Ep 08: REI MBA - Highlights and Attractions: Discovery Lehigh Valley (PA)
On this episode, Alex Michaels, the CEO of Discover Lehigh Valley, shares insightful information that can affect the commercial real estate market. It is a must watch episode to gain some inside knowledge of some of the leading indicators within some of these segments.
Alex, is a Whitehall High School and East Stroudsburg University alumnus.
Prior to Discover Lehigh Valley Michaels recently served as Vice President of Sales and Services for Visit Virginia’s Blue Ridge and Virginia’s Blue Ridge Sports Council. He also has held leadership positions for Visit Jacksonville and Daytona Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau.
2001-2005 Michaels served in the United States Navy, as a medical hospital corpsman. In 2003 was named Pacific Northwest Sailor of the Year and received The Navy & Marine Corps Achievement Medal.
Alex is the current President & CEO of Discover Lehigh Valley, the destination marketing organization serving Lehigh and Northampton Counties.
You can reach Alex through: https://www.discoverlehighvalley.com/
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Interview Transcripts
Tejas Gosai: Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to RealEstateInvestorMBA.com. I'm one of your hosts Tejas Gosai, and my co-host over there, Jeremy Moyer and you know what we like to do here. We like to talk about the real estate market obviously and why the Lehigh Valley is one of the best places in the United States and world to invest in and live in. I think everybody on the program today lives here, and it's very nice to be able to have such an awesome guest, Alex Michaels. I will let Jeremy do the introduction, please.
Jeremy Moyer: Thanks Tejas. So here at Real Estate Investor MBA, not only do we want to highlight the real estate market as he just mentioned, as here in the Lehigh Valley, we also want to highlight local businesses, attractions, the culture and the people who live here. That's why I'm so excited that our guest today. Today, we have Alex Michaels who is the President and CEO of Discover Lehigh Valley. Alex is a Whitehall High School and East Stroudsburg (University) alumni. Prior to Discover Lehigh Valley, Alex recently served as Vice President of Sales and Services with the Visit Virginia's Blue Ridge and Virginia's Blue Ridge Sports Council. He also held leadership positions for the Visit Jacksonville and Daytona Beach Convention and Visitor's Bureau. 2001 to 2005, Alex served in the United States Navy as a medical hospital corpsman. In 2003, he was named Pacific Northwest Sailor of the year and received the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal. Alex is currently the President and CEO of Discover Lehigh Valley that is a destination marketing organization serving Lehigh and Northampton counties. Alex, welcome to the show. I want to thank you first all up for serving and then also for joining us today, this afternoon for the interview. Can you tell our listeners something a little bit more about you, and how you came into this role into the Lehigh Valley?
Alex Michaels: Yeah, you know I think I have a very kind of typical Lehigh Valley story. Actually moved to Lehigh Valley back in 1984, which actually happened to be the first year of MusikFest for anybody who's ever participated, how much that is changed. So I was here for the first musikfest ever and back in 1984 moved to here, moved to Whitehall. When you and when you talk about changes like MacArthur Road for anybody who's familiar used to be mainly cornfields. So when my parents moved me here from, New Jersey, I was like where did you bring me to? I felt like I was really in the country and it was interesting. Like most teenagers in the Lehigh Valley at the time didn't realize how wonderful the location was. I was like trying to figure out where am I going to be next, where am I going to go. And I was very fortunate when I was at East Stroudsburg, I was given the opportunity to do an internship with Walt Disney World, which led me kind of into this hospitality world. So I left the Lehigh Valley back in the early 90's and really with no anticipation of ever returning again. And not that I didn't like it here. If was just one of those like, you know, hey, I'm moving on, I'm moving to a different part of the country and we didn't have a huge family in the Lehigh Valley, so it wasn't like something that it was going to be kind of drawing me back, and I didn't see it as a hospitality destination. So as my career went on, one of the great things about hospitality, is I've actually lived in about 11 different cities, 8 different states. So I really got to experience the country as a whole and I'm in different communities around, everything from the Pacific Northwest to California to Texas, Chicago. You name it. I've been around. But one thing that when people would ask me around the country, where are you from? What is home? I could have easily said New Jersey or Union, New Jersey where my early childhood was. I actually was born in Newark, New Jersey. I lived in Newark for many years. But I would immediately say hey, I'm from Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania or in Whitehall, Pennsylvania. And it just came, it kind of resonated with my mind. I'm like, I wonder why I'm selecting this place that I really only lived for about five years and I guess it is also because I married somebody from Lehigh Valley, my wife.
