One hundred years of CVB experience.

Seasoned convention and visitor bureau CEOs comment on the century-old industry that thrives on change and demands that they do, too.

Imagine turning in an expense report totaling $93.70 for attending an association convention. No, the nights weren't spent on a relative's futon; nor were meals eaten discretely from a brown bag. According to the first Convention Income Survey conducted by the International Association of Convention and Visitor Bureaus (IACVB), Washington, D.C., that was the average expense for one person attending such an event in 1948. By 1995, that figure had increased to $670 per person.

Since 1896, when Detroit founded the first office dedicated to soliciting and servicing meetings, the conventions and expositions and meetings and incentive travel industries have become a business bonanza posting $82.8 billion in direct spending in 1994, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Convention Liaison Council's 1995 report Economic Impact of Conventions, Expositions, Meetings, and Incentive Travel. Thus, the centennial of the convention and visitor bureau industry - a long-time support to each of these business travel segments - commands reflection both on the industry's past and on its future. And what better way to pry open the time capsule of recollections and lock onto professional predictions than to speak with five executives who among them have punched in more than 100 years on the CVB industry time clock.

Voices of experience

Greg Ortale started the Flint Area Convention and Tourist Council, Michigan, in 1973 with an annual budget of $35,000. His first official act was to go out and buy a desk. By 1987 he had been chosen to head the Greater Minneapolis Convention and Visitors Association, where his current budget is 1,000 times what it was in Flint and his staff is 40 times the single employee he supervised back then. Ortale's experiences mirror in many ways those of industry colleagues Sam Burns, president and chief executive officer, Sacramento, California, Convention and Visitors Bureau; Marion Szurek, vice president, San Angelo, Texas, Convention and Visitors Bureau; Michael Benton, executive director, Irving, Texas, Convention and Visitors Bureau; and Ed McNeill, executive vice president, New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Collective retrospective

In discussing the events of the past two decades, five key issues emerged as the most well-remembered currents in an undertow of change that continues to churn the industry.

1. The imposition of room tax funding for CVB support. Hotel room taxes were originally imposed in the late 1950s and adopted in a number of cities as a funding mechanism for convention centers and CVBs. According to Sam Burns, a CEO in the industry for 24 years, Bakersfield, California, was the first city to lobby for the tax, a plan that may have originated in California because that state allowed joint authority. Having joint authority meant that if two government entities agreed to support a project, bonds could be floated to finance the building of new facilities. Once Bakersfield was successful, "it was like a brushfire that fed off of itself," says Burns. While Ortale remembers that some CVB executives were reluctant to "ride the back of the tiger," most supported the concept. After he lobbied for and was successful in putting the tax in place in two states, "the growth was phenomenal," he says. A historical retrospective in the June 1996 issue of IACVB's magazine Crossroads confirms it was the hotel room tax that "ushered in an era of building projects from the late 1950s through the 1970s."

2. The technology revolution. These seasoned CEOs are on the same wave length when they mentally click on to the most vivid icon to appear on the industry screen during the past 20 years. "The emerging thing that would change the business forever was the advent of the technology revolution and [the idea] that it would be a godsend to everybody," Burns recalls.

Ortale might not use the term godsend. When the first applications of the computer age arrived in the form of a computerized housing program begun in Houston in 1979, he says, the transition was not necessarily smooth. "When you screw up somebody's room reservation, they really get offended." Ortale recalls his boss - "veins distended, his face a furious red" - instructing him to "take all those computers and throw them in the street. When you take over you can put them back in." Now, with technology firmly in place, Ortale laments, "There is no place to hide anymore. Technology has taken away a lot of good excuses."

Marion Szurek, a CEO in the industry for 17 years, seems to have taken much of the technology transition in stride. "This whole CVB life is about changing and continuing," comments Szurek, "and keeping staff trained is an integral part of the job." Szurek stresses that staying on the cutting edge requires dedicating the resources not only to the latest computer upgrades but to the training that goes along with them.

Ed McNeill, 23-year industry veteran, echoes Szurek's comments in what may seem his mantra: "When you're past, you're past - you must look to the future and constantly change, or else you lose." McNeill adds that the way CVBs attract business by using new technology is a key way of looking to the future.

Michael Benton is on board with Bill Gates's The Road Ahead - a vision of how the information revolution is just now beginning, with a host of incredible changes still to come. Like many CEOs, Benton is concentrating on using the Internet, Web sites, and other information highway networks as effective vehicles to promote his destination. One significant challenge, says Benton, is "identifying the vendors who can provide the right technology for us and teach us the most effective ways to use it."

