The Total Experience: How Gaylord Gets the Shows

By Rachelle Crum -- Tradeshow Week, 4/18/2005

You say you want the standard Las Vegas, attendee-never-has-to-leave-the-hotel tradeshow experience without the slot machines?

It's out there, and it's not going away.

There's little getting around the success of Gaylord Hotels. With three hotel-convention center properties attracting 62 tradeshows this year (up nearly 50 percent from 2004), the expanding chain is giving show managers yet another venue option and convention center operators a run for their money.

And Gaylord's not about to stop. The company, a subsidiary of 80-year-old Nashville, Tenn.-based Gaylord Entertainment, is developing its latest property in Prince George's County, Md., to cater to the glut of associations in the Greater Washington, D.C., region. The firm is also looking to build new facilities in Chicago and on the West Coast. In addition, Gaylord Entertainment entered into a new $600 million credit facility in March that is available to fund the company's business plan.

Like the handful of mega-hotels in Las Vegas, the Gaylord properties offer show planners and their participants nearly everything they need under one roof: exhibit and meeting space, hotel rooms, restaurants, shopping and entertainment.

However, unlike Las Vegas, "you don't have the distraction of the gambling to take people away from what they're there for," said Bob Moore, director of conference services for Gaylord Hotels. Plus, Moore added, there are no temptations to go hotel-jumping. At the Gaylord, he said, "you never really have to leave the property."

Certainly, the Gaylord venues will likely never reach the exhibit space capacity of, say, the Sands Expo & Convention Center/Venetian Resort Hotel Casino at more than 1.1 million square feet — but they can accommodate some sizable shows.

Two of Gaylord Hotels' current operations — the 3-year-old Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center in Kissimmee, Fla., and the year-old $480 million Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas — each offer 400,000 sq. ft. of meeting and exhibit space.

The 28-year-old, recently expanded Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville offers 600,000 sq. ft. of meeting and exhibit space and the $565 million Gaylord Natl. Resort & Convention Center in Maryland will open in March 2008 with 450,000 sq. ft. of meeting and exhibit space. The Maryland resort is part of a planned 200-acre resort facility called Natl. Harbor.

According to Tradeshow Week research, the Palms, Texan and Opryland will host a total of 62 tradeshows this year, up from 42 in 2004.

Analyst Will Marks, managing director of San Francisco-based JMP Securities, said the organization "is only becoming more powerful. Gaylord now has a Rolodex of convention planners that are captive."

And Gaylord hopes to keep much of the event business it is attracting. Already, several shows and conferences rotate annually among the three Gaylord Hotels properties. "Our goal is to build our contracts around keeping the customer with the Gaylord family for years to come," Moore said.

Since its contract ran out with Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., MediaLive Intl.'s VoiceCon is moving next year a few miles down the road to the Palms March 6–9, and is negotiating dates for 2007.

The move to the Palms suits the participants of the 15-year-old show (held in the past in Washington, D.C.) perfectly, said Fred Knight, MediaLive's general manager and vice president.

Since the Palms is "all-encompassing" and the bulk of the show's visitors fly to the venue, "they don't need a car unless they choose to (use one)."

Moore, speaking during a Nashville thunderstorm, said, "And you never have to go outside. It's all here under one roof."

Some show planners say they like the Gaylord Texan's close proximity to the Dallas/Fort Worth Intl. Airport. Marks agreed it is a help that "its location (is) next to an airport that can't be more central in the United States."

Local competitors have noticed Gaylord Hotels too.

Kathryn Goldstein, manager of public relations for the Texan, said the running joke was to call the facility "the giant sucking sound to the west (of downtown Dallas)."

However, according to TSW research, tradeshows at the Dallas Convention Center remain steady, with 18 shows in 2004. And Dallas CC Director Frank Poe said, "I've not heard any sucking sound from my vantage point."

The Gaylord facility is a member of the Grapevine (Tex.) Convention & Visitors Bureau, but not the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Goldstein said the Texan is putting the area back on the map. "We're bringing business to town that hasn't been to Dallas in a long time."

Poe said, if Gaylord is introducing new meeting and show managers to the region, then "it's better for them to be in (the area) of Dallas for the economic impact it is providing."

However, Mike Butts, executive director of Visit Charlotte (N.C.), said he looks forward to some "friendly (regional) competition" with the Gaylord Natl., which has prompted him to "stay sharp within our sales and marketing approach."

He joked, "We respect them as competitors, and we intend to make their first year as difficult as possible."

Although the Gaylord properties don't "take the place of what a total destination can offer," said Norwood Smith, vice president of sales for the Tampa Bay Convention & Visitors Bureau, "having different products that appeal to different budgets is important. It's a viable option for the buyer."

The 33,000 sq. ft. Damage Prevention Conference & Expo was staged at the Texan for the first time last year since "everything was at our fingertips (at the venue)," said Scott Odin, show manager for Cygnus Expositions.

But that reason only goes so far. The rotating show will be collocated Dec. 6–8 with the newly launched Subsurface Solutions Conference & Expo at Houston's George R. Brown Convention Center, because Odin received an offer he said he "couldn't pass up."

Plus, he added, "We want to penetrate the Houston market. We're more apt to do that down there than to do it in Dallas."

Resort destinations don't suit every MediaLive show either. It is launching a fall version of VoiceCon Aug. 29–Sept. 1 at the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego, which will offer show participants direct access to downtown San Diego.