The CVB near You

Chances are there’s a CVB – convention and visitors bureau – near your office. Most cities, some counties and pretty much all states operate CVBs, with the mission of pumping up tourism. Now, word is getting out to business-meeting planners – and to the CVBs that want to serve this lucrative market – that working together requires a new set of skills while promising great rewards. This is not to say that CVBs have gotten the total message.

“The last time I used a CVB I got way too much information. I just was swamped,” complains Laura Vogel, senior events manager at the Castle Group, a Boston-based events-management agency. That was a couple of years ago when Vogel, in doing preliminary research for a client, casually contacted two Sunbelt CVBs. It’s a competitive world out there. CVBs are eager to fight for business, particularly higher-end business meetings in which organizations readily spend on participants, who then spend their own money on drinks, leisure activities and trinkets to take home. The bad news is, sometimes, CVBs and their members pounce on the leads that come their way.

This can get ugly because some CVBs simply pass incoming leads to member hotels that, in turn, jump on the unsuspecting inquirer. That’s exactly what happened to Vogel, as she listened to her phone ring off the hook with calls from hungry hotel sales managers. Here is the irony: the client didn’t even book in either of the two cities Vogel contacted (“I’d told them this was a preliminary inquiry,” she says). To this day she says she is reluctant to give CVBs another try. She’s not alone. Many meeting planners say they shy away from using CVBs because, in the past, they were deluged with phone calls from desperate hoteliers.

There is a flip side to ponder. More intrepid planners now are reporting that, when used judiciously, CVBs can deliver gold. “The right CVB is a blessing for any event planner,” says Robert Tuchman, founder and president of New York-based TSE Sports & Entertainment. Tuchman specializes in events centered around big-ticket draws – such as the Super Bowl, the NCAA basketball tournament, the Major League Baseball All-Star game – and he indicates that, frequently, he turns to CVBs to assemble just the right package for his clients. “CVBs have a wealth of information, but you have to find the right person.” This means, sometimes, it will require multiple points of contact to locate the CVB staffer who understands what you are hoping to do with your event and who appreciates the value of this business for his or her town. Find that staffer, however, and he or she “will point you to resources – meeting venues, restaurants, activities – you might never have found on your own. They know their towns,” says Tuchman who, incidentally, runs his business in New York, but, he says, “I often use the New York CVB when planning events here. They point me to places I don’t know about.” The best part of CVBs is “what they do for you is free,” says Tuchman.

More satisfied client testimony comes from Kathy Grady, a Philadelphia executive assistant whose boss threw a meeting-planning assignment into her lap. Grady called the Greater Wilmington, DE, CVB – and now she sings the praises of CVBs. “I found a gold mine,” says Grady, who used the CVB to narrow down the list of candidate hotels to seven. Even better, the CVB coordinated appointments that let her visit each possibility. “They saved me a lot of legwork,” says Grady. She adds that this was the third meeting she had planned. For the first two she didn’t use a CVB. “I spent perhaps eight days just doing site visits for each of those meetings. For this meeting, with the help of the CVB, I spent only one day. They really compressed the time and effort we needed to put into picking the right venue.”

In that vein Aurora, IL, CVB executive Sue Vos says, “If you’re not a seasoned meeting planner, call your CVB. They will walk you through what you need to do to set up your meeting. They know how to do this, and will be glad to help; just ask.”

The bad news, as Tuchman implies, is that getting value out of CVBs requires learning how to use them – and also learning which CVBs are not worth the bother. That’s because a dirty secret in the industry is CVBs vary wildly in their abilities and, particularly, in their skills at responding to corporate inquiries, observes Colleen Gallagher, a meeting planner with Carlson Marketing Group. She adds, “The good ones have real clout in their communities.” Want to close a public street to ensure a grand entrance by your company’s CEO, for instance? For some CVBs such a request is a piece of cake – the Las Vegas and Nashville CVBs spring into Gallagher’s mind in that specific regard. For other CVBs, though, you might as well be asking about bed availability on the dark side of the moon – their influence simply doesn’t extend into the mayor’s office or police department. How can you know which is which? Sadly, the only real way to find out is to work with a CVB – the strengths and weaknesses quickly make themselves present, suggests Gallagher.

Another reality about CVBs is that “there’s a big difference between the ones that cater to business groups and ones that don’t,” says Gallagher. Some CVBs thrive only on vacationers, while others focus on large conventions. In the twenty-first century, however, more CVBs have been pursuing lucrative corporate meetings, too. Still skeptical that it is worth your bother? Jordy Tollett, CEO of the Greater Houston CVB, throws out a test any meeting planner can use to help decide if it’s worth dealing with a particular CVB: “Challenge us,” says Tollett. “Tell us the best price you’ve been able to get for a Houston event, and see if we cannot beat it.” Tollett says that with the confident twinkle of an executive who fully expects no difficulty in finding better prices. He even offers comfort for planners who, like Laura Vogel, report they were burned by prior contacts with CVBs. “Tell us you want us to keep this confidential, that you want us to act as an intermediary and keep your name out of it. We are happy to act as a buffer for clients who ask,” says Tollett.

