Pity the Poor CVB Exec

Who among us doesn't have more than one constituent, more than one boss? Me — I've got you, the reader, and a publisher. Show managers have their exhibitors and their attendees.

Everybody, it seems, has more than one person they have to try and please. Even CVB executives, as we learned this week in preparing this report on convention and visitors bureaus.

First, they've got to please all the various people they're trying to bring to their towns.

Then, they have the people who pay their salaries. Most (but certainly, not all) CVBs are funded by bed taxes, making hoteliers their No. 1 customers.

So, it gets a little rough when the CVB exec has to listen to more and more complaints every year from show managers and meeting planners about the rising cost of the average hotel room.

You know what I'm talking about. Who among you is getting a hotel room for your group at anywhere close to what you were getting two or three years ago? (Let's take the almost-forgotten attrition penalty dilemma out of the equation for now.)

The American Hotel & Lodging Assn. tells us that, across the board, the average price of a hotel room in the United States in 2006 was $97.31. You, of course, know that 2006 has been over for three months, and you're still looking for that $97.31 room. It certainly doesn't seem to be available in much abundance in any of the cities where you're trying to book shows, right?

Let's quickly look at some other numbers the AHLA offered up about the hotel industry last year. Industry-wide, revenue per available room was $61.69 and average occupancy was 63.4 percent. A total of 1.04 billion room nights was sold for industry-wide revenue of $133.9 billion.

Go back to 2002, which has become the benchmark year we will probably be gauging a lot of things against for some time to come. In the years since then, the average room rate has grown by 16.5 percent and occupancy by only 6.7 percent. Total room nights sold has increased by 10.9 percent.

So far, so good, I guess.

Now look at the numbers that really matter. Revenue per available room is up 24.9 percent; total industry-wide revenue, up 30.5 percent, from $102.6 billion in 2002.

I know, I know. Everybody who would bother to open this issue of Tradeshow Week is in business to make money, and whoever you are, more revenue this year — no matter how much it is — is better than flat.

But look at it from the CVB exec's point of view. If industry-wide revenue since Sept. 11, 2001, has grown by almost a third and RevPAR by a quarter, can't some of the hotelier's best, most consistent customers — the tradeshow manager and meeting planner — get a little help?