Selling Destinations: From Art to Science

Michael Hughes -- Tradeshow Week, 6/20/2005

The exhibition industry is a few years into a solid recovery. Investors are fueling acquisitions in the show management sector. In the first quarter, net square footage expanded by more than 3 percent and attendance grew by 4 percent. Hotels predict one of their best years ever.

But still, cities struggle to increase their convention and tradeshow market share, or even hold their share. The key challenge facing many cities and venues is that associations and for-profit show producers have simply done a great job covering their markets with events.

Without a new wave of convention and tradeshow launches, and with convention centers and CVBs getting savvier, this industry will only become more competitive in the years to come. The art of selling cities must evolve into a science.

While there's no silver bullet, here are some of the characteristics of the best-of-class convention center and CVB marketing organizations:

Management. Historically, convention center management teams, and even many CVBs, have focused on operations, and even politics, more than marketing. Today, the best convention center management teams are marketers as well as operations experts.

Working with hotels. In the past, I have discussed in this space how power in the events industry is shifting to attendees. On the city and venue side, power is shifting to hotels.

More and more, site-selection criteria relate to hotel capacity, quality and price range. The challenge is that convention center managers have no control over hotels, and CVBs have only limited influence over rates.

One of the key tools that CVBs and venues have is communication. CVBs should communicate with the hotels earlier and more often on a range of issues, such as account pipelines, the status of RFPs, industry trends and competition. It's important to educate not only general managers and sales teams, but also hotel owners.

Branding. City brands are different from venue brands. A city brand — and there are only a handful of municipalities that have a truly distinctive brand — conveys what a visitor can do when in town as well as how a city makes them feel.

A venue's brand is more mundane. It's closely tied to a track record of keeping promises, particularly service-related promises. Granted, what venue management provides is getting complex: space and dates, exhibitor services, attendee services, enhanced food and beverage services, sophisticated telecommunications networks, assistance to local stakeholders, community events and support, etc.

When thinking about your brand, here are the questions to ask: How are you different? What is unique about your people? Your facilities? Your services? Your partners? Your clients? What's your track record? And is all that communicated effectively?

When thinking about brand issues, keep it simple. Use short descriptions of your city or venue. For example, the Hawaii Visitors & Convention Bureau's brand tag line is "The Islands of Aloha."

Competitive set. Few CVBs and venues analyze their competition in any depth. And if they do, it's most commonly when gearing up to build a new venue or expansion. It's critical to watch your competitive set's booking patterns. Most highly competitive industries (for instance, autos, computers and packaged goods) track market share closely.

Do you know your true competitive set? And how have the venues in it changed over the past few years? Your competitors may no longer be only the other large city in your state and the three or four capitals in adjacent states.

Demographics. Show producers, even associations, are looking more closely at regional demographics when making site-selection decisions. They need to host shows with the best built-in attendance base possible. CVBs should provide information on their area's leading industries, leading employers, workforce counts and projections, and the overall economic strength of the region — as well as how the region differs from competitors.

Client prospecting. While venues and cities need to be consistent, each major convention or group has a distinct personality, so stories need to be tailored to each group. When marketing to association shows, learn about the board members. Find out which ones wield the most influence with the executive director. This may not always be the board chairman.

For every show, learn about the industry and the issues. The best convention center sales teams focus on particular types of events and distinct industry sectors. Their target databases may have only about 300 primary targets and an additional 300 to 400 secondary targets. The key is to know where these shows are held every year and why.

Marketing to local corporations and organizations. Venues should build a database of top local and business leaders, and send them regular communications. With event producer client approval, send these targets special invitations to conventions and tradeshows — not just events in their key market sectors. Reaching out to local charities as an event host destination/facility is another way to reach local leaders.

Pitching your venue or facility as a place to host corporate meetings, training sessions and client gatherings for local corporations is a good strategy.

Marketing pieces and advertisements. In general, the best print ads present clear pictures, with the city and venue names and logos large enough to make out when turning magazine pages quickly. Ads often have big pictures of the venues, but many of the venues look alike to non-natives.

It's also important to play up the distinctiveness of the city or region, in particular new hotels and hotel capacity. Placing people and staff members in ads suggests a commitment to customer service. Too many ads have too much copy and pictures that are too small with captions that are hard to read.

Public relations. Communicating with the local press often requires different strategies and messages than communicating with the national events industry press and the general business press. Get to know your local press and invite them to all of your top events. The better you know them, the more you can help your show producer clients when they need local PR assistance.