and use either a colonial method, something that is entertaining to the modern palate, but has reflections of the past.

Christmas City Spirits is our micro distillery and we make some historically inclined beverages, one being Cherry Bounce, which is a favorite of George Washington.

We actually based it off of Martha Washington's recipe.

The first floor of the Sun Inn is a museum That's where you enter the building.

And you can walk around and look at some of the rooms as they were in 1758.

We try to make this a place where if you want to pay attention to the history, it's there for you and you can get pretty wrapped up in it, but it's not forced upon you.

What the Moravians did was they established and actually created a template for what it was like to be town builders?

They were innovators.

They were creative.

They were manufacturers.

They were craftsmen.

They actually inspired one another along the way to do better, to make things better.

When the Moravians built this, it became pretty famous throughout the colonies.

And this was the place to stay in Bethlehem up until the 1920s, really, when Charles Schwab built the Hotel Bethlehem.

Charles Schwab is really important to the history of hotel.

He actually got the hotel built.

The hotel was built on a former hotel called the Eagle Hotel.

Charles Schwab was the president and CEO of Bethlehem Steel back in the early 19 teens.

He wanted to build a hotel for all the dignitaries and people that were coming in for Bethlehem Steel.

And what he ended up doing, which I think is really kind of remarkable they raised money through a stock offering, if you will, local people in the community, because you buy a piece of Hotel Bethlehem to be built and then because it became very much a community hotel.

And that's really what got the hotel started.

And also being part of the community, that's become a big piece of this hotel through its 101 years of life.

The hotel's been a host to a lot of dignitaries, politicians, actors, famous people, and continues to be to this day.

Some of the people that I like that stayed here is Winston Churchill, who stayed here.

Henry Ford stayed here, even Barbara Eden, my dream of Jeannie.

She stayed here in that time with the Dalai Lama, stayed here.

President Kennedy stayed here.

He would come down and have dinner and lunch with the staff and that type of thing.

But he was very instrumental in everything he's done.

And we like to say we helped to become President here at the hotel During Christmas our business obviously increases drastically, We'll do it probably three times amount of our normal business in December than we will for any other month, year of the year.

The hotel really transforms itself with our decorations.

We actually start planning Christmas now, already starting having meetings with the Christmas season that we have.

Every room is decorated.

I think we have 18 different trees.

We have two, three story trees that we have through here.

We have flying geese.

One of the things I found was really interesting when I started here was how many people come into the hotel to have their family picture taken in front of our Christmas trees.

It's a tradition for so many families.

It's quite a feat for everything that gets put up for Christmas each year.

If you don't take care of the guests, they won't come back.

I still think that holds true today as it did back 100 years ago.

And I think that's always when the spirit of our town is taking care of people, making them happy.

People come here to Bethlehem, I think through the history, even we started with them Moravians People are always very hospitable here.

People like to take care of other people and make them happy.

I think that's what true hospitality is.

As a Bethlehem area, Moravian.

We believe that in essentials unity, in non-essentials, liberty, and in all things love.

And I think that that spirit of community and acceptance permeates the entire area.

Word is getting around, and we're in a position of growth.

And we're thrilled to be here right now.

Over 150 years ago, Solomon Dorney had a vision to turn his estate into a public attraction by providing rides, games and family fun.

Since that time, Dorney Park has grown into a regional attraction with amazing thrill rides and other amusement.

(Loud speaker) Dorney Park, Dorney Park, Dorney Park Creating memories, funnel cakes with ice cream, going on thrilling rides that are there things that you just can't do with your family in any other setting than Dorney Park.

Solomon Dorney wanted a place where city dwellers would come out and have fun.

He had trout ponds here and he'd invite people to come out to go fishing.

He bought more land.

He started farming the land for food, for the property.

He put up playground equipment.

There was a bowling alley here at one time, a show theater.

That eventually put in games and rides and refreshment stands.

They put in the carousel, I believe that was in 1884.

And gradually they added more and more rides.

Amusement parks were built at the end of trolley line so that they would have ridership on weekends.

And so there was a trolley line.

The Allentown Kutztown Trolley line.

And you actually walk along the old trolley tracks when you go on the midway alongside Thunder Hawk.

Dorney Park is important to Lehigh Valley.

We have over 2500 associates that are active at any time.

Last year we hired over 3000.

We have so many diverse positions from being in aquatics to merchandise to food service so that we really can cater to someone's personality.

And what they're looking for.

We really are proud of being a first time employer for so many associates here in the Lehigh Valley area, as well as internationally with our J-1 program.

People grow up here.

I mean, they grow up here as a guest and they grow up here as an associate.