3. The addition of the "V" to IACB. In the early 1970s, with room taxes booming and more cities assuming responsibility for tourism development and visitor services, CVBs began a departure from the European model in which conventions and tourism were kept as distinct entities. With conventions undergoing great change - namely, with the increase in family and spousal travel and trips that meshed business and leisure - the membership eventually agreed in 1974 to add Visitor to the name International Association of Convention Bureaus to reflect the transition. If anything, the "V" factor applies even more today, as people routinely use conventions as venues for family or personal vacations.

The change in travel habits, coupled with longer working hours for many Americans, has also stimulated a shift in programming from pure touring and entertainment to an integration of personal and professional topics. Programs often interject a focus on personal financial planning, health and fitness, and other areas that in their normal lives at home, "[baby] boomers simply have no time to explore due to packed schedules," notes Ortale.

4. The use of niche marketing. One of Benton's challenges in taking over the Irving CVB 20 years ago was to create an identity for the city whose bureau then consisted of five staff members and a budget of $350,000. This was not an uncommon problem for emerging cities and continues to plague cities that must modify even well-honed niches as market conditions change. Says Burns, "The biggest thing affecting destinations was the deregulation of the airlines [in 1978], which led to fewer direct flights and much more use of hub airports." This has negatively affected many smaller cities, which are then forced to alter their marketing strategies.

At the Irving bureau, now the fourth largest in Texas with a budget of $4.2 million, Benton created a three-pronged meeting magnet forged of sports, corporate business, and its Los Colinas properties. Benton feels the success of CVBs requires "coming into your market, looking at your own backyard, and understanding what it is you have to offer." He says he is more focused now because of his experience and more likely to "rifle the market than to shotgun it - and it doesn't hurt that the Dallas Cowboys have won three of the past four Super Bowls," reminds Benton.

5. The ascendance of women to the top level of the industry. According to Gina Barrett, previously IACVB manager of communications and now director of marketing and communications at the National Association of RV Parks and Campgrounds, Vienna, Virginia, among IACVB's 418 member bureaus, 173 (or 41 percent) of the CEOs are women. A curious set of circumstances have helped establish this trend. (See sidebar, "Breaking the CVB Ceiling," for details.)

Ready to retrofit

In redefining their roles as they head into the next century, the CVB executives profiled in this article focused on the sea changes in politics, global markets, and information. They identified two primary goals for themselves.

Goal 1: Become increasingly involved in governmental activities related to funding sources. With the erosion of the tax base in some cities, and with the cutting back of city budgets in most others, city and state governments salivate over the money generated from hotel room taxes. Szurek articulates her opinion of this would-be raid on hotel tax revenue like a true Texan: "Politicians are shooting themselves in the foot when they think about reducing or cutting off use of industry taxes to promote the state. It's reality, however, and for the first time in our bureau s history, we've hired a full-time lobbyist to run interference on general issues."

Although these CVB executives agreed that the goals of bureaus seem totally compatible with those of their states when it comes to generating visitors and revenue, Burns explains that "we've been forced to become lobbyists for budgets - and in fact for our very being. Competition for those dollars has gotten fierce." Ortale agrees that politics in all its forms is a much bigger factor in CVB management today. "From working with city managers to protecting tax revenues to obtaining funding for expansions to membership politics - all are much more complex issues than ever before."

Szurek predicts a continuing push to restructure CVBs as public-municipal partnerships, with many more activities being outsourced. "It will be a real challenge to put together these partnerships. Especially since our business is based on customer service - and you just can't outsource customer service." Szurek suggests that CVB management remain highly involved with politics and legislation by taking a leadership role with support organizations. Burns points out that CVBs must become "lean, mean machines" and avoid the pitfall of pumping up the budget as the single measure of success of a given bureau.

Goal 2: Actively promote a national consortium to meet the challenge of worldwide competition. Though their degrees of concern vary, all the CEOs expressed disappointment with the demise of the United States Travel and Tourism Agency (USTTA) early last year. Fortunately, President Clinton signed into law last October the U.S. National Tourism Organization Act, thereby creating the National Tourism Board and the National Tourism Organization (NTO) to promote international travel and tourism to the United States. Unfortunately, full funding mechanisms for NTO are as yet unclear.

Even so, Szurek feels that establishing NTO will do much to pull together "an incredibly enthusiastic and broad base of groups with common interests but whose activities are fractionalized." In the meantime, Benton suggests that CVBs must actively ensure that they have a presence in other regional representative agencies.

