Mayor Helps Return Meeting to Los Angeles
Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 8/8/2005
The Natl. Council of La Raza has agreed to hold its 2006 annual meeting in Los Angeles after all, thanks to some persuasion from the city's newly elected mayor.
The national group had initially withdrawn its meeting as a result of the long-running boycott being waged against several downtown hotels by more than 3,000 hotel workers represented by Unite Here.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa helped engineer a June resolution to the labor dispute, earning appreciation from Mark Liberman, president and CEO of LA Inc., the Convention & Visitors Bureau, who likened Villaraigosa to an additional member of his sales team.
Christopher Heywood, the CVB's manager of corporate communications, said after the new hotel workers' contract was approved, Villaraigosa issued a personal appeal to Monica Lozano, the national council's board chair, and publisher and CEO of L.A.-based Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion. Villaraigosa also urged council President and CEO Janet Murguia to return the meeting to L.A., home to a large Hispanic population.
"He wants to be aggressive and assertive in attracting convention business," Heywood said. "The group had canceled and was looking at other arrangements."
The group had decided to move its meeting from the city just months before a resolution of the dispute was reached.
CVB officials, armed with a promotional videotape, also journeyed to the group's 2005 annual conference July 16–19 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, in an attempt to convince the group to return. "We really pulled out all the stops," Heywood said, adding that the bureau frequently journeys to host cities to help boost attendance for meetings set to be held in L.A.
Heywood said CVB officials are also trying to convince the Modern Language Assn. to return its meeting to the city in 2006. Even if the bureau isn't successful in convincing the group to hold its December meeting in L.A., one month after the hotel workers' contract expires, Heywood said there's a possibility the MLA could return in years to come.
More than 4,000 Unite Here hotel workers in San Francisco, meanwhile, remain without a contract. They are set to return to the bargaining table Aug. 10. The Intl. Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans recently decided to move its San Francisco meeting to Las Vegas. Four other groups are considering a similar move.