We have seen folks go into political arenas, own their own businesses, and they all credit this experience because we are giving responsibility.

We're developing leadership skills.

And I think that's crucial for as we look at our future workforce.

We have a very intense training program from day one.

We're job shadowing.

We have leaders working side by side with everybody, teaching those basic guest service skills, the skills that our guests want and expect from Dorney Park.

And we're so proud to provide each and every guest when they come to the park.

We do a lot of community partnerships.

We work with the Pennsylvania State Police.

South Whitehall.

Township, specifically, we've worked with A Kid Again.

Which is a mid-Atlantic chapter for kids with terminal illness and their families so that they can come to the park for a day and just have a wonderful experience.

And we have a whole day for Camelot for children, where we go out and we help to redo the landscaping and refurbish their buildings.

And Valley Youth House, we bring in like a whole group of kids from different areas across the Lehigh Valley.

So we do do the big things, but we also do the little things just, you know, the one or two off tickets for the basket bingo or the raffle.

Last year alone, we gave out well over 1500 tickets.

Talon is a fantastic ride.

It's one of our fan favorites.

Thunder Hawk, Steel Force, The Wasteland.

I'm sitting on the Whip There's a few things that factor into how we make decisions to replace rides or remove rides.

One could be the life of the ride.

Parts have become obsolete.

The operating system has become obsolete.

Another example would be if the manufacturer happened to go out of business, right?

That could impact once again getting parts and sourcing things.

A Thunder Hawk specifically, it was put together 100 years ago.

Philadelphia Toboggan helped us to create that ride when it was first constructed, and they still play a very big role today.

They're the ones that refurbish the trains for this upcoming season.

The other thing that we do is we look at ride throughput.

We take ridership every hour, every day and look at how many people are riding which particular rides.

That helps us make some of these decisions because if a ride is not very popular and it becomes very expensive to maintain and we start looking at it and going, Oh, is this really worth it?

Or is there an opportunity here to to upgrade this and put something better in?

And then the other thing we do is we have what we call the voice of the customer that allows us to go through different comments.

We do take a lot of that feedback.

Watching how guests use the park, watching how they congregate.

During busy summer days, everybody goes to the water park and then towards the end of the day they pile out and they come over here in our fifties area where a lot of our food is and they'll sit down and eat with their families.

When you observe how people use the park, it helps you make better decisions.

I think there's always room for us to grow.

Used to be able to just put a really nice ride in and that would be good with people.

But I think now people want storytelling.

They want an experience.

They want an immersive environment.

And I think people want to bring their whole family here and have something for everyone to do, and they want it to be comfortable.

Amusement parks are part of the culture of the community.

They're part of.

If you talk to people in the Lehigh Valley, they have a lot of specific memories about Dorney Park.

They came here for class trips or church trips.

Organizations came here.

Whether you're or rich or poor, everybody came to the park Whether you're or rich or poor, everybody came to the park at one time or another.

Public markets and local festivals do more than draw in the crowds.

They give new life to Main Street businesses by encouraging people to visit and engage within the community.

Local business leaders in Easton are doing just that.

Easton is about four and a half square miles.

We're about 30,000 population.

People should come to Easton because we're vibrant, full of energy.

Bacon Fest and Garlic Fest.

Lebanese Heritage Festival.

Hispanic Cultural Festival.

Each one of these festivals has its own little vibe.

Full of beautiful buildings, a great walking city.

A great physical bond.

It's a downtown, great.

It's flat.

It's got two main streets that converge on a great center square.

We're close to New Jersey community.

We're close to New York community.

It's the future of the city is incredibly bright.

Everybody feels good when they come to Easton.

Easton has changed a lot in the last 20 years, I think mostly in a positive way.

When I first started working here, I would talk to people.

They would kind of drop their head and be a little bit deflated about where they live.

Like I'm from Easton.

The city realized it had an image issue and it needed to do things to make it, first of all, cleaner and safer.

The city administration, as well as organizations like the Greater Easton Development Partnership, began to look at ways for cities to kind of remove that image issue.

And one of the ways they did that was by creating what's known as the Ambassadors program, which is a group of employees now of the Greater Easton Development Partnership that actually routinely walk the downtown area, clean up debris and refuse.

They also keep an eye, a watch on the city to make sure that, you know, that things are safe.

The city invested in clean and safe services.

They had a strategy to do some adaptive reuse and to bring buildings that were either vacant or not fully participating in in the economy to higher and better use.

A city moving forward by restoring the past in a whole new way.

This building that we're in was the Health Education Center.

They had changed their model from bringing kids in for health education to going out to the schools.

