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By Lori K. Baker
Competition
for corporate and trade show conferences has hit a brand new high. Even
savvy professionals are feeling the aftershocks of a nationwide convention
space building boom that has created a buyer’s market for trade associations
and corporate planners. In this buyer’s market, meeting planners are
demanding and expecting more concessions — deeply discounted or free rent,
special lighting and rebates.
With meeting planners asking—and getting—more from the
cities they visit, convention center managers must enlist the whole city and
make it convention-friendly to stay ahead, experts say. And as facility
managers like Michael J. Sawaya, director of Convention, Sports and
Entertainment Facilities for the city of San Antonio, have discovered, the
first stop on that campaign trail must be the local convention and visitor’s
bureau.
Unlike many other convention facilities managers,
Sawaya doesn’t have to worry about whether he’s working at cross-purposes
with the local convention and visitor’s bureau. In San Antonio, both the
convention facilities department and CVB are city departments. “Even though
we serve ‘one master,’ the sense of teamwork must exist to be effective,” Sawaya says.
In Salt Lake City, Allyson M. Jackson, SMG general
manager for the Salt Palace Convention Center, may work for a different boss
than her counterpart at the CVB, but meeting planners are only concerned
about whether they receive seamless service. “You can’t pretend you’re a
team,” she says. “You have to be a team — every day, every week and every
month. You can’t fool meeting planners during site inspections; they know
when a city isn’t working together.”
For better or worse, much of your success in today’s
competitive marketplace rests on the strength of your ties with the local
CVB. Think of it like a marriage, says Mark White, vice president of sales
for the Salt Lake City Convention & Visitors Bureau. The time to work on the
relationship is now — not after it has already headed south.
With that in mind, here’s some hard-won wisdom from two
cities in the know — San Antonio and Salt Lake City — on seven
best practices for building and maintaining strong ties with your local CVB.
Become the TiVo of the
meetings and
convention indus try. Make
things as easy as possible for clients, providing them with one-stop
shopping. If you were a busy meeting planner, wouldn’t you prefer to make
one telephone call rather than 10? “You have to
make it easy for your client to do business with you,” Sawaya says.
In Salt Lake City, that seamless customer service
begins in the early sales phase. “When we go to call upon potential new
clients, people from the convention center go, as well as our hotel
partners,” White says. “It demonstrates to the client that we really
do get along.”
In follow-up conversations with potential clients, it’s
important for convention center managers and CVB representatives to offer
the same deal. “It’s key that the two staffs talk before an interaction with
the client so they say the same thing,” says Sawaya, who also recommends
keeping that steady dialogue going during an event.
For example, the convention center’s event services
manager needs to keep the CVB’s account manager informed of what’s happened
at the event — good and bad. “It’s just a courtesy so the account manager
isn’t blindsided,” Sawaya says. “When an account manager picks up the phone
and tells a client they’d love to have them back, they need to know what the
client’s experience
was."
Some rules are made to be broken.
Do you still have the typical arrangement with
your CVB that they’re
responsible for booking 18 or more months
in advance, while your convention center handles the shorter term and
consumer-show business? That formula isn’t always the most effective
nowadays.
Corporate meetings are now booking very
short-term, so corporate planners needing convention center space are more
likely to end up booking directly through a convention center rather than a
CVB. “Corporate business is much closer at hand than ever before,” Jackson
says. “While the CVB is out there marketing the destination, there are times
when the convention center might have the sales lead. The key is to promptly
pass that lead on to the CVB to take it from there.”
The new rules on who should pick up the
tab. Like dating after the feminism
movement, it’s not always clear who pays for concessions — convention
ce nters or CVBs.
“One of the pitfalls to
avoid is for the CVB to expect the facility to absorb the costs of
concessions made to book the business,” Sawaya says. “If concessions are
made to close a sale, this is truly a cost of sales and should be tracked as
such for accountability. Since buildings typically have large fixed costs
that are mostly utilities and labor, decreasing income only diminishes the
bottom line at the end of the year. If the expense is tracked on the sales
side, then there is accountability. While paying for rental is sometimes a
hard pill to swallow for a CVB, it represents a fair and logical business
philosophy.”
Divvy up the duties.
In the nationwide scramble for convention center business, how the centers
and CVBs divvy up duties can vary dramatically. According to some reports,
just a little more than a third of convention centers are sold and marketed
exclusively by the CVB, while the convention center marketing is handled
internally about 28 percent of the time. And in 23 percent of cities with a
conve ntion center, the CVB and the facility have a joint marketing
arrangement.
No matter what arrangement you have with your CVB, it’s
important — but not always easy — to avoid duplicating efforts. “You have to
communicate and you have to have a formalized process where you get together
and talk,” says Steve Clanton, vice president of sales for the San Antonio
Convention & Visitors Bureau.
It’s all about three words: communicate, communicate,
communicate. Exactly how do you create open lines of communication between
your convention center and the CVB? The two organizations in San Antonio and
Salt Lake City both rely on formal weekly meetings and regular, more relaxed
social get-togethers.
In Salt Lake City, Jackson has a weekly standing
appointment on her calendar with the convention center’s director of sales
and marketing and the CVB’s president and vice president of sales and
marketing. Standard agenda items include which meeting planners are coming
to town for site inspections, business that is definite, sales calls that
are comin g up, contract issues and concessions, among others.
Create win-win situations. This tip might sound simple
enough, until you consider that convention centers and CVBs have different
benchmarks for success — room
nights for CVBs and revenue generated for
convention centers. “Having these different metrics is the biggest challenge
we face,” White says.
To iron out any differences, the Salt Lake City CVB
president and the convention center general manager meet weekly. “That
serves us well to make sure all entities understand the goals and
expectations of why we booked an organization that
might not pay as much
rent, but has a huge economic impact on the city,” White says.
During such meetings with the CVB, it’s important to be
a “big-picture thinker,”
Sawaya says. “You have to focus on what’s the
overall, common goal you’re trying to
achieve.
You have to give up the
thinking, ‘What’s good for my department?’ ”
“For better or worse, much of your success in today’s
competitive marketplace rests on the strength of your ties with the local CVB.”
Find out how you’re doing — really.
If you want to find out whether your
convention center and CVB offer
seamless customer service, just ask your customers. One of the best tools to
get feedback from your customers isn’t a survey but a customer advisory
board, Sawaya says.
In San Antonio, that customer advisory board consists of 12 meeting planners
the conve ntion facility has worked with throughout the years. The board
meets twice a year to discuss such topics
as services they’re not being
offered but would
like to receive in a convention center, whether the
convention center offers a good value, and whether the city is user-friendly
—
everything from airport-to-hotel transportation to cleanliness and safety.
There’s also plenty of time for follow-up — from plans made to actions
taken.
“The customer advisory board provides us with input to
ensure we are meeting their facility and service
demands,” Sawaya says.
“Providing long-term plans to address these needs gives us potential to
attract new business as well. It’s also a good way to build customer
loyalty.”
fm
Lori K. Baker
is an award-winning freelance writer and editor specializing in business,
health and human interest profiles. Her clients include national, regional
and custom publications as well as corporations and nonprofits. She can be
reached at
lorikbaker@cox.net .
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