Salt Lake Bureau Names New CEO
Executive committee goes with local hotelier after nationwide search
By Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 8/29/2005
Following a five-month, nationwide search, the Salt Lake Convention & Visitors Bureau has picked a local hotelier as its new president and CEO. Scott Beck, current general manager of the Salt Lake City Marriott City Centre, will take the helm of the bureau Sept. 15, replacing four-year chief Dianne Binger, who died of cancer on March 23.
A Utah native, Beck has held his current position at the Marriott since it opened in December 2000. Before that, he ran the Cedar Breaks Lodge in Brian Head, Utah, and was in charge of sales and marketing at the Sundance Resort in Provo Canyon, Utah.
Beck does not have any direct CVB experience, but noted, "I've been in the hospitality industry my whole life. At the core of what a bureau does is sell room nights, and a lot of my career has been involved in doing that on a smaller scale."
His father was hired in 1969 by actor Robert Redford to manage the Sundance Ski Resort, and his mother, who was director of tourism at the SLCVB for five years in the late 1980s, introduced him to bureau operations, Beck said.
"In addition to Scott's personal qualities of enthusiasm, leadership and a very engaging personality, is his detailed knowledge of the Salt Lake City market," said Kelly Matthews, who chaired the executive committee that chose Beck. Matthews, who is an executive vice president and economist for Wells Fargo Bank, said the committee believed Beck's strong sales record suggested he would be the best person to tackle the job of scheduling meetings and tradeshows for the Salt Palace Convention Center, currently under expansion.
In his role as president of the Salt Lake Valley Lodging Assn., Beck helped plead the case for the expansion, done in response to the city's near-loss of its largest client, VNU Expositions' semiannual Outdoor Retailer show, which had outgrown the existing space.
Matthews declined to give names of other finalists for the position, but said national recruitment firm SearchWide, headed by Mike Gamble, received resumes from all over the country.
Salt Palace management firm SMG, the city and county of Salt Lake, and organizers of tradeshows that will be using the expanded Salt Palace Convention Center are thrilled by the progress being made on the project — but the rapid pace robs of the 2- to 3-year period that bureaus typically have to pre-sell a new space.
"We have got this facility built overnight, and it's not much time," said Mark White, SLCVB vice president of sales and marketing. "Meeting planners usually want to see pictures of a facility before they book it."
Renderings of the additional 215,000 square feet of meeting and exhibit space weren't available until the first phase of the project was almost done.
Nonetheless, the CVB has managed to book six new groups worth $214 million into the expanded facility. The largest, Rotary Intl., is expected to bring 30,000 delegates to the city and generate a $27 million impact when it holds its annual meeting there in 2011.
White added, "The bookings we have wouldn't have come about without longstanding relationships."
White said he's starting to reap the benefits of a marketing initiative begun two years ago. It consists of a customized e-mail attendance promotion campaign; electronic post-show surveys, with results posted on the bureau's Web site; and a new brand message, "experience the Rockies," meant to give Salt Lake an edge over Mountain State competitors.