What if a company already has a relationship with one or a few hotel chains? CVB executives say that’s a prime reason corporate meeting planners give for not contacting CVBs, but the tourism executives explain that they do much more than book rooms. Diane Brandon, a vice president with the Arlington, TX, CVB, offers for-instances of the services her CVB provides: 1) spousal events, where CVBs work with meeting planners to develop suitable activities; 2) raising the excitement level, where the CVB will help hype premeeting anticipation with Web-based content, postcards and whatever it takes; and 3) exotic requests, such as the time, says Brandon, “a meeting planner challenged us to find a boxing kangaroo. ‘I don’t think you can find one,’ she said.” Brandon doesn’t know why the planner wanted a boxing kangaroo – though she assures us the marsupial emerged from the event unscratched – but she says this request definitely didn’t stump the CVB. “We found one – just as we found an eagle for another client who wanted one for an event.” Adds Brandon, “Ask us. We can help with your nonstandard requests – the things that help make meetings memorable. Many meeting planners say they don’t need the help of a CVB, but when you ask them what that means, often it turns out that they do not know the range of services we can provide.”

At the Virginia Beach CVB, Director of Convention Sales Al Hutchison says much the same – “just try us out on, for instance, spousal activities. You’ll be impressed,” and Hutchison says his CVB has set up shopping excursions, private tours of the Virginia Aquarium and still more eye-popping activities. “Tell us you want a unique venue, something you hadn’t heard of before. Probably we can find just what you want.”

Some CVBs even go a big step beyond by helping meeting planners book unique talent. In Austin, TX, where there is a vibrant music scene, the CVB launched a program it calls Hire a Musician Today. This program matches the ideal Austin musician with the ideal group event.

Of course, CVBs also excel at more fundamental aspects of making meetings work. For instance, a key to many meetings’ success is as simple as arranging the right local transportation to help attendees move from place to place, on time and without hassles. Good CVBs know all about the available options. For example, if you check the Birmingham, AL, CVB Website, there’s full information, readily available, regarding limos, taxis, for-hire busses and even public-transit options, all viewable at www.bcvb.org/pam-transcentral.html.

Savvy CVBs also are working double-time to get into the heads of corporate meeting planners, says Nicki E. Grossman, president of the Greater Fort Lauderdale CVB. Toward that end, Fort Lauderdale recently brought in 30 meeting planners for a focus group aimed at finding out exactly what they want (and don’t want) from CVBs. A big surprise is that “they really wanted help with delegate retention,” says Grossman. Hers is the polite way to say planners wanted tips on how to keep attendees in the meeting rooms and off the beaches, out of the bars and away from the golf courses, except at designated breaks. The Fort Lauderdale CVB is working hard to give planners just the tools they need to help keep attendees focused on the meeting.

Another traditional knock against CVBs is that they cannot be counted on to offer honest assessments of local facilities – to some CVBs, all their facilities are five stars – but shrewd CVBs have begun to realize they are only as useful as they are credible. That’s why “we will tell you if a facility won’t work for your group,” says Michael Smith, a vice president with the Portland, OR, CVB. “We will tell you the truth.” Is that crazy? Not according to Smith, who indicates that it is in every CVB’s interest to cultivate positive word of mouth among customers, and that means lining them up with venues that indeed meet their needs. Happy clients are crucial in winning new business, especially in second-tier locales such as Portland (which may be beautiful but it nonetheless isn’t top of mind for most planners who often will look first to San Francisco and Seattle). Honesty is emerging as a sound business- development policy not only in Portland but also in many other second- and third-tier cities, which need all the glowing reviews they can come by. “We are still kind of unknown,” shrugs Smith, who quickly adds, “Once people come here, they fall in love with our city.”

Is your group too small to win a CVB’s attention? “We work with groups as small as 15, sometimes fewer,” says Beth Gendler, director of sales for the Alabama Gulf Coast CVB. Part of gaining a CVB’s attention is being smart. A group of 10 probably won’t get a lot of notice from, say, the New Orleans CVB during Mardi Gras week. A group of 10 or 20 meeting in Los Angeles in January – usually a very slow month in Southern California – just might arouse a CVB executive’s enthusiasm.

A final reassurance comes from Houston’s Tollett. “Our job is simply this: to make you look good.” His CVB succeeds, says Tollett, only when the meeting planners who turn to it put on events that dazzle beyond expectations. “When that happens, we know we have done our jobs – and of course the services we offer are free. It won’t cost you a penny to see if a CVB can really deliver for your next meeting.” Put that way, what’s there to lose? Pick up the phone and put our personal CVB challenges to the test – then be prepared to be delighted with what today’s smarter, more business-centric CVBs deliver.