Welcome to “a new world of
CVBs,” in the words of David DuBois, who took over as
president and CEO of the Fort Worth (Texas) Convention and Visitors
Bureau in January. Indeed, DuBois and a host of other new bureau
heads are poised to transform the way CVBs do business in what many
agree is a tumultuous time for cities seeking revenue from
meetings.
The new world DuBois talks about is a
place where competition and financial scrutiny have escalated to
new heights, and hitherto sleepy cities have built major facilities
and joined the scramble for meetings business. In the new world,
the old practices -- like a name badge and a handshake at an
industry trade show -- aren’t enough to achieve ambitious new
business goals. It’s a fast-paced environment that needs to be
nourished with energy and constant reinvention.
It’s also a world that increasingly has
been turning to leadership from the outside, with the likes of
DuBois, David Peckinpaugh in San Diego, Tim Roby in Chicago and Don
Welsh in Seattle all working within the CVB community for the first
time.
Several new CVB heads -- presidents and
CEOs, and an executive director -- recently spoke with
M&C to outline their plans and some of the hurdles
they face to make their destination stand out among fiercely rival
counterparts.
David DuBois
Fort Worth Convention and Visitors Bureau
Within days of the official
announcement last December that David DuBois was to be Douglas
Harman’s successor in Fort Worth, he had dined downtown with Harman
(and offered him an ongoing advisory position at the bureau),
started formulating new fund-raising and advertising campaigns, and
held a staff meeting during which he quoted passionately from
Results Rule! by Randy Pennington (the take-home point:
Create a culture in which everybody sells the destination). “And I
don’t get my first paycheck till January,” he told
M&C.
A resident of Plano, Texas, 50 miles
northeast of Fort Worth, DuBois brings to the bureau 13 years of
hotel sales and marketing experience with Sheraton and Ritz-Carlton
and 16 years on the association side Ñ most recently he served as
vice president of sales and key accounts for Meeting Professionals
International and executive vice president of the MPI
Foundation.
DuBois plans to draw on all of that
experience to kick-start an aggressive campaign to sell Fort Worth,
which over the next two years will see the additions of a 608-room
Omni convention center hotel and a 434-room Sheraton. The city, for
the first time, will be able to pursue 1,000-person groups. “We
will open up to the meeting planning world a whole new product,”
says the new bureau chief.
With new facilities comes added
pressure to fill the beds -- pressure coming from all over: No
longer is Dallas or San Antonio the major competition, DuBois
notes. Rivals now include Las Vegas, Milwaukee, even Copenhagen,
Denmark. But DuBois is up to the challenge. “I’m a very competitive
guy,” he says.
DuBois’ top priority is to identify
qualified meeting planners and bring them to town to experience the
revitalized city. Don’t be surprised, he warns, to find him working
a trade show floor wearing cowboy boots and a fine European suit,
to extend the city’s “Cowboys and Culture” marketing campaign that
positions Fort Worth as a place where groups can glimpse the Old
West (the livery and stables at Stockyards Station, for example) as
well as sophisticated urban culture (Sundance Square has four
theaters and the Bass Performance Hall). He also plans to increase
the bureau’s financial resources through creative fund-raising and
cooperative programs with local businesses.
By Dubois’ estimation, meetings
represent a $200 billion industry worldwide. “Fort Worth just wants
its fair share,” he says -- with a wink that suggests he is gunning
for much more than that.
Dan Lincoln
Cincinnati USA Convention and Visitors Bureau
The defining moment of Dan Lincoln’s as
yet brief tenure as president and CEO of the Cincinnati USA
Convention and Visitors Bureau was the day, last October, that the
NAACP announced it would bring its 2008 National Convention to
Cincinnati instead of Las Vegas. “It was like David snatching the
prize from the mouth of Goliath,” Lincoln recalls.
A month and a half after the NAACP
comes to town next year, the National Baptist Association is due to
bring nearly 20,000 people to Cincinnati.