Tejas Gosai: There you go.
Alex Michaels: Salisbury High School grad.
Tejas Gosai: I married a Freedom grad.
Alex Michaels: So, you know, she kept reminding me how much she loved this area. She lived in the same home for about 21 years and she's probably as big of a fan of the Lehigh Valley as I am. So as my career came back, it was coming through, I kept, when I kept looking, I kept comparing everywhere I was to here. And I kept saying wow, you know, this is just. You know, we have the same thing in the Lehigh Valley, we could do we could, this could be better and even in the Lehigh Valley we have this and that. And most recently when I was in Virginia's Blue Ridge, which is in the western side of Virginia and the Roanoke Blue Ridge Mountain Area. I started to compare the Lehigh Valley a lot. It kind of reminded me. That area reminded me of Lehigh Valley back in the 1980s. And all the potential that it had and so we started doing trips up here. My daughter was going to school at FIT in Manhattan. And I started coming up the Lehigh Valley and I was just taken; like it was amazing all the transformation that's going on in Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton and all our metropolitan areas. So I was like, wow, this place is really becoming something that I never expected, you know. And so I did, at that point, I really had no idea that I would be returning. It just started to become a huge fan again of the area. So at the time I was actually interviewing for a couple CEO positions around the country. One was in the Pacific Northwest. One was actually in Jacksonville, Florida again. And then at the same time the current CEO for Discover Lehigh Valley was about to retire. I literally landed, I flew into Jacksonville. I had my final interview with them and I was flying in Atlanta and he had made the announcement and I sent a text to my wife and I'm like, hey if Jacksonville doesn't work out, maybe we can go back to Lehigh Valley if they would have me. And I thought it was a joke. I was just kidding around and my wife was like no you should really consider it. And I came home that night and the next morning she started getting on me. She's like are you gonna, are you gonna send some message to anybody? I'm like, no, I'm not, I don't even know if there's a job open yet. I'm just heard guy is retiring. So as most sales people do and that's what my background was, I saw in the paper who was going to be in charge of the search committee, which was the President of ArtsQuest, Kassie Hilgert and the General Manager of the Iron Pigs, which is Kurt Landes. And I immediately sent them an email and said hey guys, just in case you're looking down the road, I'd be interested. And Kassie was so gracious to send me a quick response and said hey send your resume. And so luckily I went through the process and as I was going through the interview process, I started to explore more and more about what was going on here. And as you all know, it's just such a booming area.
Tejas Gosai: Yes.
Alex Michaels: It's such a pleasure to be here now.
Tejas Gosai: That's an awesome beginning to this. So, you know you get here, you land here, you're in this position and me as a local real estate guy. Like, you know, I married a girl from the Valley. I moved here partially because I wanted to but also because you know, I saw what was going on here. You know, it's been crazy what's been going on and you've been at the helm of that for quite a bit of time now.
Alex Michaels: Just two years now, two years now.
Tejas Gosai: Yeah, but still. We've been on an exponential curve. So whether you were here four years ago, the place has changed rapidly. If you were here two years ago, it has still changed rapidly and we're more, almost at the higher incline of the curve I would say.
Alex Michaels: Sure.
Tejas Gosai: Can you comment on that? Like what position we are in now since you've been in the position and what you think is happening?
Alex Michaels: Well one of the things I immediately realized and this is getting more on the hospitality side or destination marketing side. You know, one of the things, in no offense to the past, but we weren't, as a Lehigh Valley, we weren't really thinking outside the Lehigh Valley. A lot of our marketing efforts as Discover Lehigh Valley were mainly kind of in the Lehigh Valley. I kind of tell the joke that we spent a lot of time marketing to the person that lives in Breinigsville to go down to Easton. And which you know, if you grew up in Lehigh Valley, you know going out of town, I used to live in Whitehall, but like I'm going out of town today, I'm going to Easton. And I was kidding around and you know, it's actually shrunk now, it's a lot easier to get around the area. Our mindsets are different now to. But the first thing we kind of did, we looked at all our assets and we said we need to start telling this story around the country. You know, we need to not just focus only on the Lehigh Valley's marketing to one another, which we still need to do that, because there's a lot of residents still don't even realize how much they have around them. And so we started to expand our reach. We started kind of getting, you know, slowly but surely getting further and further out, meaning we started to market through a 3-hour drive radius, then a 5-hour drive radius, 6-hour. We started to see some incredible results. And in every sector right now in Lehigh Valley is just really rocking and obviously in real estate, it's doing really well. But in hospitality or in travel and tourism and hotels, we just started incredibly breaking record after record every month. You know, our occupancy levels continue to increase.