While McNeill explains that it's difficult to quantify the impact of the loss of USTTA, he does realize that "the future for us is in developing new markets." Fortunately, New Orleans is well-known abroad, where everyone associates the city with jazz. "We maintain a corps of sales representatives in Mexico, London, Paris, and Frankfurt. They say the names Fats Domino and Louis Armstrong, and the people just go goofy."

As for the omnipresent information highway, most agree that technology will continue to have great impact - from the way information is delivered at meetings to online marketing opportunities.

McNeill and his staff have spent recent months applying technology to employee training. He says, "We don't sell refrigerators; we don't sell chairs; service is our only product. We've devised a program to move into state-of-the-art training. After all, everyone enjoys giving good service - giving the good, correct, and exact answers to questions."

Hand in glove with the information highway goes an increase in accountability. Szurek explains that CVB management is held to higher standards than before, when there were no statistics on performance. Now "you must be an open book, totally accessible to your governing entity and your board," says Szurek. Or as Burns puts it, "In 1972, I wrote my business plan for the CVB on two pages of a legal pad. This year, I prepared an entire business plan, including a detailed marketing program, on 350 pages. It's no longer just the convention business but all the auxiliary businesses that help fill hotel rooms."

In keeping with this trend of accountability, other areas have seen a new professionalism, particularly in the site selection process. Burns explains there is much more negotiating today because meeting planners are increasingly budget conscious. Often they are "looking for deals, either at the convention site or in the hotels themselves," says Burns. Also, there is much more surveying of the organization's membership to determine the site of choice.

With regard to the effect of technology on the need for meetings, Burns believes that interaction cannot be replaced by anything so artificial as high-tech interchange. New technology will continue to unfold, but it is within the breakout discussions between very small groups that much of the work gets done. He says, "If anything, telecommunications has intensified the awareness of meetings and their importance."

Ortale predicts that the technology revolution could have more of a negative impact on business travel than on association travel. Telecommunication enhancements do offer the capacity to teleconference salespeople into a virtual sales meeting that can disseminate sales and product information via e-mail and the Internet. "However, when you are dealing with the issues of association constituents, the uses are not so straightforward," says Ortale. "Besides, you can't hook up 2,000 people on a computer conference. I'd hate to gavel that meeting."

RELATED ARTICLE: Breaking the CVB Ceiling

The Federal Glass Ceiling Commission - a bipartisan body created by the Civil Rights Act of 1991 - reports that by 1994 only 3 percent to 5 percent of Corporate America's senior positions were held by women. Why then does the convention and visitor bureau industry top the charts with an astounding 41 percent of its chief executive officers in 1995 being women, according to the membership statistics of the International Association of Convention and Visitor Bureaus? For women, the path to the CVB executive suite seems to be paved with skill, experience, and mentoring.

The industry executives interviewed for this article had several possible explanations:

* The rapid growth of the hotel and travel industries provided opportunities for many women who had gained experience and held solid credentials in those industries.

* Women are well-suited to the industry: They usually are great communicators and are detail-oriented. They often have a depth of warmth sometimes missing from their male counterparts.

* The more women there are in high positions, the more mentoring is possible to help other women achieve leadership positions.

In fact, the actual reason may be somewhat different, as revealed by Bobbie Patterson, executive director of the Boise, Idaho, Convention and Visitors Bureau, for the past 14 years. "When it's time to select someone to manage the CVB, those conducting the search look for someone highly visible in the community who has promoted the city, someone who has made many important contacts within and outside the city." Patterson explains that women are often the ones who, through their volunteer work or through positions in chambers of commerce or hotel and hospitality work, have those kinds of credentials. They are visible and committed to promoting their cities, and they know how to fit into local politics.

In addition, Patterson explains that in these days of accountability, "it's more than just the warm fuzzies" that make women successful. The CEO positions are now less sales positions than they are managerial positions - managing budgets, staff, political issues, scarce resources, benefit programs, and so on. "Women can be excellent managers, especially if they are willing to pay their dues through learning, through networking, and through volunteering and contributing to support organizations." Women can indeed be successful, "not because they are women, but because they are involved," says Patterson.

Sound too good to be true? Patterson suggests that the data may be skewed. The truth is that the bigger bureaus are harder for women to crack into at the CEO level. And since there's usually only one CVB in any given town, it's sometimes difficult to gain a higher spot without relocating. Patterson believes, however, that there are a number of directors of sales and other second-tier management positions currently held by women who will move up through the ranks. "We'll see a woman named to head one of the top 10 bureaus within the next 10 years," she predicts.

Carole Schweitzer is a freelance writer based in Arlington, Virginia.