Meetings in Jacksonville: Super Bowl Boosts Business

By Rachelle Crum -- Tradeshow Week, 3/7/2005

Last month's Super Bowl brought more than just screaming fans and a $300 million economic impact to Jacksonville, Fla. Along with some facility renovations, the massive event also introduced the tradeshow industry (and 700 million television viewers) to a rehabilitated city — and new business followed.

Several meeting leads resulted from a fam' trip during the week of the big game, according to John Reyes, president of the Jacksonville & the Beaches Convention & Visitors Bureau, who joined the group on Feb. 3, three days before the game.

Trip participant Gregg Talley, chairman of the Professional Convention Management Assn. and president and COO of Talley Management Group, said "The Super Bowl, in general, helped put Jacksonville on the map."

Because of his visit, Talley said he is looking at scheduling a TMG client meeting for nearly 1,700 people in Jacksonville in either 2007 or 2008. The trip proved that the city is "a contender for significant meeting and convention business," he said.

Reyes said, "The Super Bowl demonstrated that Jacksonville can do a very large event." Reyes joined the CVB from the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau, where he had served as vice president of sales for nine years.

"Hopefully, we can leverage the positive business from the Super Bowl," Reyes added.

The attention also spurred facility construction talks, including an additional convention center and possibly a hotel to compete with comparable cities in the region like Charlotte, N.C.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Memphis, Tenn.

The city's current convention center, the Prime F. Osborn III Convention Center, is now attracting "more leads than ever before," said James Pritchard Jr., the facility's director. The center has 100,000 total square feet of exhibit space.

The Jacksonville Fairgrounds now can offer several amenities it couldn't before the Natl. Football League rented it for five weeks and transformed the grounds into its temporary corporate headquarters. The grounds and arena, which offer 92,788 sq. ft. of exhibit space, now feature 27 tents with hardwood floors, five gazebos and new carpeting.

The Super Bowl also helped the city attract cruise ships to its port. Since the number of hotel rooms in the area was insufficient for the event's crowds, the ships were used as floating hotels. As an unintended side effect, soon after the city won the Super Bowl bid in 2000, Celebrity Cruises and Carnival Cruise Lines started offering service from Jacksonville.

The combined changes and exposure may have been frenzied, but well worth the trouble, said Reyes. The Super Bowl "positioned our destination as a future player in the marketplace," he said.

Reyes filled the vacancy left by Kathleen "Kitty" Ratcliffe, who now is executive vice president of the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau.