What Planners Need From a CVB

These are unsettled times for convention and visitor bureaus, for reasons both old and new. On one hand, third-party meeting-planning companies that provide site-selection services have long posed a stiff challenge to bureaus that primarily measure their worth by a traditional benchmark: the number of leads they provide to hotels or rooms they book directly. But in recent years this competition has become more intense as business for third parties has grown significantly, due largely to companies and some associations downsizing their staffs and outsourcing their meetings management.

CVBs also have been beset by the same force that has disrupted numerous other business models—namely, the proliferation of information on the Internet.

“Today, anybody can be a spokesman for a region,” notes Brian John Riggs, an assistant vice president at Association Headquarters, an association management firm in Mt. Laurel, NJ. 

Indeed, today’s bureaus have to strive to distinguish themselves from a host of digitally empowered competitors. Online travel agencies like Expedia, hotel review services like TripAdvisor, travel guide publishers like Fodor’s, and individual travelers who post their impressions in words and pictures on myriad social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, YouTube, and Picasa all make it harder for a CVB to maintain its visibility and position as an authoritative source for its destination.

And when it comes to event management, the Internet has enabled planners to send requests for proposals (RFP) quickly and easily online, either directly through hotel websites or through meeting site-selection services like StarCite and Cvent.

So CVBs face an increasingly noisy, confused, and evolving marketplace—one in which their roles are less and less uniquely defined. What follows are four issues some planners and industry insiders say CVBs need to address in order to stay relevant to the meetings industry in this new landscape.

 

When it comes to lead generation for meetings, David Scypinski, senior vice president for site-selection company ConferenceDirect, says, “Bureaus are like lost sheep. They’re trying to figure out what to do.” 

Steve Goodling, president and CEO of the Long Beach CVB, says bureaus do have effective strategies for serving the needs of planners. “Site-selection companies aggregate a lot of information that helps planners in the negotiation process, and that’s very useful,” he says. “CVBs offer a depth of knowledge that helps planners sell the destination to their attendees, and we have the relationships within the community that can resolve problems when they arise.”

For his part, Michael Gehrisch, chief executive of Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI), the trade group for CVBs, asserts that most bureaus “have the best relationship with the hotel community they’re representing. I wouldn’t say they are less relevant, but rather there’s more competition. It’s just gotten a lot more competitive out there.” 

And that competition often results in a blizzard of leads that obscures the role of the CVB. Hotels often receive duplicate or even triplicate RFPs for the same piece of business—from the local bureau, third-party planners, and the hotel’s national sales office. Gary Sain, president and CEO of Visit Orlando, estimates that third-party planners send about half the meeting leads that hotels receive.

“Companies like ConferenceDirect control a huge volume of business, so it’s important for us to partner with them to make sure the planner gets the best impression of our destination when going through a third party,” says John Cychol, vice president of meeting sales for the Fort Worth CVB.

Sain is less concerned about his bureau generating leads and more concerned about booked business, however that is accomplished. “We believe our first job is to brand the destination,” says Sain. “We don’t care if a lead goes through us or directly to the hotel. As long as they’re coming to Orlando, we don’t care.”

Whatever the debate is about how much value CVBs provide in meetings sourcing, bureaus are the undisputed kings in marketing destinations to groups holding city-wide conventions.

“CVBs are built to play that role,” says Richard Scharf, CEO of Visit Denver. “We’re the Walmart of destination marketing. We have the most robust information and the relationships with the key players to put together a comprehensive proposal for the customer.” 

The knowledge about the destination that CVBs have is also crucial to creating a complete package for a large meeting. Heidi Longton, director of client operations and lead trainer for Meeting Industry Experts Inc., says that the value of this type of information shouldn’t be discounted. “We have to create an experience as well as a meeting, and that’s created by what goes on outside of the education, reception, and convention hall,” says Longton. 

Scypinski agrees that bureaus can enjoy a competitive edge for city-wides by coordinating all the hospitality and travel components in the destination, negotiating vendor discounts or subsidies on behalf of groups, and providing groups a housing bureau at a discounted price. 

Riggs recommends that bureaus act as curators for their destinations, a reference to the gaining concept that people researching a subject online want a single, trusted source. “As the official voice for their destinations, CVBs are well-positioned to fulfill that role,” he says.

In an effort to assist CVBs, DMAI last year launched empowerMINT.com, a website through which planners can search for destinations and send RFPs to local bureaus. The site receives more than 2,000 visits monthly, according to Christine Shimasaki, empowerMINT’s managing director. 

“As an industry, we need to be easier to find,” says Shimasaki, explaining the year-old initiative to connect planners with destination management organization (DMO) representatives, a program that also includes focus groups with planners.

“In our discussions with meeting professionals, it’s amazing how unaware many of them are about the level of services DMOs provide,” says Shimasaki. “Our web portal articulates to the meetings market the value of using a DMO.”

Many planners find great value in that. “Having just one person to deal with is very high on my list,” says Yolanda Simmons, meeting services manager for the American Dietetic Association.

Planners say that one of the most effective services offered by CVBs is one of the oldest—a hosted site inspection of the destination. “We need to see everything that is available to us during a site visit, so to have a city put out the welcome mat by showcasing their entire hospitality community is very important. Something like that can only come from a CVB,” says Arvella Murff, special events conference planner, Aglow International. 

Like other industries roiled by the Internet’s ascendance, CVBs must aggressively embrace the new communications technology to remain competitive, say industry observers.

The Long Beach CVB builds about 35 microsites a year to help groups meeting in Long Beach communicate with attendees. “It’s been a big help to the planners,” says Goodling. 

According to Goodling, some groups use these microsites as the main website for their event.

“It’s about taking control of the destination and using all the online channels to understand the public perception of the market, communicate key points, and then engage the customer,” says Lorraine Sileo, vice president of research for PhoCusWright, a travel-industry market research company.

As an example, Sileo points to an online campaign that the Greater Vancouver Visitors and Convention Bureau launched to combat the negative publicity that resulted when Vancouver hockey fans rioted last June after their team lost the Stanley Cup Final. 

In response to the disturbance, people posted favorable expressions about Vancouver on various social-networking websites, and the bureau’s advertising agency deployed software to automatically aggregate those postings into a single site, ThisIsOurVancouver.com. The effort helped restore some of the city’s battered pride and presented a more positive image to the public.

The Long Beach CVB has been using its Facebook page to run contests that promote attendance for groups meeting in the city. “It’s been very effective in driving attendance for the events we’ve done it for,” says Goodling.

But Riggs says that CVBs need to aggressively expand in this area. “It is fast becoming a component of our everyday life. The impressions made through electronic platforms are almost decision points,” says Riggs. “There has to be a ‘capture experience’ at the point of contact. If CVBs can leverage the culture of their destination and let it shine in that ‘capture moment,’ then I think they take a leap ahead.”