Convention and visitor bureaus
perform vital community services, from marketing their destinations
to rolling out the welcome mat for meeting planners and tourists.
And that’s profitable work. In a given year, CVBs help bring in
travel and tourism spending worth $100 billion in tax revenue for
local, state and federal governments, according to the Washington,
D.C.-based Travel Industry Association.
But, like businesses in any industry,
CVBs operate differently, with varying levels of successes,
failures and sometimes even scandal. To bring some consistency to
how bureaus operate -- and ideally infuse some universal standards
into their procedures -- Destination Marketing Association
International, the Washington, D.C.-headquartered trade group that
represents more than 600 bureaus in 25 countries, is rolling out an
accreditation program for CVBs. Here’s why -- and what it means for
the planners who depend on their services.
Out from the
scandals
Besides money and visitors, CVBs also
can bring a city unwanted notoriety. Indeed, at times the universe
of destination marketing organizations appears beset by incidents
of graft and controversy. “Think back over the last five years, and
it seems like there have been a variety of different issues that
have raised the issue of credibility,” acknowledges Doug Price,
senior vice president of professional development for DMAI
(formerly called the International Association of Convention and
Visitor Bureaus, or IACVB).
The examples are many: Last year in
West Palm Beach, Fla., the CVB’s comptroller was accused of
embezzling $1.5 million in bureau funds that were intended, in
part, to pay taxes owed to the Internal Revenue Service. In 2004,
local hotels in Akron, Ohio, threatened to boycott their own local
CVB over an alleged lack of accountability and communication. In
2003, Denver residents awoke to the headline, “Visitors Bureau
Fires President; Strip Club Party Among Issues Cited.”
Of course, these are isolated cases and
should not condemn the entire industry. However, such scandals have
lead to a decline of confidence and credibility in CVBs in the
minds of some -- especially because they make for compelling
“gotcha” journalism and receive more than their fare share of
publicity.
“I think that we’re past the scandals,”
says Doug Neilson, president and CEO of Visit Milwaukee. “This was
an issue years ago, and it was also an issue in the corporate world
across the board in every industry. Because we’re a publicly funded
CVB and are scrutinized in that way, it’s important that we should
have credibility and accountability.”
Many CVBs receive public funding and
are subject to state open-records acts, whereby reporters (or
anybody else) may access records pertaining to finance or
operation. But DMAI’s Destination Marketing Accreditation Program
(DMAP) goes much further, requiring regular audits, liability
insurance, annual budgets linked to strategic plans, adoption of
DMAI’s accounting system and other essential elements that will
make transparency and accountability the name of the game -- and
scandal less likely.
Model operations
Another source of difficulty for CVBs
is their lack of uniformity in purpose, organization or operation.
Even identification as a “convention and visitors bureau” is
increasingly rare, with many groups converting in recent years to
the industry-preferred appellation “destination marketing
organization” or DMO. (For the purposes of this article, the terms
are interchangeable.)
According to the 2005 Profile of a
Convention and Visitor Bureau complied by DMAI, 65 percent of CVBs
are not-for-profit entities, while 18 percent are government
agencies. Half are membership organizations -- with hoteliers,
cultural groups, event service suppliers and restaurateurs being
the most typical members. Most CVBs (87 percent) receive operating
funds from bed taxes. However, additional funding can come from
public sources, such as states and cities, and private sources,
such as membership dues, donations and sales at CVB-operated
visitor centers.
Like other industries’ programs, DMAP
establishes universal standards for destination marketers, in hopes
that standardization will demonstrate to a bureaus’ stakeholders
and clients that the organization is accountable and meets an
industry measure of excellence.
To become an accredited DMO, a bureau
must complete a thorough application process whereby it must comply
with 54 mandatory standards and 33 voluntary standards.
“That was one of the more difficult
things in the accreditation process,” says Valerie Pena, executive
director with the Bloomington/Monroe County (Ind.) Convention and
Visitors Bureau, one of the first bureaus to become accredited.
“They give latitude because some CVBs are in a chamber of commerce,
some get money from offices of economic development, some are run
on innkeeper’s taxes, some get money in other ways. It’s not so
much about how its funded as being able to communicate how
its funded, so it is clean and understandable to the public.