Tejas Gosai: Can you talk about that? Sorry specifically, I'm a hotel guy. Indians....you know, my dad's a doctor. We owned a Dunkin' Donuts....every kind of Indian thing...in my history. But one thing, sure....like hotels pre-COVID. I mean this area specifically. We don't have a convention center that's big enough, all those things. Can you talk about that and the demand?
Alex Michaels: Yeah, there was definitely you know, we're currently I think we're sitting around 6,200, we probably lost a few rooms here and there. But we're about 6,200 - 6,500 rooms in the Lehigh Valley total as a whole. So to give you a kind of a perspective. We, last year at the same time, we were running about 84% occupancy in those hotel rooms. This year, the numbers for August did not come out but as you know, MusikFest usually lands in August, so we don't anticipate those numbers to be that high. But we were averaging year-round about 70 - 72% occupancy in the hotels. Why that's important. The national average right now is approximately about, it was at that time, it was about 64 - 65%, which was historic. I mean if you were doing 60 - 65% a decade ago, you were killing it.
Tejas Gosai: Amazing.
Alex Michaels: Yeah the fact that we were in the 70s and then some of our higher hotels were actually in the 80s are in the almost 90 percentile. So we were definitely spoiled. We definitely needed. We need more hotels. We need more meeting space.
Tejas Gosai: Can I jump in? Sorry because.
Alex Michaels: Yeah, no, you can stop me anytime.
Tejas Gosai: People who don't understand the hotel world. Let me explain this. You know, when he's talking about these numbers and these statistics. Those are reported every day by anyone that is a flagged franchise (Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge) all those. They have to every night, the night auditor at 11 p.m., is when their shift usually starts. You know that's the first thing they do. What were are reports of the day. And then every week, 'STR', which is Smith Travel Research gets that data and then you find out how much of your hotel occupancy you ate of you're competing hotels or vice versa. And then where the whole kind of market ended up. So when you're saying these numbers, you know, you spent much more time and effort and energy than just mentioning this for a couple seconds. Right? Like this is a hard data and you use those metrics to see if you guys are doing well enough.
Alex Michaels: Yeah, and I'm also looking at a little differently because I'm also looking at as a region. You know, so we're looking at Lehigh and Northampton County, versus the Pocono Mountain region versus Montgomery County, Bucks County. So we're performing really really well. And so, you know, I can tell you know pre-COVID you know investors were looking at the Lehigh Valley for hotels. One of the things I kept advocating for was that we needed more meeting space. They are one of the biggest drawbacks right here now is that I'm not asking for a convention center. What I'm saying is that there is a need in the Lehigh Valley to be able to hold. Now this is again, prior March 15th was be able to hold about 1,500 to 2,000 people in a room in rounds (tables) to have a conference event; to have breakout spaces and things like that. So luckily we have some you know, some great space down at Wind Creek and ArtsQuest. We had some decent space and Hotel Bethlehem and Renaissance (Allentown). But in reality we don't have the large conference center venue right now that could attract some larger regional or even national conferences to the Valley. I think many many people would love to bring their events and conferences here. We just don't have that indoor space currently. We can do some really unique stuff on that ArtsQuest campus, but it typically ends up being outdoors. But yeah anybody who is interested in investing in the hotel world here, I still think they can do well. Even give an example starting in April when everything kind of plummeted in the last few months, we dropped to about 29 % occupancy. Locations like Philadelphia went down to 12%. And then in June this year we actually were at 52% occupancy. We were one of the tops in the state. I think Pocono region was doing well as well and but given the average in the country was about 30%. So we're still performing really well. I think it's because of the diverse markets that come into this area that people are doing business. And real estate continues to be booming too. And I'm a new homeowner, which you'll probably want to hear. I just bought a home; yeah, I just bought a home in a Palmer Township in Northwood Farms and I could tell you my neighborhood is surrounded by New York and New Jersey plates. I'm probably one of the few Pennsylvania plates in my neighborhood right now.
Jeremy Moyer: To go a little deeper in the convention center, have you guys, do guys do feasibility studies like to try to determine like where in the valley it would be best, I guess placed, you know from a transportation and all that?
