Greetings from Washington, D.C. and happy Friday!
Over the past week the team has been in a full debrief mode after our Annual Convention. We are pleased to report that 1,625 people attended the convention and over 17 countries were represented. On behalf of the entire team, thank you to everyone for spending your valuable time with us in Anaheim. We want to again thank Jay Burress and his team at Visit Anaheim for being such incredible hosts and partners. We also want to thank Gary Sherwin of Visit Newport Beach Inc. and Kelly Miller of Visit Huntington Beach for co-sponsoring the opening reception with Visit Anaheim – What an amazing event! And, a special thanks to all of our partners and sponsors who helped make our Annual Convention a huge success.
I am pleased to report that we netted over $100,000 for the Foundation from the online auction, the Golf Tournament and other events during the Annual Convention. Thanks to Stephanie Pace Brown for her leadership this past year. What a great way to close out her term as Chair of the Foundation.
For those who attended the convention, we would value your input on the survey that was recently sent out. We have already started the initial planning for the 2019 Annual Convention in St. Louis, Missouri. Be sure to mark your calendar for July 23-26, 2019.
Earlier this week, I had the privilege of attending the 93rd annual VenueConnect Annual Conference and Trade Show in Toronto, which had nearly 2,000 attendees. It goes without saying, this was a difficult week for the city of Toronto after the cowardly shooting that took place Sunday night in their great city. However, Toronto is a very resilient city and is quickly back on its feet. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of those impacted by this tragedy.
While in Toronto, I had the pleasure of serving on a panel with Brett Mitchell, General Manager, of Overland Park Convention Center; Geoff Lacher, Senior Economist at Oxford Economics; and Brad Mayne, CVE, President and CEO of International Association of Venue Managers. As many of you know, the latest venture between Destinations International and Adam Sacks and his team at Tourism Economics is the EIC partnership with IAVM. We all understand the importance of measurement, return on investment and having timely data to validate our business decisions. We have been working for almost two years with Brad Mayne and his team at IAVM to align the reporting requirements of convention centers, arenas, and stadiums in conjuction with current member EIC subscribers. We are very excited about the interest that was expressed by IAVM members in Toronto. Special thanks to our Board Member, Johanne R. Bélanger, for her hospitality and support of our efforts throughout Canada. Tourism Toronto is pairing up with Barry Smith and his team from the Metro Toronto Convention Centre as one of the EIC test city groups. Thanks to Johanne and Barry!
As of today, the following members have paired up with their centers to begin testing pertinent information/data between the two organizations that EIC currently delivers: Anaheim, Baltimore, Chicago, Columbus, Denver, Los Angeles, Louisville, Overland Park, Palm Beach, Seattle and Toronto. In addition, we are building a fourth module of EIC that is very important for IAVM members which will measure the impact of public shows, that in many cases are not room night driven nor booked through the CVB. More on this important initiative later! A special thanks to Christine “Shimo” Shimasaki, CDME, CMP, of 2synergize, Inc. for her continued hard work and coordination on behalf of IAVM and our team. And, a special thanks to our Board Member, David DuBois, President and CEO of IAEE, for his interest and vision for EIC as an industry standard.
With Annual Convention behind us, we are moving full speed into our summit season. Each of these summits have been developed by our Summit Committees in conjunction with Colleen Phalen and our team. We hope to see you there!
- C-Suite Session: CVBs Engaged!, August 17-19, 2018, Chicago, IL, USA
- Visitor Services Summit, September 23-25, 2018, Monterey, CA, USA
- Membership Summit, October 22-25, 2018, Palm Springs, CA, USA
- Finance, Operations and Technology Summit, October 28-31, 2018, Cleveland, OH, USA
- Advocacy Summit, November 7-9, 2018, Philadelphia, PA, USA
- Fall Learning Week, November 11-16, 2018, Seattle, Washington, USA
- CDME (2 Core Courses, 2 Electives)
- PDM: Fundamentals of Sales
- CDME Summit
- 19th Annual LGBTQ Tourism Forum, December 2-4, 2018, Fort Lauderdale, FL
- Convention Sales & Services Summit, December 2018, Location and dates to be announced
Thanks again for all your support and we look forward to seeing many of you in Chicago for our C-Suite Session: CVBs Engaged which is co-presented with our great partners at ASAE!
Best wishes for a safe and enjoyable weekend!
Sincerely,
Don Welsh
President & CEO
Destinations International