Perhaps unsurprisingly, a city has taken tourism to its literal outer space, with Lexington, Kentucky, today launching a campaign encouraging aliens to visit. The new marketing campaign, which started earlier this month by VisitLEX, the city’s tourism, aims to advertise Lexington as ‘the best place on Earth,’ inviting extra-terrestrial tourists, if any, from the TRAPPIST-1 solar system 40 light years away.

Leslie Miller, VISITLEX VP of Marketing, stated the rationale in support of the initiative, acknowledging that ‘’We think Lexington is the best place on earth, so why not invite our extraterrestrial friends to visit and see the best of what earth has to offer?’’ This grand endeavor of integratingunctuationics into future linguistics—marketing it accordingly—a global team of scientists, linguists, science fiction fans, specialists in the digital media, and engineers.

The main feature of the campaign was directing an infrared laser message from the Kentucky Horse Park toward the TRAPPIST-1 solar system. Of all the distant star systems, this one is believed to support the greatest number of potential earth-like earth sized planets that are known at the moment and for this reason, it would be the best one for Lexington’s interstellar public relations. This message which will travel for 40 years contains all sorts of things that are intended to be understood irrespective of the language or culture of the recipient.

Dr. Brenna Byrd, who is an American linguistics expert working on the project, noted the complexities faced and issues to do with the messaging. ‘We sent a bunch of different messages based on who might be able to interpret them,’ she said. The team used images, audio files, mathematical equations, and even molecular communications to try and tell potential alien visitors what Lexington is all about.

Even though the extended goal of the campaign is to lure extraterrestrial tourists in the far future, the primary objective here on Earth is. Miller noted that the campaign was created to spread information about Lexington and what it has to offer to the public. This concept of tourism marketing has already proven to be effective and new, and, thanks to this feature, has attracted quite a lot of attention to Lexington and could potentially attract human visitors interested in such an innovative approach.

Interstellar tourism is relevant to the recently launched interstellar tourism campaign because Lexington has registered an impressive tourism industry with a record $1.6 billion tourism contribution as per records in 2023. This other worldly marketing attempt could potentially take Lexington marketing to the next level and make it even more appealing as visitors may want to see the city that tried to reach for the stars first.

To mark such a historical achievement and to inform locals and tourists, the Lexington Visitors Center in the downtown area is currently hosting multiples artefacts that include the infrared laser that was used to beam the interstellar message. Also, visitors can engage in the campaign of posting messages on the post cards which will be deposited at the Kentucky Horse Park ready incase the martians arrive in the future.

Of course, as much as Lexington is seeking to revolutionize the concept of marketing tourism, this interstellar promotion is quite fitting for the city. Despite the fact that it may take tens or even hundreds of years before any extraterrestrial beings get the invitation, the action has already helped to stir the public interest around the world and presented Lexington as a place that truly can offer other-worldly experience.