Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau (GMCVB): Tourism Business Enhancement Impacts All Community Members

Social Impact Framework: Engagement with All Community Populations

What is the issue you were trying to address?  

The issue that we are addressing is making sure that the small businesses in our heritage neighborhoods and cultural communities are an integral part of our tourism ecosystem.  

Many times, without intentional outreach, the unique members and businesses that make up the diversity of our destination are overlooked. The information being shared is specific to the impact and continued work in the area of business capacity building and community connectivity to tourism opportunities.  

While this is not a new program for us as it is a foundational component of our Multicultural Tourism & Development Department, it continues to evolve and grow. The overall name of this program is the GMCVB’s Tourism Business Enhancement (TBE). This program assists small businesses directly and indirectly related to tourism and also includes embracing our arts community via our platform Art of Black Miami.  

What were the stated objectives of this initiative?  

The Vision: To provide capacity building support to businesses in our multicultural communities for them to benefit from Miami’s #1 Industry – Tourism.  

The Mission: Advocate, support and strengthen the economic sustainability and access of our multicultural communities and heritage tourism related businesses within Greater Miami and Miami Beach. 

What were the specific metrics you used to measure the success of your efforts?

We use both quantitative and qualitative metrics.  

From a quantitative perspective we look at Partnership (Membership) conversion, the number of businesses that attend our GMCVB led quarterly workshops and businesses that attend our joint collaborations such as the Miami Bayside Foundation Small and Minority Business 10-week training sessions.  

From a qualitative measure we track success stories and examples regarding the positive impact of capacity building resources provided by the GMCVB. 

What were the specific outcomes and results of your efforts?  

From 2016 to date, a total of 737 businesses have participated in our business resource workshops. This total reflects the number of businesses that have participated in the Miami Bayside Foundation Small Business Training in which the GMCVB is a recruiting, retaining and financial partner or the quarterly GMCVB led workshops.  

In addition to the numerical data showing engagement, we track instances of specific stories in which the businesses have seen an increase of tourist related activity or has experienced some type of positive elevation because of their connection with the GMCVB. 

Is there any other information you'd like to share, including any best practices or key lessons learned?  

The support of a business development program like the Tourism Business Enhancement program must be supported from the senior leadership and board of directors.  

While there are quantitative results, the qualitative results resonate the most. It is not a sprint it is a marathon mindset for seeing results. Bureaus must have the same financial and staffing resources for this area of work that they do for other key areas of the DMO.  If it is important to an organization, it will have appropriate funding or there will be a plan of action to develop a funding channel.      

This area of work must be integrated into the culture of the full organization so the program does not become siloed or looked upon as a lesser area of focus. This type of work should not be looked upon as a hand- out but rather a mutual partnership, awareness and growth opportunity between the organization (DMO) and the community of businesses and stakeholders in which it serves.  

We all rise together.