Alex Michaels: We've done a few studies. I shouldn't say we, I think the City of Bethlehem has done a study not too long ago. They had looked at the, again the ArtsQuest campus also to do some additional space down in Main Street, Bethlehem. Allentown has done some studies as well and they were actually looking to do another study. But I think the consensus is always been that whole area where Wind Creek, ArtsQuest could be a potential venue for some really good conference space. And I think the new owners at Wind Creek are looking to do that. If everything works out, I believe they're going to break ground on their additional Tower coming up soon, which will bring another 300+ rooms to the Valley. I know there's all kinds of crazy developments that were kind of being planned all over the Valley. But now we're kind of on that wait and see, let's see how this all plays out. But I do think conference space will become a topic of conversation again when things start to roll again. And the numbers, I believe we will as an economy, I think will recover a little bit faster than other parts of the country. I think the biggest hits are going to be in those first tier destinations like the New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago are going to have a lot harder recovery period than we are.
Tejas Gosai: You're nailing my biggest topic right now because I'm telling all of my investors and friends and family and people that the Lehigh Valley is insulated. And I believe that because I left a market that was previously insulated in Pittsburgh with the oil and gas boom. And I happened to land in the next place with you know, what was going on. So I love what you guys, Don Cunningham, the whole narrative of what Lehigh Valley is doing because most of my investors and colleagues are coming from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland and to say this; COVID was our best advertising.
Alex Michaels: Yeah it was.
Tejas Gosai: You know like it’s posh to move from Brooklyn to the Poconos and things like that. But can you kind of discuss some of those pieces and you know, post-COVID what you may predict or kind of see what happened?
Alex Michaels: Yeah, kind of like what I just have a second ago, I do really believe that we're going to have the opportunity to recover a little bit quicker. The larger markets, the larger metropolitan areas are going to have a lot more, they have a lot more to kind of recover from. I think this area because it's an economy that continues to be on the tops in the country. We continue to land on all the top 20 list in all economic sectors. So I think we will recover. I think the hardest part is is not to let things get so far out of place. So I think right now we're trying to advocate for is everything from restaurants and all the hospitality community, that we're trying to basically get people to go out and support local. You know, right now, you're not able to take those long vacations, those long trips. So, you know, we're asking people to do "stay-cations" and spend their money in the Valley that they may be in the past would have been spending otherwise. But I think the minute the doors are open, I think people are going to start getting on flights. We have an incredible airport here in the Lehigh Valley that people forget about, and the convenience of having that airport, and to be fortunate to have an airport this wonderful of an airport when you have Newark and Philadelphia right next door. But I do believe we're recovering. It's funny you say that we have an insulated area. My biggest joke when I was younger in this area was that we had a bubble over the Lehigh Valley. That people got into that bubble and never left, and if they did escape they were going to find a way back in. We...it's an incredible area that has amazing pride. Once you live here, you kind of feel the pride. You could either be a 1-year resident that just got here a year ago or somebody who maybe was here for the last 30 to 50 years. It's an amazing a pride that comes in this area and I used to tease too that we didn't really associate ourselves where we lived in the Valley. We kind of associated ourselves where we went to high school. As a matter of fact, I think on the intro you talked about how I went to Whitehall High School. And I tell people that here because it immediately gets people in conversations like, 'well I went to Easton' and 'I went to Freedom', 'I went to Becca' and I went, you know, 'I went to P-burg' or wherever they were in the Valley, but there's always that association. I got a buddy here and there and this area you can become welcomed really quickly. But then the other thing too that there's some great, what I call, "first-tier' amenities here, but not the first tier headaches that go along with it. You know, we can sit here and argue about 22 traffic or whatever you want to talk about. But if you've lived anywhere like Atlanta, Orlando, which I have, traffic here is not even the biggest issue. Now does 22 stink at certain times a day? Yes. Nobody wants to be on it. But we're very fortunate we can get around the Valley pretty quickly. We can have a quality of life. We can have short commutes. There's some great commercial real estate in all of our downtown areas and in our industrial parks. But most importantly, you can live in a beautiful home throughout the Lehigh Valley or you can choose to live in an urban sector at a fairly affordable rate, and have I guess the 'American Dream' in this area, and enjoy a lot of the amenities that you would find in major cities. I remember like we used to always have to get in a car to go to Philly to go to a concert. We always have to go outside of town to get into an event, and now we're starting to see these things come in. But anyway getting back to post-COVID, I do believe you're going to see a lot of that coming back quickly. I think, you know another thing that Don (Cunningham), I think you're going to have LVEDC on one of these calls shortly. You're going to hear that the demographics of the Lehigh Valley right now, I think close to 45% of our Workforce is under 38 (years old), which is tremendous. It's an area that young professionals are choosing to live. I have one right now that just moved back. Like I said, was living in Manhattan, and is so excited to be in the Lehigh Valley and she can see herself here now raising a family and not feeling like she's stuck in the middle of nowhere. We're 90 minutes from New York City, were 60 minutes from Philadelphia. This area has so much to offer, and but it also gives you that escape when you're in a situation or like you know, what I kind of want to see some green spaces. I want to get out and explore some trails and I want to get out and feel the fresh air. During this COVID crisis, you could actually feel that, that we had that opportunity here. I've lived in so many places and this is one of the most tremendous areas in the country, and what excites me about it is I don't see a downturn anytime soon. I think people are finding out about the Lehigh Valley and I love that our leadership in the Lehigh Valley; people like yourselves are starting to say, 'Hey, you know what, we need to get the word out', because this is an Investor's dream, and this is also a place where you want to make your roots, you want to raise your family, and you want to bring your business to, so I'm here to support anything you guys have to do because I think this is a gem, that I don't want to say is a hidden secret anymore, but there's still a lot of people that are not even aware of how wonderful Eastern Pennsylvania is.