They’re not trying to make everybody the same.”
GLOBAL EFFORT
The BestCities Global Alliance is a small group of bureaus around the world that was founded in 2000. Members -- representing Cape Town, South Africa; Copenhagen, Denmark; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Edinburgh, Scotland; Melbourne, Australia; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Singapore; and Vancouver, British Columbia -- pledge to uphold service standards and provide planners with benefits loosely akin to what airline alliances offer frequent flyers. Planners can share event details and profiles with BestCities destinations simultaneously, negotiate with multiple members and expect the same standards of service from all.
“We’re focusing on international association meetings and larger corporate meetings,” says Lisa Klint, Copenhagen-based general manager of the BestCities Global Alliance. “They could rotate to Edinburgh or Melbourne year to year, and we’d share the profile of the group and have a leads exchange.”
In November 2006, the BestCities alliance announced plans for a Global Certification Program, with help from London-based Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance Ltd. and a hospitality consultancy in Dubai, to improve the quality and performance of service standards.
“The certification is for services relating to meeting planners,” notes Klint. “It covers the 35 service standards that all of our partners need to adhere to. It takes those standards and puts them into a quality management program that can be managed by a third party. We’ve put best practices and tools into the process so we could assess who has the highest baseline among the BestCities partners. It is compulsory for the partners to be assessed. We will do that in February and March with internal audits, and Lloyd’s will perform the extended audits after that.”
But what is the difference between DMAI’s DMAP accreditation and BestCities’ Global Certification Program? Klint explains, “From what I know of DMAP, it’s for the whole aspect of being an organization, with all stakeholders and markets considered, while ours is tailored to service given to meeting planners and ensuring that there is consistency across the globe. You know, there’s a big difference between how a U.S.-based CVB works and how a CVB in Europe or Asia or Dubai works.” -- B.M.L.
Accreditation nation
The DMAP process has its roots outside
of DMAI. The process of accrediting CVBs began in Indiana in 2004,
when state officials developed the Accredited Destination
Management Organization, or ADMO program, with the Purdue
University-based Institute for Convention & Visitors Bureau
Accreditation. ADMO was later transformed into DMAP, which is in
the final stages of beta testing, with several CVBs having already
achieved accreditation.
“The state of Indiana raised this issue
in the late 1990s and early 2000s,” says DMAI’s Price, who helped
build the accreditation program at DMAI. “They were suggesting that
the industry needs standards and saying, in effect, ‘We here in
Indiana are taking the lead on it.’ And they did. They came up with
an extensive review process for accrediting bureaus, originally
targeting the state of Indiana, and it spread to Wisconsin,
Tennessee and other states. They approached us and said this
program would have more credibility if it wasn’t state-based. They
were right. We saw they had the pillars of a basic program, and we
decided to enhance it and take it over. Now it’s internationally
available, and you need not be a member of DMAI to become
accredited.”
For CVBs seeking accreditation, the
hurdles are high. First, there’s a fee. For members of DMAI, the
costs are $1,000 for the initial application, $400 yearly for
maintenance and $750 for renewal after four years. For nonmembers,
the fees are roughly double.
Aside from the cash outlay, DMAP
requires bureaus to show transparency and clearly explain all
relevant policies and procedures to prove they measure up to the
program’s standards of organization and provision of service.
Standards were created to ensure a core competence in governance,
finance, management, human resources, technology, visitors’
services, sales, communications, membership, branding, destination
development and other areas.
“When I got involved in it, I was like,
‘Oh my gosh, I hope I can get it done in time,’?” says bureau
director Pena. “It made us kind of stop and go back and not just do
status quo. That was good for me. Some of it seems like basic
stuff, and you say, ‘We do that!’ But are your ducks in a row so
that at any given time you could produce solid info about what you
do?”
“We were pleasantly surprised that we
were already meeting the mandatory standards,” says Judy Widlowski,
vice president of finance and administration with Visit Milwaukee.
“We put an internal team together to collect the information along
with collateral materials and prepared it for DMAI. It was a
time-consuming process, but as we thought we were achieving
excellence, this was confirmation of that.”
