Convention And Visitors

Armed with telephones, prospect lists and hot-pink markers, volunteers gathered at the Baltimore Convention Center yesterday to try to replace convention business lost in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks. The sales blitz, which continues today, is aimed at 3,000 East Coast meeting planners, who plan at least five meetings a year, using 100 to 1,000 hotel rooms per night during traditionally slow months. About 45 volunteers from the hospitality industry are expected to make 3,000 calls over the two days on behalf of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association.

The president of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP says it looks as if the city is a good bet to host the civil rights organization's national convention in 2012, which happens to be the 100th anniversary of the local branch. "It looks favorable," Marvin L. "Doc" Cheatham said Wednesday, a day after he, Mayor Sheila Dixon and representatives of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association and the Baltimore Convention Center made a 20-minute pitch to an NAACP panel considering proposals for that year's gathering.

BaltimoreAug. 17-20 Rural Utilities national conference, Omni Inner Harbor. Contact: Ken Ackerman, 202-720-9460. Estimated attendance: 600Aug. 18-20 United Trout Farmers Association conference, Sheraton Inner Harbor. Contact: Mary Wiltshire, 304-728-2189. Estimated attendance: 200InformationThe Sun lists selected conventions of general interest or with exhibits open to the public from those provided by the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association. This is not a list of all industrial, business or organizational conventions and meetings which are held in Baltimore, most of which are not open to public participation.

As the crucial summer travel season starts, how much are tourism marketers scrambling to meet the challenges from fast-rising gasoline prices and airfares? Well, "What happens here stays here" is not staying around, at least for now. That feel-good slogan, which promotes visits to Las Vegas - also known as "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" - is being shelved for harder-hitting pleas. The familiar commercials with cute, funny tales about travelers whose lives are changed by trips to Las Vegas have been supplanted by spots with a fast-talking pitchman who urges the world to "do Vegas right now."

Baltimore Feb. 16-19 American Choral Directors Association, Hyatt Regency, 300 Light St. Contact: Frederic Ford, 732-254-6783. Estimated attendance: 1,000 Feb. 22-27 American Craft Enterprises conference and craft fair, Baltimore Convention Center. Contact: Jo Ann Brown, 914- 883-6100. Estimated attendance: 25,000 Information The Sun lists selected conventions of general interest or with exhibits open to the public from those provided by the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association.

Feb. 13-16Career Communications Group annual Black Engineers Conference and awards, Convention Center. Contact: Ashanti Zebulum-Brown, Suite 504, 729 E. Pratt St., Baltimore, Md. 21202.InformationFor Washington-area convention information, call the Washington, D.C. Convention and Visitors Association at (202) 789-7000.Pub Date: 1/13/97

Information For Washington-area convention information, call the Washington, D.C. Convention and Visitors Association at (202) 789-7000.BaltimoreJan. 4-6 Mid-Atlantic Nursery- men's winter trade show and exposition, Convention Center. Contact: Carville Akehurst, 410-882- 5300. Expected attendance: 7,000.Pub Date: 12/14/98

BaltimoreFeb. 14-17 Biophysical Society national convention, Convention Center. Contact: Nancy Nootenboom, 301-530-7010. Expected attendance: 3,000Information For Washington-area convention information, call the Washington, D.C. Convention and Visitors Association at (202) 789-7000. BaltimorePub Date: 1/11/99

BaltimoreMarch 5-7 IDEA-Association for Fitness Professionals personal training conference, Convention Center. Contact: Dawn Norman, 619-535-8979. Expected attendance: 3,000InformationFor Washington-area convention information, call the Washington, D.C. Convention and Visitors Association at (202) 789-7000.Pub Date: 3/01/99

BaltimoreApril 11-14 American Nephrology Nurses Association conference and symposium, Convention Center. Contact: Kristine Jannetti, 970-728-9074. Expected attendance: 2,500InformationFor Washington-area convention information, call the Washington, D.C. Convention and Visitors Association at (202) 789-7000.Pub Date: 3/08/99

Tom Noonan grew up in the Midwest and calls Rochester, Minn., his hometown, but he fell in love with the Mid-Atlantic when a job opportunity took him to Washington, D.C., several years ago. After spending time in Texas, he moved to Baltimore at the end of December to become head of the city's main tourism organization. "This is like coming home," Noonan says. Noonan, 42, lives with his wife, Mindy, in Canton with their miniature dachshund, Macy. 1. New music for my iPod "I'm a fan of all kinds of music.

