Michael Hart

Detroit's Reliable Sources
September 26, 2007

Once in a while a reporter at a local newspaper will call me or one of my colleagues at Tradeshow Week for comment on a story they perceive as purely home-grown but is really just another rendition of one we hear all the time: Some government/company/entrepreneur spends tens or hundreds of millions of dollars for a convention center or hotel (in this case, also a casino) to attract visitors to their wonderful town … and somehow it just doesn’t work out.

Of course, for each one of these reporters calling me, there are probably a dozen who don’t. Nor do they call somebody who might know much better what they’re talking about: A leader of one of the industry associations we have who could comment intelligently about the odds of City A or Destination B actually profiting from the national tradeshow-meeting-convention business.

Heck, it doesn’t even have to be a local paper. Take a look at the story on page B1 of today’s Wall Street Journal extolling Detroit’s prospects of landing a fortune with all the convention and show business it hopes will come its way. The news hook is the recent opening of the MGM Grand Detroit with its – get this – 30,000 square feet of meeting space.

This is not a new story to our readers. Most of you already know MGM has spent $800 million in downtown Detroit. You might also know the Ilitch Family (of Little Caesars Pizza fame) is spending $275 million on the MotorCity Casino and that the Chippewa Indian tribe is spending $200 million on the Greektown Casino.

So, before long, Detroit will be set for casinos. But stealing TSW 200 shows or conventions worth 100,000 or so room-nights from Las Vegas or Chicago?

Sources quoted by the Journal say it could happen. Those sources would be MGM’s president and COO, the MGM Grand Detroit’s executive vice president and a dealer in its new casino, all dutiful representatives of the company that’s just spent $800 million.

I guess they’d know.

Posted by Michael Hart on September 26, 2007 | Comments (0)