Jeremy Moyer: So I kind of want to go a little more in that direction. So I grew up here, I was born right here in Allentown. I was as a graduate from Emmaus High School.
Alex Michaels: There you go.
Jeremy Moyer: Yeah. I moved away for a few years, came back, but I'm still finding new things to do. Like, 'I didn't know we even had that.' You mentioned, you know, we have 'Tier 1' amenities, but maybe not at the price tag or the crazy traffic. I do a lot of traveling myself. So I know what DC, and New York and L.A. traffic looks like, right. Can you kind of give just a few examples of well hidden gems that you know people that maybe lived here their entire lives don't even know about?
Alex Michaels: Yeah. I mean, there's, I could probably sit here for an hour naming a bunch, you know. One of the ones that I immediately kind of come to all the time because you're our in Emmaus is; I think a lot of people in the Lehigh Valley don't even realize that we have Valley Preferred Cycling or The Velodrome you know. If you've never had an opportunity to explore that facility out there, which I did and I'm going to be the first one to say, you know, the last time I lived here, I'd never went to an event there, never went to a race. And to me, I don't know how to describe it, but the only way I described as and I'm not a Nascar fan, but it's the 'NASCAR of Cycling'. And we have some amazing Olympic potential athletes that are working out of there right now and just having that nationally renowned facility out there in that Emmaus or area out there. It's just amazing. You know I took for granted when I was here too just some simple amenities as Dorney Park and Wild Water Kingdom. When I you know when I realized that I was an amazing facility when I had my child. My daughter who spent many summers playing around Camp Snoopy and I don't know if it's still called that anymore, but you know, Dorney Park is one of those that were like 'eh' and we always want something else. We were like, oh, we don't care about Dorney Park. We want to go to Hershey Park. Or we want to go to Great Adventure or we want to go to Disney. Dorney Park and Wild Water Kingdom is an amazing facility, so much fun. Again, it's sitting right in our backyard. People forget we have a phenomenal zoo. The Lehigh Valley Zoo, which is up in the Schnecksville area. You know here in Easton we have the Crayola Experience. You know who has an experience with crayons and and the love for crayons and drawing and art. And you know, we have phenomenal art facilities in downtown Allentown. In Bethlehem of course, I can't go without saying, you know what has happened over there at SteelStacks at Bethlehem Steel. What they did with that campus and preserved the history of that campus and you can see a lot of that in the Museum of Industrial History. But just that campus and what Kassie and her group have been able to do for events. Any given weekend there's live music, free, concerts, there's all kinds of fun stuff to do down there. Plus now, Wind Creek, which is definitely a game changer. And I'm forgetting a bunch, you know, going to Iron Pick stadium and get incredible AAA ball and all the other things that go along with it. I can go on. I'm sorry. You're probably like stop stop stop.
Tejas Gosai: No, it's awesome. Hang on, I'm trying to show this screen and I'm just messing it up. You also have your buddies over at Made Possible in Lehigh Valley.