Even if a bureau passes muster with
DMAP’s mandatory standards, the voluntary standards included in the
program give these organizations goals to achieve and a road map to
betterment.
“The voluntary measures are something
for us to shoot for to improve ourselves,” says Visit Milwaukee’s
Doug Neilson. “Besides, as time rolls on, some of these voluntary
measurements are going to become mandatory.”
As DMOs will need to go through the
accreditation process every four years to maintain their DMAP
status, many see the value in making progress on voluntary
standards ahead of time.
Are planners
affected?
While a CVB’s organizational structure
or auditing policy does not immediately effect a meeting planner, a
bureau’s overall standard of performance does. Destination
marketers provide a range of crucial services to meeting and trade
show planners. In general, they pave the way for an effective event
and take stress off the planning process.
For instance, CVB sales or meeting
staff ordinarily can assist in locating event or meeting space,
securing hotel guest room blocks and setting up site inspections.
Additionally, CVBs serve as links between planners who might
require a range of services, such as ground transportation,
catering, entertainment and off-site event help, and qualified
local suppliers of such services. Also important, a CVB usually
markets the destination to potential attendees. DMAP guidelines
ensure that approved bureaus are providing certain of these
services.
“We have heard from planners that one
of the frustrations with bureaus is the lack of consistent service
offerings around the world,” says DMAI’s Doug Price. “As a meeting
planner, you absolutely should have confidence in working with
accredited DMOs anywhere.”
Another pet peeve is sales calls. “One
of the biggest areas of feedback we hear from planners is the
desire to not get inundated with publicity and unnecessary contacts
from vendors in a destination,” explains Price. “We make sure there
is an opt-out clause in the contract, so that if a planner doesn’t
want to hear from anyone but the CVB, they won’t.”
Marketing
excellence
While accredited bureaus are proud of
their DMAP status, few are actively hyping it -- at least not
yet.
“We have the plaque hanging in the
lobby, and we did the press release when we were accredited,” says
Bloomington’s Pena. “We have not used it from a marketing
standpoint yet. From our end, it was a matter of making sure our
mayor, our city council and other stakeholders all felt like, ‘We
have a good bureau here, and we don’t have to be concerned about
them doing something wacky.’ But as more CVBs become accredited,
meeting planners will begin to look for that as a sign such bureaus
are more driven to excellence.”
In all, six destination marketing
organizations achieved accreditation through the Destination
Marketing Association in 2006: the Alexandria (Va.) Convention and
Visitors Bureau; Boise (Idaho) Convention and Visitors Bureau;
Greater Louisville (Ky.) Convention and Visitors Bureau; Visit
Milwaukee; Greater Naples, Marco Island & The Everglades (Fla.)
Convention and Visitors Bureau; and Tourisme Montreal.
Another group of nine destination
marketing groups based in Florida, Indiana, Tennessee and Wisconsin
rank as the true pioneers of DMO accreditation, having been
accredited under the original ADMO program developed in Indiana
prior to 2006, and are considered to have DMAP-approved status.
Soon, these organizations and many more
might be using DMAP to sell themselves and their services, as the
DMAP seal of approval gradually adorns more industry websites and
promotional materials. “I’m looking forward to this as one of those
things that adds credibility to us if a meeting planner of an
association is looking at us,” says Jack Moneypenny, Visit
Milwaukee’s vice president of sales. “We live in the days of suffix
initials like CAE, CMP and CDME, and when they’re in there it adds
a little comfort zone. In years to come, it is something that will
hit people like, ‘If a bureau isn’t accredited, why aren’t they?’
There are still just a few bureaus that are part of this. Once 200
bureaus are a part of this, it will be big in the industry.”
That time may not be far off as DMAI
ramps up its efforts. As it moves from the beta test phase into
regular implementation of the DMAP program this year, the
association plans to accept applications three times per year, with
as many as 25 applicants per review cycle. According to DMAI’s
Price, “As of today, for first review class, we have 18 bureaus who
have expressed intent to participate. For 2007, we’re up to a total
of 28.”