Over the past two
years, a number of long-serving executives at major
convention and visitor bureaus around the country have retired (or
will soon do so). M&C spoke to six of these CVB
industry legends -- Bill Peeper of Orlando, Reint Reinders of San
Diego, John Marks of San Francisco, Bob Imperata of Pittsburgh, Bob
Bedell of Indianapolis and Spurgeon Richardson of Atlanta -- about
how they got their start, changes on their watch, challenges their
successors face and, of course, how their golf games have been
improving.
Here, in their own words, is a lively
picture of the CVB world over the past four decades and beyond.
Career beginnings
Bill Peeper: I started, as so
many others did then, by chance. I was getting out of the Air Force
after a tour in Vietnam, and they were offering “early outs” for
people with less than a year left to transition back to civilian
life.
I always was interested in chamber-type
activities, so I went to the Dayton [Ohio] Chamber of Commerce to
see if I could transition with them. I was soon offered a job to
manage conventions, since the city was building a small convention
center. Dayton was a great training ground.
Reint Reinders: I had a
career before the CVB business, in the hotel business. I was with
Marriott as a general manager for 21 years. I had joined the hotel
company in 1969 and traveled across the country -- in fact, I went
coast-to-coast five times, opening Marriott hotels along the way --
and then I landed in San Diego, opening the very first Marriott
here in 1985, as general manager. And then I became the CVB
president.
John Marks: I was born and raised
in San Francisco and had been on the staff of the chamber of
commerce there in the early 1970s. I migrated to Arizona in 1974
and ran the Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce, which was a chamber
and a convention and visitors bureau in those days. I
served as director of tourism for the state of Arizona for a short
period, and then as president of the Phoenix Convention and
Visitors Bureau before returning home to San Francisco in 1987 in
the same role.
Bob Imperata: I
started [at the Pittsburgh CVB] on April Fool’s Day, 1968. Prior to
that I had spent four years in the hotel industry selling for
Sheraton, so combined I wind up with 44 years in marketing and the
hospitality industry.
Bob Bedell: I worked for Marriott
for almost 15 years, starting when I graduated from college. Then I
started my own business and had a consulting contract with
Indianapolis in 1985. During that time, Bill McGowan, CEO at the
Indianapolis CVB, convinced me to move there and work full-time for
the bureau, and so I accepted the position in January ’86 as vice
president of sales and marketing. I was there until 1993, went to
St. Louis as president and CEO, and came back to Indianapolis as
president and CEO in 2002.
Spurgeon Richardson: I’ve been at
the Atlanta CVB for 17 years. I came here in 1991, and that’s when
I became president and CEO. But before that I had been involved
with the bureau for about 12 or 13 years, being on the board, the
executive committee, heading up the marketing committee and then as
chairman. So I’ve had a long experience with them.
Changes in the industry
Peeper: When I first
began in Dayton, our funding came from membership dues and support
from the chamber of commerce. It was only four or five years later
that the advent of room tax to be used for bureaus really started
to take off, even though New York City had a room tax many years
prior to that. There was a lot of excitement when Louisville [Ky.]
imposed a room tax, as well as San Antonio -- and this really
changed the way bureaus had to operate: Record keeping and
accountability had to be better.
Reinders: One of the
difficulties that every CVB has always had, even more so in the
past 10 years, is they are joined at the hip with most
municipalities, mainly because of their financial structure: CVBs
receive funding from cities through the transient occupancy tax.
That’s how it’s set up in most cities. And there’s been so much
pressure on cities from a financial point of view, and every year
you have to grovel to get your money from them. That’s been an
ongoing situation, and I think it’s gotten worse as cities have
gotten into more of a tight financial situation.
Marks: Competition was
pretty defined in the ’70s and ’80s -- by that I mean it was pretty
clear what cities could host what groups. That started changing by
the ’90s, when it seemed that every city -- or, better yet, every
off-ramp on the freeway -- wanted to build a convention center. So
there was just an amazing proliferation of facilities built around
the country, and not all were built for the right reasons. They
were built for redevelopment efforts, for community pride -- maybe
without proper due diligence that might have been required. So the
level of competition just heightened.
Imperata: Technology
has played a very, very important role in the changing of the
industry and how we do business on a day-to-day basis. It moved us
light years ahead of where we were, as far as being able to
identify the client base and identify their needs. At the same
time, the CVB industry has had to work at making sure that they do
not lose the human touch, that they do not lose the
relationship-building that’s necessary to generate business within
that destination.
Bedell: When I first
started at the Indianapolis CVB in 1986, it was very different from
Marriott -- everything about Marriott was accountability, it was
all about your business plan, executing your plan, your goals,
results. When I first got involved in the CVB world it was a little
“fluffier” than that -- probably not a great choice of words, but
it just wasn’t as businesslike. Now it is, and just as it’s become
more difficult in the private sector, it’s also become
significantly more difficult in our industry, in our world.
Richardson: When I
first came to the bureau in 1991, it was mostly sales calls. I was
given marching orders to run this bureau like a business -- we had
80 employees, a big budget. The idea was to make sure you made the
budget every year and to be as professional as you could be. I
think one of the things that’s changed over the years is that
successful bureaus have a much greater role with the city and state
in advocacy issues like safety and new product.
