Michael Goldsmith, senior director of convention sales for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, is chuckling. We're talking about the fallout from the "diss heard 'round the world" in February 2009, when President Obama warned companies receiving taxpayer bailouts not to spend the money on Vegas junkets.
"You are not going to be able to give out these big bonuses until you pay taxpayers back," Obama told a crowd in Elkhart, Ind. "You can't get corporate jets. You can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers' dime. There's got to be some accountability and some responsibility."
Local politicians sniped at Obama and the city experienced a raft of convention cancellations.
Goldsmith says the president's comments had come just days before the LVCVA's planned launch of VegasMeansBusiness.com. He laughs at the suggestion that the timing was cosmic.
"Cosmic is probably appropriate," Goldsmith said. "Vegas Means Business goes back to when we first started noticing a decline in national market conditions in 2008. We started developing a website as a tool to put all the information that validates Las Vegas as a viable business destination in one place."
He said that the organization had previously used the site as an information "parking lot," but "now we needed to develop content to combat myths about Vegas."
(Incidentally, a year later, Obama ruffled feathers again when he referred to the city in a Nashua, N.H., town hall meeting: "Responsible families don't do their budgets the way the federal government does. Right? When times are tough, you tighten your belts. You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices. It's time your government did the same.")
Resetting the narrative
Obama's larger points about corporate and personal fiscal responsibility were lost in translation. Resetting the narrative was imperative, Goldsmith said, and that began with transforming VegasMeansBusiness.com from a parking lot to an information superhighway packed with data, research, tool kits and testimonials.
Getting third-party validation was paramount.
"It's not us saying we're great, it's the people who do business here validating that this is a great place to have a convention," Goldsmith said. "I'm paid to tell you how good Las Vegas is, but somebody from a competing trade organization isn't.
"We're able to provide independent research that addresses the misperceptions," he said. "I'm asked all the time if the city will distract meeting attendees. We have research to debunk that."
Among pages of testimonials is one from Angelo Varrone, CEO of ExpoNation, whose Digital Signage Expo in February brought in a record 4,979 attendees and exhibitors, up 21% vs. 2009.
"Equally important, we had our highest-quality attendance, including all-important end users of digital signage, up 44% from 2009," Varrone wrote in his testimonial. "Based on our day-to-day attendance stats, we believe they stayed longer than in 2009. In addition, we had 778 (15.6%) foreign visitors from 59 countries, another record."
Other testimonials point to the attendance boost resulting from lower-priced hotel rooms; myriad specials on dining, shopping and entertainment; and Vegas' weather. Such testimonials have both an emotional and a tangible impact on meetings planners, Goldsmith said.
To wit: According to a survey conducted for the LVCVA by Exhibit Surveys in 2008, companies noticed attendance increases 14% when their shows are held in Las Vegas and decreases 2% when their shows are held elsewhere. Las Vegas trade show delegates also spend more time on the show floor: 11.5 hours compared with 5.8 to 9.5 hours in other cities.
Despite the economy, several trade shows experienced record attendance in the last year, including the Wedding & Portrait Photographers International Convention and Trade Show in March at the MGM Grand.
"With over 14,500 registered attendees, more than any other past convention in our history, WPPI was filled with photographers from all over the world learning about what is hip, hot and new in the business of professional photography," George Varanakis, WPPI's group publisher and executive vice president, said in a statement.
Anti-meetings mood
VegasMeansBusiness.com's efforts are mirrored on the national level by the U.S. Travel Association's MeetingsMeanBusiness.com, which debuted in March 2009, a month after the president's first comments about corporate jaunts to Vegas. At the time, Goldsmith said, "the whole industry was under attack."
In a widely cited 2008 study in Meetings & Conventions Magazine, Travel Weekly's sister publication, 52% of respondents said the anti-meetings climate influenced their companies' convention plans. Upward of 400 conventions were canceled, costing Las Vegas more than $100 million in nongaming revenue.
"This assault awoke the entire industry," said Geoff Freeman, senior vice president of U.S. Travel, the industry's research, policy-setting and lobbying arm.
In March 2009, the association, along with other travel and meetings industry organizations, started MeetingsMeanBusiness.com to combat negative rhetoric from policy makers and bad press about business travel, particularly to destinations like Las Vegas.
The website trumpeted facts (for every dollar invested in business travel, companies realize $12.50 in incremental revenue) and commentary from the likes of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman ("Travel for business meetings and events drives the whole hospitality industry in America, and that industry isn't fat cats; it's waiters and dishwashers, maids and cooks, event staff and hotel clerks -- blue-collar workers.").
Freeman said the coordination produced results, including the defeat of five federal proposals that would have hurt meetings-related travel.
"We made the case that these activities provide extraordinary value to companies and the economy," he said. "Now we're all working together, including the folks in Vegas, to tell this story."
VegasMeansBusiness.com is also a coordinated effort, Goldsmith said, uniting tourism officials, hospitality companies, meetings planners, sales staff and other providers.
By supplying industry news, marketing kits, sales contacts, vendor lists and services, VegasMeansBusiness.com has become a one-stop resource.
"There's no way to attribute that these resources have had an economic impact, but it is one arrow in our quiver, and a very good arrow at that," Goldsmith said. "We really want users to go to the website and get information they need. We want to help companies and customers make good business decisions."
This report appeared in the July 12 issue of Travel Weekly.