“The fact is, when you start hitting a
few home runs, people start noticing,” Lincoln says. “Planners
start to think, ‘Perhaps we should be considering that market.
What’s going on in Cincinnati that we should know about?’?”
Lincoln worked at the Cincinnati bureau
for most of the 1990s as vice president of tourism and membership,
then left to join the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors
Association, where he served for five years, most recently as
senior vice president of sales and marketing. After launching his
own firm, Lincoln Consulting Group, he rejoined CincyUSA last
April.
“I’m passionate about rebuilding,”
Lincoln says of his attraction to Cincinnati and Baltimore, both of
which experienced periods of redevelopment during Lincoln’s prior
service. He also likes the challenge of “coming into a city where
perhaps they haven’t been running on all six cylinders” to
revitalize the destination and compete with better-funded
rivals.
On Lincoln’s watch, the Duke Ener-gy
Center reopened following a major expansion. Fountain Square, site
of the CVB’s new office, has seen 10 new restaurants and clubs open
within the last few months. Lincoln hopes these improvements will
create a buzz about the city. “Once we get awareness, we’ll get
preference,” he says. “I strongly believe that.”
It’s no small task, especially with
limited financial resources and so many competing destinations. “We
need to be and we are being much more strategic in the business
we’re going after and how we’re going after it,” Lincoln says.
The bureau chief has realigned his
staff to focus less on tourism and more on group business, and he
wants to target national and regional associations, as well as the
much-coveted medical, pharmaceutical and educational groups.
The key to marketing, Lincoln believes,
is getting planners to see the city firsthand. “The trick is to get
them here to sample the product,” he says. “I know we can seal the
deal.”
Nan Marchand
Pasadena Convention and Visitors Bureau
After spending 15 years at Universal
Studios Hollywood, most recently as vice president of sales, Nan
Marchand created her own boutique consulting firm that worked with
destination management companies and the Pasadena (Calif.)
Convention and Visitors Bureau.
What eventually attracted her to the
position of executive director at the CVB, which she assumed in
October 2006, was the fact that Pasadena was “on the cusp” of major
change.
The centerpiece of the city’s ascension
in the meetings world is an expanding convention center, which will
open 85,000 square feet of exhibit space in 2009. “It’s never going
to be a huge center,” Marchand admits. “Given that fact, it’s
really going to be state-of-the-art, first-class space, similar to
meeting facilities at a four- or five-star property.”
Marchand’s major task will be to sell
the center in a hotel market that is extremely healthy without much
group business: Overall occupancy rates for fiscal year 2006
averaged 76 percent, and rates were even higher during weekdays. “I
think we do need more hotel development in this city,” she says,
although no plans are actively being considered.
Even without a mega-size center or a
plethora of new hotels, Pasadena is a draw for planners looking for
a small, stylish destination that’s easy to manage in Southern
California. Four main hotels are within walking distance of the
convention center.
Marchand is concentrating her efforts
on encouraging venues, and her bureau, to be high-tech and
user-friendly. “We’re a one-stop-shopping destination,” she notes.
“The convention center is owned and operated by the same parent
company as the bureau. We can really handle everything
internally.”
She’s initiated a technology upgrade at
the bureau that will enable her to see bookings at the convention
center in real time, and she wants to make the bureau’s website a
much more robust research tool without ceasing to communicate the
stylish appeal of the city.
The bulk of Pasadena’s group business
comes from state associations. Marchand has realigned her sales
team to focus on small- to midsize exhibitions and meetings, as
well as incentive business.
On a personal note, the bureau chief
says she’s also looking to further her education. “One of my goals
is to speak Japanese fluently before I die,” notes Marchand. In the
meantime, she’s becoming increasingly conversant in the advantages
of the city she represents.
Jeff Miller
Portland Oregon Visitors AssociationThe first order of business for Jeff
Miller as president and CEO of the Portland Oregon Visitors
Association is to get shovels in the ground for a headquarters
hotel. To do that, he will have to draw on one of his greatest
strengths: his ability to communicate with politicians. Leaders
throughout the city and the region “need to understand the economic
impact, what this industry does,” he says.
