Convention Business

As The Sun has reported, the outlook for the citywide convention business from 2008 through 2010 is soft, and that's why the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association is taking immediate steps to fill some holes in the coming years ("Convention bookings decline," Feb. 10). Convention business is typically booked five to seven years in advance. But there is still time to make an impact with short-term bookings. Our strategies include adding more muscle to the sales team with one or two new sales managers in the Baltimore office and opening a Northeast sales office that will focus on corporate and pharmaceutical groups, which can book meetings in the short term.

If the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association had troubles in the past, the organization is paying for it now. Its bookings for 2008 through 2010 are abysmally low, a reflection of the agency's failure in past years to lock in future business. The new management at BACVA has its work cut out for it. How well it does booking more conventions and meetings will influence the success of the city-financed convention center hotel being built. The sad, sorry state of Baltimore's convention business dates to 2003, when the BACVA board fired executive director Carroll R. Armstrong for poor performance and falsified booking data.

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The Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association rolls out its new campaign today to sell the city as a secret worth getting in on. There's plenty to share about Baltimore: its hospitality, cultural attractions, conviviality, entertainment venues and accessibility. But the pitch can't target only tourists; it must entice convention and meeting planners if the city's convention business is to thrive. The BACVA professionals know this. That's why, within 24 hours of unveiling their new slogan and branding campaign, they will be promoting the city under the "Baltimore - Get In On It" banner at the Greater Washington Society of Association Executives, a big industry trade show with the potential to score convention business.

BALTIMORE MAYOR Martin O'Malley is going to get his convention center hotel after all. After weeks of contentious debate, deliberation and concessions by Mr. O'Malley, nine City Council members gave the mayor the votes needed to approve a publicly financed 752-room hotel. Now it's up to the mayor's convention and tourism team to use the project to sell conventioneers on Baltimore. For starters, a major marketing and sales campaign should be launched to win convention business and inaugurate the new Hilton in 2008.

THE O'MALLEY administration's development team has taken a beating before the Baltimore City Council recently. Members opposed to a proposed publicly financed $305 million convention center hotel have been pounding away at the deal's lack of private investment. Their criticism has focused on whether the city actually needs another hotel, whether that hotel would invigorate Baltimore's convention business, and whether the city's investment in the project might be better spent improving conditions in blighted city neighborhoods.

AS THE Baltimore City Council prepares to consider the publicly financed convention center hotel, I thought I'd add my two cents' worth of observations to the debate over the $305 million project. First, the vote over whether to approve funding for the project looms as the first real political test for the reconfigured council, which took office in December. Individual accountability was a key reason community groups such as ACORN and the League of Women Voters pushed the ballot initiative to change the composition of the council from six three-member districts to 14 single-member districts, in each case with an at-large president.

Standing before a panel of skeptical politicians in the City Council chambers, Baltimore Development Corp. President M.J. "Jay" Brodie conjured up the image yesterday of councils past that had had to make tough decisions on risky public projects - things such as Charles Center, the Inner Harbor and the west-side redevelopment. Now on the table before city leaders is a publicly financed convention center hotel - what could be the costliest city project of all time. "In every case, the decision of the council was to move forward," Brodie said.

Thirty local business leaders signed up on the spot yesterday to be ambassadors for Baltimore after the head of the city's convention bureau appealed to them to help bring meetings and conventions here. Leslie R. Doggett, president and chief executive of the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association, said the new initiative is aimed at overcoming a recently identified weakness in booking convention business - selling the city's assets at the board of directors level, where decisions about meeting destinations are made.

Baltimore's convention business dipped in the most recent fiscal year to its lowest level since the size of the city's convention center was tripled in 1997, according to statistics released this week. Convention-related hotel bookings also slumped to two-thirds the budgeted level in the fiscal year ended June 30, the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association reported. Months of turmoil at the city's convention and visitors bureau - while its operation underwent a review that led to its president's ouster - along with a national convention travel slump contributed to the miserable showing, industry officials said.