Today’s challenges
Peeper: The issue of
how CVBs are funded is going to be looming for some time. The
federal government is mandating more programs being pushed down to
the state level; the state government is pushing more programs down
to the local level, and mayors and county commissioners are saying,
“Where are we going to get the money?” So, they are looking at
increasing the room tax and saying, “People are going to come
anyway,” which is wrong.
Reinders: There’s
always the issue of being relevant and being visible. You look over
the past 10 years, and the Internet has been a sea change for
tourism development -- people getting information, making
reservations -- and many new companies have been formed, like
Hotels.com and Travelocity. All of a sudden, they have become the
competitors of destination marketing organizations. That is a very
significant piece that CVBs have to struggle with, because now they
might have to spend several hundred thousand dollars or more a year
on the Internet, making sure their online presence is easy to find,
easy to deal with and something people find attractive.
Marks: The biggest
issue we had in San Francisco is that people have been going
outside the housing block, and that has caused nightmares for the
hotels and CVBs. Twenty, 30 years ago, when you had a block of
rooms for a convention, it was honored. Some of this is being
improved now, but for my last two or three years, it was probably
the single biggest issue we had with our hotels and meeting
planners: people going around the block. And everybody was guilty
of it.
Imperata: I think the
biggest issues CVBs can face and have faced are not necessarily
within their control -- 9/11-type events or economic downturn. You
don’t have any control over that, and yet it affects the industry
tremendously. It affects how much business will come through that
community, whether or not organizations, associations and companies
will continue to have meetings away from their home base, and
whether attendance is upheld.
Bedell: I think that
the competition today is pretty unbelievable. You’ve got a lot of
destinations that compete very aggressively for the biggest
business and the best business, and you have a lot of successful
cities and a lot of cities that just don’t quite get there.
I think if cities don’t understand that
they continually have to grow and improve their convention and
tourism product, they’re going to fall by the wayside. You can’t
sell a bad product for long and expect to be successful, because it
eventually catches up to you.
Richardson: In
Atlanta, I think it’s long-term funding. We need to convince the
leaders that the need exists to spend more money marketing this
city; we’re in a very competitive market against many major cities,
and we don’t have the funding that some of these cities have. So,
if we’re going to be competitive, we need more funding to do
that.
Busy in retirement
Peeper: I recently
co-authored a book called Managing Destination Marketing
Organizations: The Tasks, Roles and Responsibilities of the
Convention & Visitors Bureau Executive [ForPer Publishing]
with Robert Ford, a professor at the University of Central Florida.
So, we are promoting the book, and we’ve had six or eight
engagements on the speaking circuit. Other than that, myself and
Joe Lathrop [founder of OCG, the Maitland, Fla.-based CVB
consulting group], John Marks and Mike Gamble [founder of
SearchWide, the Stillwater, Minn.-based hospitality executive
recruitment firm] have formed a little CVB executive coaching
service.
Reinders: Unlike most
CVB heads who retire and who had their whole careers in the CVB
business, I had a career before CVBs, in the hotel business. So in
terms of my consulting, I have several hotel development gigs --
I’m representing the Gaylord development here in San Diego that’s
being considered for the South Bay, and I’m doing some work for
CVBs as well.
Marks: I retired on
June 30, 2006, and we moved to Tucson on July 15. I am serving as
an executive consultant and coach for SearchWide. I’ve worked on
various projects with Mike Gamble and the SearchWide team, trying
to identify candidates for specific bureau and other
tourism-related roles -- but I’m always quick to point out that I
really do this between backswings. I didn’t retire to work full
time. I enjoy what I do with SearchWide, but it is just what it is:
a part-time endeavor.
Imperata: I left the
bureau last September. I have a consulting agreement with Visit
Pittsburgh, and it’s based primarily on the fact that I had served
on the board and later was elected chairman of the Pennsylvania
Society of Association Executives. So I’ve been averaging about two
trips a month to our state capital, where the association is
headquartered. That’s really kept me in the loop in the association
industry, to be able to be involved with that and have pretty much
day-to-day contact with other board members, staff and association
executives throughout Pennsylvania.
Bedell: June 26 was my
last day. I feel great about leaving. You know, all the time,
people look at me quizzically and say, “Well, what are you going to
do?” And I always answer, I’m really gonna retire now. I want to
spend more time with my family, I want to spend more time with my
grandchildren. I love to golf, fish, travel, read -- I like to work
out every day, so I want to do more of the things that I really
enjoy doing. At the same time, I want to be in a better position to
volunteer and give back and, hopefully, do some work with kids.
Richardson: First of
all, I want to get all of this pressure off of my back, so I want
to relax for a while. And then my wife and I want to do some
traveling, so we’ll do that, spend some time with our eight
grandkids. But I will never retire to do nothing; I will seek new
adventures. I’m looking at a lot of things at this point in time,
everything from maybe teaching to consulting. I’d really like to
stay involved with the industry as much as I can.