Alex Michaels: Yeah, so the great conversation, when I got here one of the greatest things that I heard when I was in my interview process in 2018, one of the first things I talked about was I really believe that tourism and economic development need to always work together. There needs to be a collaboration there and the messaging needs to be very similar. And thank goodness for Don Cunningham and his group. They were already kind of thinking this way. They were looking at exploring how they could start pursuing talent and knowing that that's what employers / businesses are looking for nowadays. It's so important for them to have the right talent in the area for them to bring their businesses here. They started to explore what would be the message, what could be this collaborative message that they'll come up with. So they hired a firm out of Harrisburg and they came up with the Made Possible in Lehigh Valley concept and idea, and I loved it because you know, we consider ourselves as DMOs (destination marketing organizations) as storytellers and what better way of telling your story with you can tell your Made Possible in the Lehigh Valley story, what you know, what brought you here, why you're here. Why did you choose to learn here, to live here, work here and this is what's great about the Made Possible. So Made Possible in the Lehigh Valley story, our concept is just a tagline. It's basically a storytelling campaign that lets people around the country know what are Made Possible story is and what the kind of people that they are going to encounter when they come to the Valley. We're hard working people but we're also innovative and were enthusiastic and we want this to be a place of growth and everything. So I think there's, I think everyone has a Made Possible in Lehigh Valley story.
Tejas Gosai: Yeah, and now I'm gonna be. Sorry. I've had my head down in real estate. I knew about this campaign. I didn't know how interactive it was. So now, you know, Jeremy runs the show, so Jeremy, let's start using this. Absolutely. Start tagging it. Have some fun with it. And honestly, that's one of the reasons we wanted to do this Podcast. You know, I know all the 4-units and 20-units and like every piece of every gas station and you know. Like I'm in such a weird real estate bubble. And you said it right man. My kids are the reason that I know about, you know, Keck Park and all these like little things and how much the water tributaries and and all this stuff. It's really. I mean, I'm going to say it, I don't care. I'm the best advertisement there is. This is the best place in the world to live. And you should come here. But a lot of people do need to discover it, understand it. We can talk to you all day. I got to ask our final question here and you're probably the worst person to ask this. What's your favorite restaurant in the Lehigh Valley.
Alex Michaels: Oh my gosh. I have a ton but the one that kind of came to mind because I think it was pretty recent. There is a little gem in Allentown called 'Union and Finch' and if you've never been there, it's an excellent restaurant that I would highly recommend for you all to try. But I can sit here and give you about 50 different restaurants. There's incredible culinary scene. Easton has got an amazing culinary scene, and so does Bethlehem. So each area has one that I would recommend but definitely Union and Finch in Allentown is one of my favorites, kind of like a little hidden gem out there in the Allentown area. And on a final note before you let me, before we go. I just want to encourage any listeners, any business owners in the Lehigh Valley, the Made Possible in Lehigh Valley campaign is a campaign, for the Lehigh Valley. So any business, any investor, anybody who wants to tag and utilize that that tagline is welcome to do it. It's #lvmadepossible and we're encouraging people to utilize that logo and utilize that campaign because we want to share with United States our story. So tell us your Made Possible in Lehigh Valley story and work with us. Reach out to Mike Keller and Made Possible and let us work with you to get your story out. I know both of you have an amazing Made Possible in Lehigh Valley story and we need to get that word out.
Tejas Gosai: We are doing it. It's time to tell it in a great way. Awesome. Anything to wrap up Jeremy?
Jeremy Moyer: Only if Alex, if anybody wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Alex Michaels: I'm really easily accessible. You could either go directly, if you forget my email, you go directly to the Discover Lehigh Valley site. The staff page has my email address, which is alex@discoverlehighvalley.com. But yeah, I always encourage people go to our site. We have, we place a lot of the community events, things to do, anything that you want to learn about the Lehigh Valley, for the most part when it comes to hospitality and tourism, is on our site. So we definitely encourage you to go there. Follow our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin pages, so that you can learn immediately what's going on. And if is there anything that we can do to encourage people to continue to visit, come here, and make this the place to call home and we're very welcoming diverse market now. So I'm really excited for the future of the Lehigh Valley.
Tejas Gosai: For sure. You nailed it. That's Jeremy Moyer over there. We have Alex Michaels who is the CEO of Discover Lehigh Valley. Awesome interview. We could go on all day. Do you mind if we have you back on in a few months?
Alex Michaels: Yeah, of course. I'm sure we'll have a lot more crazy fun stuff to report and we're all, hopefully we can do this in person one day.
Tejas Gosai: Yeah, please God. But this is Real Estate Investor MBA. We came up with this idea, and we wanted to share all the stories as well, as with some of the other folks in the Valley. Cheers.