So this building was kind of underutilized and vacant, and the city was intent on trying to bring new, new life to it.

And, you know, public market seemed like a good potential fit for that.

Easton has the longest continuously operating farmer's market in the country.

We have a history of food, local food, in particular.

We felt like the Easton Public Market was a way to kind of level up the food culture here in Easton here at the Easton Public Market We get about 5000 visitors per week.

We wanted to bring also different options for dining and to bring fresh food options and grocery items to the market, from fresh fish to fresh meat to produce.

I think the coolest thing about a place like the Easton Public Market is that you have a lot of options in front of you for you and your family Easton Main Street Initiative is a grassroots volunteer driven downtown revitalization program.

The goal of the organization is to bring about economic stability to what.

Was once a. Decaying downtown environment.

So the things that we've pushed for over the years was to involve the community, make sure that community voices are heard, whether those are residents or business owners or property owners or even visitors.

We want to always to make sure that what we're doing is what the community wants, not what is decided for them.

At some top down level.

Another initiative of ours truly was to get the business owners to know each other, to support each other, to work together.

I am most proud of the fact that Eastonians can be proud of where they live.

I think a lot of the reason that we do what we do is to rebuild the pride of place.

People now like, you know, chest out, chin up kind of puffed up like I'm from Easton, Isn't that cool?

Folks began to reconnect with Easton and specifically its downtown and have interest in supporting its positive trajectory.

Our population is going to.

Continue to grow.

We are expecting about a thousand new residents in the city over the next three years.

We are seeing business development occur in all districts of the city.

So this city is going to continue to be a great location for businesses because we care about the businesses we serve and support, and we're going to continue to help them be successful here.

The game of golf is the inspiration for our next feature on tonight's program with spectacular mountain views, beautiful fairways, and a first class dining experience.

Woodstone Country Club offers only the finest to its members and guests.

Located in the gateway to the Poconos, Woodstone is more than an attraction.

It's part of the community.

Woodstone as a country club It's such a family atmosphere.

We're open to the public that certain amenities, golf simulators.

The lodge, the ballroom.

There's lots of things that are available to the public.

That in a regular private golf course You would not have that having Blue Mountain right next to us, the gateway to the Poconos.

I think people are realizing how easy it is to navigate through and just come to all these different places without taking a very far drive to do it.

We do over 100 events and weddings a year here.

We go all out on 4th of July and we have a fireworks display that rivals any city around.

And that's one that brings almost 3500 people every year.

One of the best fireworks shows you'll ever see.

The image of Woodstone and being welcoming to everyone.

I think it's a direct reflection of our owner’s personality.

Bruce owns LMN fabrication.

Steel fabrication business is a steel man.

His father was a steel mill on this property here that we sit on now and decided to build a golf course.

So in 2000, right on the property with a bulldozer, started knocking trees down the golf course and a clubhouse.

Then he had it on the lodge, had it on the ballroom.

He built the outdoor patio for people to eat outside.

23 years later, here we are.

We are open year round.

We get 75 to 80 employees.

During the summertime.

We have close to 150 staff members here that go through, you know, all the kids that work here to your management staff and then the enhanced staff to even take care of the golf course.

The work ethic in this area is hard to match.

We have a fantastic group of people that work here.

We all care about each other.

We look at each other as family.

And that's a Woodstone special at Woodstone The majority of our business that we do here is a lot of weddings.

Our ballroom can hold up to 300 people in here with a dance floor.

You do not have to be a member to rent any of our rooms here at our banquet facility.

We also have our suite, which is a complimentary to the bride and groom.

So our bridal suite has a huge canopy in it it has two balconies, one overlooks the ceremony site, the other overlooks our waterfall area on the golf course.

We're closed on Mondays.

That's kind of the day we do our charity events.

So we do about 20 to 22 charity events throughout the season with the Andre Reed tournament.

Here we do Kids Peace, Boys and Girls Club just name a few.

So we do a lot of different charities within the Lehigh Valley area.

We do have a Thanksgiving food drive here.

When you have a membership like we do here, the outreach to that is just unbelievable.

We have people that show up with vans of stuff from their companies just to help everybody out.

Nothing is greater than doing a wedding for a bride and then having them come back and doing their baby shower and birthday parties and other events for their families.

Most of our memberships from the area within probably 20-30 miles.

We are 20 minutes from the Lehigh Valley, 20 minutes from, you know, the Poconos.

We're right in the middle of everything.

One of the benefits is our members pay a fraction of what they would pay in another course, right In the Lehigh Valley, 20 minutes away.

This is a community place.

We're here to help the community with.