Thomas J. Noonan President and chief executive officer, Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association (BACVA) Salary --$185,000 Age --42 Time on the job: --Seven months How he got started --Before promoting Baltimore as the best location to hold a conference, he promoted Dallas for 18 years with the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau (DCVB). For eight of those years, he worked out of the DCVB's Washington office and fell in love with the Mid-Atlantic. When the opening for BACVA came up, he scheduled a video interview and became a finalist for the job, eventually securing it. He started in January.

Here, water is everything - the heart of the city's revival, the point of its main tourist attraction, the flavor of the hometown dish. There, the wettest things are the decorative fountains outside the convention center. It's dust, it's prairie, it's cows - it's Texas. Despite having nothing visibly in common, Baltimore and Fort Worth have become the nation's newest clique - business partners and instant mutual admiration society. Tourism boosters in each city are reaching across the country to join hands, hoping that together they can grab visitors' dollars that traditionally end up in other cities.

On a warm November weekend morning, about 35 people from Massachusetts, New York, Missouri and Pennsylvania pack the benches of a trolley rolling through Roxbury, a historically black neighborhood in Boston. For two hours they listen as the tour guide explains how residents are building on vacant lots created when the neighborhood disintegrated in the 1960s. The trolley, part of a tour organized by the local group Discover Roxbury, passes restored 19th-century mansions and red-brick rowhouses, and the tourists audibly "aah" with delight.

When Thomas J. Noonan takes over next week as head of Baltimore's convention and tourism bureau, the view from his new office will remind him daily on just how much is riding on his performance: the $301 million publicly financed headquarters hotel rising adjacent to the Pratt Street convention center. Noonan, who becomes president and chief executive of the Baltimore Convention and Visitors Association on Wednesday, is charged with ensuring that the hotel, set to open in 2008, will jump-start Baltimore's long lagging meetings business and revive its underperforming convention center.

The Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association has tapped an industry veteran as its new president and chief executive officer with hopes he will bolster the city's flagging meetings business. Thomas J. Noonan, 41, will take the helm Jan. 3. He is senior vice president of sales and services and second-in-command at the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau, which oversees the nation's eighth-largest convention market. Noonan arrives at a pivotal time for the city, which is betting that a publicly financed $301 million headquarters hotel that is under construction will fill the underperforming convention center.

Baltimore Jan. 26-30 United States Pony Clubs annual meeting, Renaissance Harborplace, Pratt and Commerce streets. Contact: Peggy Entrekin, 606-254-7669. Estimated attendance: 300 Information The Sun lists selected conventions of general interest or with exhibits open to the public from those provided by the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association. For Washington-area convention information, call 202-789-7000.

BALTIMOREFor more Baltimore convention information, call the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association at (410) 659-7300 within Maryland or (800) 343-3468 outside Maryland.Feb. 7-Feb. 12: No Baltimore-area convention activity has been reported for this period.WASHINGTONFor more Washington-area convention information, call the Washington, D.C. Convention and Visitors Association at (202) 789-7000.* Feb. 7-8: Fertilizer Institute national convention in the J. W. Marriott. Contact: Linda McAbee, (202)

NEW ORLEANS -- Determined to temper fears that New Orleans is not safe in the aftermath of six deadly shootings last week, tourism industry representatives, city officials and police are pushing a defensive message: The city's crime problem is not spiraling out of control, and the violence in recent weeks is contained to certain neighborhoods and certain types of people. "This is going on among the criminal element," said Bambi Hall, a spokeswoman for the New Orleans Police Department.

Fifty thousand Baptists are getting in on it. The city's biggest-ever convention is in town for the week, and anyone else downtown yesterday could feel the impact. The National Baptist Congress of Christian Education transformed Interstate 95 north into a creeping, crawling mess. It has packed downtown hotels and overflowed into suburban lodgings. It's flooded the streets, restaurants and tourist attractions with badge-wearing, photo-taking visitors, adults and kids alike. Imagine Oriole Park at Camden Yards at full capacity - and then imagine all those people milling around for roughly five days.