Virgin Atlantic Promotes Detroit As Hotbed Of Art, New Restaurants Before Starting Non-Stop To London Service

By Edward Cardenas

ROMULUS (CBS Detroit) - Virgin Atlantic doesn't begin flying non-stop flight between London and Detroit until June 1, but the airline is already beginning to promote the Motor City online.

Drawing on the city's musical heritage, the airline posted a blog entry titled, "Like a Virgin, Detroit for the very first time," which highlights the city's musical, entrepreneurship and creative community.

While the post briefly acknowledges the city's bankruptcy, it also highlights how diverse the arts, business and music city has become.

"Detroit is enjoying a recent resurgence and is hot bed of energy with a burgeoning art scene and new bars and restaurants popping up daily," the blog stated.

When Virgin Atlantic begins flights in June, it will be the only British airline to fly direct from Detroit to London. The airline will an Airbus A330-300 on the route which offers 33 Upper Class, 48 Premium Economy and 185 Economy seats.

Among the facts included in the Virgin Detroit infographic:

• The Heidelberg Project, a community based project led by Tyree Guyton, designed to improve the lives of people and neighborhoods through art is famous for its polka dot houses and receives over 275,000 visitors each year,
• Every Monday night, a free bike ride called Slowroll unites residents and tourists as they explore Detroit and its neighborhoods. The biggest roll to date included 3,000 people,
• Detroit is home to the highest concentration of commercial and industrial designers in the US spanning architecture, graphic design, product design, landscape design and user experience design,
• Due to its street art culture Detroit uses more liters of paint per square meter than any other city in the US,
• There are plans to create an  'Innovation District' in Midtown and Downtown Detroit which will provide workspace and money for budding entrepreneurs. It is estimated that a new idea for a start-up is generated in Detroit every 27 minutes,
• In the last year, over 30 restaurants have opened in Detroit. Try Slows (www.slowsbarbq.com) for traditional BBQ or Wright & Company (www.wrightdetroit.com) for American tapas.

Virgin is taking over the summer-only service Delta Air Lines currently operates and will be extending it to a year-round service.