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NATCHEZ — After almost a year in the making, the Pilgrimage Garden Club has rolled out radical albeit exciting changes to its Spring Pilgrimage this year.

Laine and Kevin Berry are spearheading the effort at the request of the PGC’s executive board.

The Berrys, who moved to Natchez in 2021, are the founders of Our Restoration Nation, an online community of more than 150,000 followers interested in history and architecture. They have been renovating homes for 25 years in various locations in the country, mainly in the Southeast. They purchased Hope Farm in July 2023, shortly after being damaged by fire. They are in the process of reconstructing and renovating it. The house, which dates back to 1775, is one of the most historically significant in the city.

The Berrys are interested in history, architecture, and historic preservation. They also have extensive experience in business and marketing. Kevin ran his advertising agency for 34 years, and Laine has owned and operated several businesses, focusing on high-end offerings and exclusivity.

“He has more than three decades of business marketing experience,” she said.

“Laine has owned several large businesses and brings business experience to this venture,” he said.

Laine said that when they moved to Natchez, they were surprised by the many who expressed negativity toward the potential for growing tourism there.

“They said, ‘Nobody wants to come to Natchez anymore. It’s too hard to get here. We don’t have an airport.’” she said. “We set out to prove that’s not true.”

‘Proof of concept’

Since then, they have held two “proof of concept” events in Natchez with Restoration Nation. The results of those events prove that Natchez is still a vital and vibrant tourist destination.

“The first weekend, we had people from 24 states with us. The second weekend, we had people from 27 states. People came to Natchez from as far away as Washington State, New Hampshire, Maine, and Vancouver … Natchez needs to do something entirely different, and we tested the waters with those two weekends.”

As members of the Pilgrimage Garden Club, the club’s executive board saw the Berrys’ success of those two weekends and approached them about partnering to reimagine what Spring Pilgrimage looks like, they said.

“We realized through those two weekends we need to cast our net far wider than we have been in recent years with all of our cultural tourism,” Laine said.

The Berrys began researching together issues they saw with the past configuration of Spring Pilgrimage.

“We looked at it as a tourist. What issues need to be improved? As a homeowner, what problems exist? We tried to look at the issue from all sides,” Laine said.

She said one person who had been excited to visit Natchez expressed a sentiment they would hear repeatedly.

“One woman told me, ‘I went to Natchez a few years ago and was so excited. But when we got there, none of the houses we wanted to see were open when we wanted to see them. We couldn’t figure out where to go. We wound up being so disappointed,’ “ Laine said. “That’s never how we want our guests to leave this city feeling, right?”

Exclusivity and a sense of urgency

It became clear the experience needed to be consolidated and presented more as an exclusive event.

“We came up with two long weekends as opposed to two months. All the houses will be open every day for every tour with one ticket price. That solved many of the problems we heard from both sides,” Kevin said.

Laine said it is a misconception that everyone coming to Pilgrimage lives within a day’s drive of Natchez.

“The thinking now is that our guests live within a day’s drive, so if they miss a house, they can shoot back up the road and see it the next weekend, right? Well, if you live in New Hampshire, you can’t do that,” she said. “Our objective was to make it as clear, concise, and simple for our guests as possible.”

“Now, they know they can go to one website and buy one ticket, and they get access to all the homes. The tours of the homes are on a clear-cut schedule — 9, 10, 11, 1, 2 and 3,” Kevin said. “It’s much easier on our homeowners because our homeowners don’t have to answer the door every two minutes or every three minutes and run multiple tours through the house at one time. There aren’t as many processes in the dance.”

Tourists will no longer be able to buy a ticket at a PGC house. Tourists, or guests, as the Berrys call them, will buy tickets online at the PilgrimageNatchez.com website and, when they arrive, will go to the PGC headquarters at the Carriage House, where they will pick up their wristbands that give access to the homes and their Welcome Packets.

“Kevin and I are very fortunate. We feel very, very honored that the PGC asked us to step into this role. This is huge, and we understand the obligation that’s been placed on us. Our experience in marketing and business has allowed us to reimagine Pilgrimage in a way that is going to benefit everyone in the long run.

“Our city’s industry is tourism. We are mindful that our hotels, bed and breakfasts, and retail vendors all rely on the money that comes through Pilgrimage for a good chunk of their yearly income. We wanted to be very clear: The objective is to bring not only the same number of visitors but also more to this event and to grow the event going forward. We want hotels and B&Bs to be booked for two weeks solid. We want them to be full as opposed to selling rooms this weekend or that weekend.

“One of the best sales techniques on the planet, and the most successful sales experience on the planet, is to create a sense of exclusivity and a sense of urgency. So instead of having a few stragglers coming into the shop over a month and a half, you condense an event down to a limited time and offer very special events, you encourage your consumer to show up and take action,” Laine said.

The magic of Natchez

A big part of the magic of Natchez, she said, is its culture.

“Part of what we sell when we’re selling Natchez on our YouTube channel is the culture of Natchez. In recent years — since the Tableaux went away — Pilgrimage lost the culture of Natchez aspect. We want to bring back for our guests who are coming here the magical experience of what Natchez is. So now we’ve incorporated for our guests evening events. They’ve been to our houses all day and then they will have evening events that will help them fall in love with our city and desire to return year after year after year,” she said.

The Pilgrimage Garden Club plans to add two new houses on its tour each year on a revolving basis, as well as feature some of the city’s Victorian houses built as late as 1910, as they are doing with this year. The emphasis will be on the architecture of the home, rather than only its decor.

“While we obviously will cast a wide net, we don’t want to neglect the people in our own backyard. We want those people to come back, too, to see the new homes and our cultural events,” Kevin said.

“We hope that people who have experienced Pilgrimage many times will all of a sudden see a home they have been dying to get into for 20 years is on the list of homes and they will be anxious to come back and experience our city again,” Laine said.

Natchez created cultural tourism, the Berrys said, and other cities Natchez now competes with for tourists originally followed the Natchez model.

“Charleston, Savannah, Boston, Williamsburg. Those are our four biggest competitors. Every city that does cultural tourism copied our model. The difference is those cities have evolved in the way they market cultural tourism, the way it functions. It’s just time for us to evolve. Tourism is a survival of the fittest industry. We have to stake our claim at the top of the food chain.

“We did a lot of research. We have almost four times the inventory of daily open homes as our top competitor city. When we’ve shared that information with people here, the response has been, ‘Yes, but they have an airport.’ Williamsburg doesn’t, and yet they’re drawing hundreds of thousands of guests and getting billions of dollars in revenue each year,” Laine said. “It’s time to quit making excuses about why we’re not one of those top four and make changes that are going to make it happen.”

After being asked how they would reconstruct Spring Pilgrimage, the Berrys began their research and planning.

“We came up with 10 new extremely different ways of doing it and adding events. We were thinking, you know, maybe they’ll do three or four of these,” Kevin said. “They said yes to every one. There was not a single thing that we suggested that they aren’t doing.”

“We really can’t commend the PGC board enough. They recognized that changes need to be made. Our executive board has been absolutely visionary in their approach to evolving Pilgrimage to the next step,” Laine said.