June: Publisher’s Update
Several hospitality industry leaders we interviewed recently regarding the state of the travel industry agreed that association meetings and sports-related travel are two of the few bright spots on the travel-industry horizon. The roundtable session featured Loews Hotels Chairman & CEO Jonathan Tisch; Roger Dow, president & CEO of the U.S. Travel Association; Michael Gehrisch, president & CEO of Destination Marketing Association International; J. Stephen Perry, president & CEO of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau; and Maura Allen Gast, Executive Director of the Irving (Texas) Convention & Visitors Bureau.
The comments of our roundtable participants echo those of many people in the travel industry that we have spoken with during the past six months. In times like these, destinations and hotels need to target the markets that are most likely to produce business for them and two of the best markets to be targeting right now are association meetings and sports-related travel.
The complete roundtable discussion will appear in the July issues of SportsTravel and Association News magazines as part of a special section produced in conjunction with Destination Marketing Association International titled Why Meetings Matter. To request a copy of this special section, please e-mail me.
Tim Schneider
Schneider Publishing Company
4 Comments so far
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Tim,
The roundtable you mention sounds like an important piece and I am looking forward to reading it. As I travel and talk to sports commissions, it is coming very clear to me that a number are in real danger of being disbanded/ merged out of independent existence with CVBs, or having their support cut drastically. The core problem is that many did not have a strong enough philosphical base to start with, do not manage expectations and do not communicate their value enough or regularly enough. Many do not have the confidence or the ready information to address the normal concerns that come up in their communities re: funding and value or know how to sell themselves as “not a cost center but a revenue generator.”
I believe we need to help this portion of the industry to give them the tools to allow them to stay in business. Yes, sports-related travel is a bright spot, but it will be less bright if we have less people pushing it. TEAMS would be a great place to discuss these topics.
Jack Kelly
Event Partners Inc.
Jack:
Thanks for your comments! As always, your insights are appreciated. It would be extremely unfortunate if sports commissions are disbanded right at the moment when the “mainstream” travel industry is finally realizing the importance and value of hosting sporting events. You can bet this will be a topic we’ll be discussing at TEAMS 2009 in New Orleans.
Tim,
It is something we do need to talk about and address or we’ll be looking back in 4 or 5 years and wishing we had at least tried to address it. I do believe that TEAMS is one of the best places to raise the issue and to see if we can provide some tools to communities. My guess is that there ar 30-40% of the communities that do not really understand the fragility of any business or institution much less one that depends in large part on some public funding.
Sometime in the 1990s, I conducted a session at the NASC annual meeting on “Surviving the ‘Sophomore Slump’” and addressed this issue at a different point in the evolution of commissions as there were far fewer at that time. Many commissions were facing some ongoing opposition about their relative value as public officials really didn’t understand that there was value in this process.
Jack:
In “Why Meetings Matter,” Craig Davis of the Pittsburgh Convention Bureau talks about making the case for funding by positioning the travel industry as the “solution to the problem” that faces the funding entities. I think sports commissions would be well-served to take that same approach.