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the cvb exec
David DuBois The power of cooperation
David A. DuBois, CMP, CAE, is President and CEO for the Fort Worth Convention & Visitors Bureau.
MPG Like a lot of other people, I tripped into this business. My two best friends in high school’s families were in the restaurant business in Detroit so they chose to go to Michigan State’s Hotel & Restaurant Management school. I decided to go with them.
Once I was able to work my way out of my father’s dry cleaning business, I got a job at the Dearborn Inn in Dearborn, Michigan. Dutch deVogel, the Inn’s European-trained general manager, introduced me to the hospitality business.
What makes Fort Worth unique as a meetings destination? From the Amon Carter days (founder of the Star-Telegram), Fort Worth has been endearingly called “Cowtown.” You will rarely see that term in our marketing materials now because we are truly a city of “Cowboys and Culture.” For the past 10 - 12 years that has been our brand and, working with TCU’s marketing department and a local committee, we recently reaffirmed that brand with our mayor, Mike Moncrief. Our research showed that the “Cowboys and Culture” tagline is short and sweet, and it honestly defines who we are.
The perception of Fort Worth is still one of a third-tier city - a suburb of Dallas. We are now a very sophisticated city, the 9th safest city and, with a population of 700,000, we’re the 17th largest city in the U.S. Fort Worth may be sophisticated but it’s also very supportive of its western heritage.
The Fort Worth CVB has developed a cooperative sales program with two other bureaus. Tell us about the program - its genesis and its effectiveness. Tom Noonan, president of the Baltimore CVB, and I are good friends – we both started our jobs on the same day two years ago. We give each other credit for the program because neither one of us came up with the idea, it just happened.
Our common need was to generate more short-term national corporate business. We said, why don’t we join forces to sell Baltimore and Fort Worth. Perhaps we could get a west coast city to participate (we chose Sacramento) and we could hire sales people to handle corporate accounts on the east coast, Midwest and west coast.
None of us - Baltimore, Fort Worth or Sacramento - are known as national corporate destinations. If Dell, Microsoft or Nike thought of an east coast location, Baltimore just didn’t come to mind. After we secured the Sacramento partnership, we hired three home-based sales representatives – Ann Garvey in Baltimore, Robin O’Connor in St. Louis, and Julie Gorman in Eagle, Idaho. In a year and a half, the program has generated almost 300,000 lead room nights. Since we are in the middle of the country, Fort Worth receives most of the leads - we get 50%, Baltimore gets 30% and Sacramento gets 20%. Through this program, we have booked 60,000 definite room nights.
What are your thoughts about the relationship betweens bureaus and hotels? The Fort Worth CVB hosts a monthly meeting with the six downtown hotels that make up our city’s convention package. We discuss marketing, tourism and meetings.
Years ago, a former boss taught me, “the best and quickest way to graduate is to cooperate.” I live by that good advice and understand that we can’t do the sales and marketing alone.
The bureau cares more about booking business into Fort Worth than which hotel gets the group. We want to beat our competition for every piece of business that we have an opportunity to bid on. Fort Worth’s competition is anywhere from Grapevine to Dallas to Austin to Albuquerque. Because of the DFW International Airport, we also compete against international destinations and I’m pleased to say that we just beat out Toronto and Maui for two different groups.
When I joined this organization, I wanted to implement a system that allows my staff to work with any piece of business whether it is generated by a hotel sales person, a national hotel sales office, a third party, or by the bureau. It doesn’t matter if five different distribution mechanisms get the credit. Everyone agreed and we all go by what the customer wants. That’s the culture we’ve created and it’s been nicely supported.
What is the greatest challenge facing the travel & meetings industry? We’re fighting a perception. Research shows that 91% of the Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. are not receiving any TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) money but one in five of these companies has cancelled meetings because of the perception that they would be wasting money.
Ten prominent CEO’s from the hospitality industry including Roger Dow of the US Travel Association, recently met with President Obama and congressional leaders to let them know how important this industry is to the growth and health of our economy. A consortium of industry organizations has been formed and has developed a campaign and website called MeetingsMeanBusiness.com. It’s a great source of information about our current challenge.
In the city of Fort Worth, the hospitality industry is worth over a billion dollars. We have a balanced and diverse portfolio - a third is meetings and conventions, a third is leisure tourism, and a third is business travel. Conservatively, meetings and conventions represents $250-300 million dollars and supports 12,000 jobs. Some cities are more affected because they are not as diverse. We work closely with the CVBs in this area through the Dallas/Fort Worth Area Tourism Council. We all have to tell the story that meetings are a valuable part of our economy.
What action can we take individually to support your efforts? Contact your state representatives and your congressman. Template for letters are on USTA’s web site, www.ustravel.org. MeetingsMeanBusiness.com also has information about the issue and ways that we can all help. Meeting planners should go to this web site and learn more about the talking points that they can discuss with their management about the importance of meetings to the health of our economy. |
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