Orlando's CVB Head to Retire

If Bill Peeper was looking for an almost perfect time to exit the stage, he picked it. The Orlando/Orange County Convention & Visitors Bureau has announced that Peeper, who founded the CVB in 1984, will retire Dec. 31.

The announcement comes just a month after the national media made much of the fact that Orlando had finally supplanted Chicago as the city with the second most Tradeshow Week 200 shows (with 26) behind Las Vegas. One of those shows, No. 11 on the list, The Intl. Builders' Show/TecHOMExpo, was the largest ever held in Orlando.

It comes amid a flurry of construction activity that is expected to add thousands of hotel rooms to an existing inventory of 113,000, and three years after a 585,000 square foot expansion made the Orange County Convention Center the second largest exhibition facility in the United States.

"Bill has laid an incredibly strong foundation here," said Mark McHugh, chairman of the Orlando CVB board of directors, president and CEO of Gatorland, and the man charged with finding a replacement for Peeper.

"I'm actively looking for another Bill Peeper," McHugh said. "I'd be the hero if I could find that person."

Peeper's accomplishments, just on the exhibition and convention side in a destination that is best known for the traditional family vacation, are substantial. In 1983, the year before he arrived in Orlando, the Orange County Convention Center had 147,000 sq. ft. of exhibit space and, according to the convention center, hosted 129 events with 342,000 attendees for an annual economic impact of $26.2 million. Last year, it hosted 967 events (including the homebuilders and 25 other TSW 200 shows) and 1.4 million attendees for an economic impact of $1.4 billion.

Besides the Orange County center, there are 16 other exhibit facilities in Orlando with another 1.8 million sq. ft. of exhibit space.

Peeper said the moment he realized personally what great strides he and the Orlando tourism community had made came with completion of the latest phase of convention center expansion.

"It was when we hit the 1 million sq. ft. plateau and then had the boom in construction of convention-related hotels," he said. "Investors caught on that the convention side of this business was for real. It said to me that we had solidified that as something we could build on."

Still, even if Orlando has vaulted to Tier 1 status during Peeper's tenure, Wayne Stetson, Natl. Assn. of Home Builders senior vice president, said that when NAHB made the decision four years ago to mount several of its shows in Orlando over the next few years, "Bill personally took on NAHB and the show as his own personal responsibility. When I asked him who on his staff we should be dealing with, he said, 'Me.'"

McHugh said he is looking for a carbon copy of Peeper as he begins the search for his replacement, but it may not be easy to do. Even with the great success Orlando has experienced under Peeper's leadership, there are challenges.

"We never really recovered after 9/11," McHugh said, referring to the leisure side of the business.

In fact, just a few weeks ago Peeper was in front of the Orange County Tourist Development Council asking for its blessing on a hike in the county's bed tax, from 5 percent to 6 percent.

The extra money, about $25 million a year, would be funneled into the county's advertising budget with the hopes it would drive more tourists to Orlando's theme parks. While Peeper has laid a solid foundation in both the leisure and exhibition sides of the business, his successor will probably have to focus on the former more than the latter.

"Those extra resources will help us compete with somebody like Las Vegas," McHugh said. "It should get us back to where we were before 9/11."

Peeper's announcement, six months in advance of his departure, should give the CVB board time to find the right candidate.

By coincidence, there are currently other vacancies at top positions in the Orlando tourism industry. National searches are already on to find a new Orlando Intl. Airport executive director and a head of Walt Disney World.

Peeper said he and his family will continue to live in Orlando and that he will remain involved in the community.

"I'm talking to some of my other colleagues to see if there's something I can do to help that doesn't include the stress of running a convention and visitors bureau," he said.

Peeper began his CVB career in 1970 with the Dayton (Ohio) Area Chamber of Commerce, then went on to spend six years with the New Orleans Tourist & Convention Commission and a stint as president of the Greater Hartford (Conn.) Convention & Visitors Bureau. However, his 22 years as the head of the Orlando CVB is a record among CVB executives.

"The more I got into it, the more I realized I was being given an opportunity to make a difference in the community in which I lived and worked," Peeper said. "Being able to stand on a street corner when you've got 5,000 or 15,000 people in town and say, 'I helped make that happen. People have jobs because of this, people are prospering because of this,' it's really an extraordinary opportunity."

Peeper is a former chairman of what is now Destination Management Assn. Intl. and the Florida Assn. of Convention and Visitors Bureaus, and is currently treasurer of the Travel Industry Assn. of America. He has held leadership positions with the Professional Convention Management Assn. and Convention Industry Council.