Miller, who assumed his post last
November, believes Portland’s officials do understand the
importance of convention and tourism business, thanks largely to
the efforts of former POVA president and CEO Joe D’Alessandro, but
he also knows that any major proposals need to be well-researched
and carefully thought out. For his part, Miller says, he needs to
continue to sell the idea by “telling the story in different
ways.”
Selling has never been a problem for
Miller. He spent 25 years in retail, 13 of them as a general
manager at Saks Fifth Avenue in Portland. During that time he also
sat on POVA’s board.
“I understood at Saks that people
weren’t just buying clothes but how the clothes made them feel,”
Miller explains. “When visitors come to Portland, it’s about how
the city welcomes them, how the city makes them feel. We have to
take a very broad view and understand what the total experience
is.”
Portland is buoyed by vibrant
entertainment and restaurant scenes and its close proximity to
outdoor recreation spots. Miller wants the city to continue to lead
in the realm of environmental responsibility by building or
converting more hotels to LEED (Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design) standards.
Miller expects a modest budget increase
this year and wants to welcome qualified planners to experience the
city firsthand. “We have an incredible mix of an urban downtown
that’s very accessible, plus the ability to get out into nature
very quickly,” Miller says. “That’s really what we have to
sell.”
David Peckinpaugh
San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau
An avid sailor, David Peckinpaugh likes
to think of himself as the “skipper” of the San Diego Convention
and Visitors Bureau. He joined the CVB last June as president and
CEO after eight years with Experient, then known as Conferon Global
Services, and 14 years in the hotel industry. Immediately, he faced
the challenges of a dwindling budget, the result of more occupancy
tax funds being used to bankroll public safety and other city
initiatives. “This is the situation we’re in,” Peckinpaugh says
philosophically. “How can we make the best of it?”
One way, he says, is to support a
proposal to add a 2 percent business improvement district surcharge
to hotel bills; at least half of the revenue would go directly to
the CVB. The funds, he says, will help him develop a long-range
“blue ocean strategy” to create new market space, rather than
compete for existing meetings business. “We’ve got to break the
rules and redefine ourselves,” Peckinpaugh declares.
Another of the skipper’s major efforts
will be to reinvigorate a spirit of partnership within the San
Diego business community that has “suffered significantly” over the
past few years. “If we get that community aligned and really
collaborating, I think we’re going to be tough to beat,” he
says.
Martha Sheridan
Providence Warwick Convention & Visitors Bureau
The president and CEO’s office at the
Providence Warwick Convention & Visitors Bureau in Rhode Island
should look familiar to Martha Sheridan. She’s occupied it before
as interim president -- twice, in fact, between 1995 and 1999. She
left to serve as vice president of sales at the Newport County
(R.I.) Convention and Visitors Bureau, but felt 2006 was the right
time to return to Providence. “I was ready for a new challenge,”
she says.
Having joined the bureau last June,
she’s excited about developments taking place around her. “The
capital city is on the verge of a new chapter,” she notes.
By the end of this year, Providence
will have a total of 2,000 hotel rooms within walking distance of
its convention center, 750 of which will be new or renovated. A
revamped Dunkin’ Donuts Center is being attached via enclosed
walkway to the convention center. The Westin Providence, the
convention center headquarters hotel, is adding a 200-room tower,
and the construction of several new residential buildings promises
to attract more shopping and restaurant options to the city’s
well-preserved historic districts, framed by Brown University to
the east and the Italian enclave of Federal Hill to the west.
“I think every CEO of a city this size
has the same goals I have,” Sheridan notes. Among them: Offer
top-quality customer service to clients, attract groups that can
generate the most economic benefit and raise the profile of the
city in the minds of planners.
Sheridan appreciates that Mayor David
Cicilline is so supportive of the bureau, and she believes his
help, along with the new facilities, will enable Providence to
attract larger, more lucrative groups. “Our package stands up to
any other, any day,” she says.