This facility is here to make everybody around here and everybody's lives around here better.

You feel that as a member coming in here, when you know that every single person in this place is out for your best interest, you're going to like being a member here.

And hopefully we build those generations for years to come off of that.

I wanted to know more about what to do and see in the Lehigh Valley.

So Alex Michaels, the president of Discover Lehigh Valley, and I sat down at the Moravian Museum and discussed what I may have been missing.

So, Alex, describe our setting.

Where are we?

And not only within this room in this building, but this area of Bethlehem?

Well, we're sitting right at the heart of the World Heritage Settlement, which is nominated for a World Heritage designation, which we hope to get in the next year or so.

This room, the saw was the Moravians first place for worship.

So it's very significant to their culture and everything they brought to the area.

And go a little further into the World Heritage designation and why that's important.

It's not only just an important designation here for Bethlehem and for the for the Lehigh Valley.

It's it's a it's a global designation.

It's through UNESCO's.

It's it puts us in the same conversations as great locations like the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the Acropolis in Greece.

So to have that conversation and here in the United States, there's only about 24 locations that have that designation.

So we hope to be the next designated site here in not only the Lehigh Valley, but in the United States.

Wow.

You're among the greats.

Yes.

Based on what I've read on your website, the tourism and hospitality industry pulls in about $2 billion a year.

Is that just folks going to the Poconos and stopping off?

Where is that money coming from?

Where are those people coming from?

Yeah, well, a lot of that money is coming from people visiting the area and doing overnight stays.

But they're, you know, about 51% of the people that visit the Valley are coming here to visit friends and family.

That money is now staying a little longer.

They're spending some time in our hotels.

They're seeing all the great amenities that we have to offer.

I think residents only have they're starting to realize that there are some really tremendous assets here.

And there's a reason why they're here to raise their children in great schools.

But then they're realizing, hey, there's some really great tourism assets, too.

You want to live in a place you want to visit.

And this place has that to offer now.

And I think it's been the leadership in the area that really had that vision.

We've seen certain things that we've talked about when the decline of Bethlehem Steel and all of a sudden now it's it's a great entertainment venue with the Windcreek Casino and the Arts Quest and SteelStacks.

And we're preserving history, but we're also making it a place to visit.

And that's what's great about this World Heritage site, too.

It's if somebody were to come here from 1741, they would see pretty much what they saw back then.

So you kind of got into it.

But what are some other key destination sites in Bethlehem?

If you were to advise someone that said, hey, you know, Yeah, what should I see first?

You know, again, if you're coming to Bethlehem, there's so many great amenities here in the historic site of Bethlehem, which is on the north side, the great restaurants, great hotels to stay at.

You can sample food from all around the world.

And we also have a small little festival that happens every August that brings over a million people to our region.

Arts and Musikfest with the Arts Quest group and Dorney Park and our zoo, Lehigh Valley, preferred cycling for the Great World class cycling.

Easton has Crayola, Martin guitar.

I can go on and on and on.

If you're into something, we can pretty much find it for you.

Here in the Valley.

Things have changed since you first got here in 84 and even myself here since 2006.

So many things have changed.

Yeah, when I when I arrived here in 84, I knew it was a good place to live, but I didn't know much about it.

And then I left.

I was actually left for 30 years and came back and as I was watching the Lehigh Valley from afar, I was just so incredibly proud of all the accomplishments that were happening.

When I left here.

We didn't have the PPL center for grand entertainment and a hockey team.

We didn't have Coca-Cola Park with the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs.

Musikfest isn't what it was today.

We didn't have the food scene in Easton and all these amenities that are happening here right now.

I'm mind boggling because I represent it all and I never have enough time to cover it all.

And we're always like, if I do these interviews 20 times, 20 different places will come up.

And there were always reasons to come to the Lehigh Valley as a destination.

But all those changes that you've just enumerated have made it even more so.

The people of this region are very proud, they're hardworking, they have grit, and they want to see this place succeed.

And when you have that in the region, you're going to have a lot of success.

And we have a huge influx of new people coming in and they're coming in with great ideas.

So the future is very bright.

We have about.

Right and Discover Lehigh Valley is always there to help you.

Yeah, anything you need.

Just going to DiscoverLehighvalleylive.com and you'll find what you need and you'll find all the great things that are out to do in the valley.

Thanks so much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you again Alex, that was some great information.

Well, that's about it for tonight's episode of Lehigh Valley Rising.

Thank you for joining us.

And remember, you can catch this and every episode right on our website.

From all of us, I'm Grover Silcox saying.

See you next time.

BSI Corporate Benefits is a proud supporter of Lehigh Valley Rising.