One-center States: Shows Are Bread And Butter

By Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 3/21/2005

As cities around the United States hound their citizens for bigger, better convention centers, three mountain states have to settle for just one or two exhibition facilities each.

Between them, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming have only three facilities listed in Tradeshow Week's Major Exhibit Hall Directory, the largest of which has only 64,000 square feet of exhibit space. This doesn't exactly qualify them as big players for large national groups.

But not everyone in the region thinks that type of business is important anyway — and even those who do have learned to make the best use of the space they have.

At the Boise (Idaho) Convention & Visitors Bureau, Director of Sales Terry Kopp said she and her team of six salespeople do focus on conventions, but will "bid on anything that's out there."

The CVB is the marketing arm for Boise Centre, which has 45,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space and 13 meeting rooms spanning 16,679 sq. ft. Both the CVB and the center's own salespeople book events there, but Kopp said the bureau is responsible for most of the citywide conventions.

The facility has three March shows listed in the TSW Data Book: the Idaho Sportsmen Show, the Boise Flower & Garden Show and Gem State Industrial & Construction Show.

Gem State Manager Rich Fredericks, of Face-to-Face Marketing based in Salt Lake City, said he launched the Idaho show in 1991 as a regional offshoot of the Utah original. Participants in the Salt Lake City and Denver (another offshoot) versions convinced him the event would work well there, and it has.

So, it's not a total stranger to tradeshows, but Boise doesn't exactly focus on them either.

Kopp said her team works on the SMERF (social, military, educational, religious, fraternal), corporate, motor coach and tour markets. "Anything with potential," she said. "We have someone who handles tradeshows, but we don't actively pursue them."

But Boise would do better if it had a larger convention center — something the city has tried, and failed, to get.

When Boise Centre opened in 1990, the district board purchased land a couple blocks away with the intention of eventually building a second phase of around 150,000 sq. ft. The city last year presented a formal proposal to voters for an increase in the 4-percent hospitality tax needed to fund an expansion.

"We had a simple majority, but not the necessary two-thirds," said Kopp. "People say, 'Why do you need it?' Well, the market is so big that we don't go after any business we can't accommodate right now. But there's plenty of that business out there, and yes, we'd like to be able to bring in larger groups. It's good for the economy."

She said the city and CVB haven't given up; they'll lobby for a change in legislation or retool the funding proposal and make another proposal in the near future.

At the other end of the spectrum is Casper, Wyo. Max Torbert, director of the Casper Events Center, home of the state's largest exhibit space, said only 10 percent of his bookings are tradeshows — and that's fine with him.

The center offers 43,401 sq. ft. of exhibit space and four meeting rooms that cover 6,400 sq. ft., but the exhibit space is in an arena with retractable seating.

"We do have a marketing person on staff, and she does work with either the hotels or the CVB depending on the size of the conventions, to book those," said Torbert. "But we just respond to the market. If there is business looking to hold a tradeshow, we're available and they probably already know we're here."

Instead, the center focuses on typical arena business: music, theater, public shows and sporting events. The facility's calendar of upcoming events doesn't includes any trade-only exhibitions.

Still, said Torbert, the tradeshow business is important in that it fills some vacant dates. He estimated that the events center does about 18 shows each year, ranging from one to three days each.

Tradeshows aren't that significant in Great Falls, Mont., either, where the Four Seasons Arena/Exhibition Hall has 64,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space and 10 meeting rooms covering 3,692 sq. ft.

Upcoming events on the center's calendar include mainly sporting and community events, along with some consumer shows.

But Great Falls is working on a unique plan to change that: A volunteer committee made up of those who benefit from group business coming to town — everyone from hotels to county commissioners — is working together to collect leads and make bids on new business.

The Convention and Events Committee is a subcommittee of Destination Great Falls, a tourism initiative of the city's chamber of commerce. Made up of a couple dozen members, the committee formed last January when the regional Shriners organization said it wanted a proposal from the city to hold its annual convention there.

The committee's mission is to gather leads through tradeshows and local travel bureaus, and aggressively pursue groups of 500 or more (individual properties can handle groups smaller than that on their own).

"We bid five large events this year, and we got all of them," said Casey Buckingham, sales and catering director for the Holiday Inn Great Falls, and co-chair of the committee.

Apart from two Little League softball tournaments, new business includes the Shriners convention and the Montana School Boards Assn.

"We don't focus on the national tradeshow market," Buckingham said. "Instead, we try to get small-scale tradeshows that want a more intimate setting."