Just one year after opening a satellite office in Washington, D.C., the Greater Hartford Visitor’s Bureau has already seen significant return on its investment.
Karen Staples, the East Coast sales manager for GHCVB, has been based in the D.C. office for the last 12 months. In the year before the office opened, there were 50 leads for new business that Staples uncovered compared to 74 this year, a jump of 48 percent.
For the number of leads that became definite bookings, the figure increased 59 percent from 34 to 54. The hotel room nights associated with those definite bookings went from 28,677 to 42,840, a 68 percent jump.
“What I do down here is press the flesh,” said Staples. “There are so many associations that it’s vital to be here.”
In fact, there are 61 convention bureaus that have satellite offices in Washington, D.C. and simply by being one of them, the perception of Hartford has changed.
“There’s a feeling that everyone here is in the game and if you aren’t here, you’re not in the game,” said Staples. “Perception is reality and the perception is that Hartford’s doing great because of the office. It takes away any of the doubt they might have.”
In addition to the benefits of perception, there is the invaluable personal interaction with meeting and event planners.
“You start building those contacts, building name recognition and build those relationships through networking,” she said. “It’s almost more important than the actual sales because people do business with people they like.”
New Slogan
Another initiative that may become more prevalent in the coming months is a new marketing slogan, “Happening As We Speak,” that will supplement the now-engrained “New England’s Rising Star.”
The old tagline won’t be going away anytime soon but Michael Van Parys, GHCVB’s vice president of sales, said the new phrase is a way to brand the city as an entity that is viable now, as opposed to a city that will be in the future.
“It’s not the old Hartford and that’s point we’re trying to get across,” said Van Parys. “We have the convention center, we have more development, we’re going to have the Connecticut Science Center and these are all things that draw the attention of meeting planners.”
In a new promotional video made by the GHCVB, the updated tagline is repeated several times over shots of unique Hartford landmarks such as the Mark Twain House.
Though the city is clearly not in the same league as neighboring Boston and New York, the bureau uses Hartford’s relatively intimate status as a key selling point.
“When your convention is in Hartford, you’re the only one in town,” said Keith Voets, GHCVB’s sales and marketing manager. “You’re going to get all of the city’s attention. The conventions that come here don’t get lost in the shuffle.”
In feedback from convention attendees in recent month, the bureau has found that the attention is warmly received and out-of-towners have described downtown Hartford as safe and walk able.
Small City
H. Scott Phelps, the GHCVB President, believes that the ease of getting around the city, specifically citing the Star Shuttle, has helped convince meeting planners to return to Hartford for more events.
Despite the focus on the city itself, Phelps plays up the location of Hartford in relation to the 23 million people within a two hours’ drive, and “off-site” destinations like the two casinos and the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield.
“It was always a source of frustration that we had so much to offer, in and out of the city, but didn’t have a convention center,” said Phelps. “Pierre, S.D., had a convention center and they were getting events but they didn’t have around it what we did. It was a matter of how could they have that and how could we not?”
Obviously, the convention center has provided the biggest boost to the bureau for attracting events but meeting planners aren’t descending here by their own volition. They have to be coaxed, coddled and convinced.
In that vein, the bureau has altered some of its previous tactics or ramp-up pitches that were working.
For the past several years, the bureau has had an agreement with Experient, an event planning company, to promote Hartford through meetings set up by the company. There was such a promotion in Denver earlier this month with future promotions set up in St. Louis and Chicago.
The bureau has also stepped up its wining and dining of potential clients, with events scheduled in Chicago and New York that will have the bureau throwing cocktail parties and bringing meeting planners to Broadway shows.
A significant change has been made in how the city itself is presented to meeting planners that do actually visit. In the not too distant past, these “familiarization meetings” consisted of showing the meeting planners just about everything Hartford had in a short time span.
Suffices to say, it was not as successful as it could have been.
“We used to bring in a lot of decision makers and basically just run them ragged,” said Van Parys. “We’ve completely changed how we do that now. We bring in a couple individuals in a limited group and set up a customize site visit based on what they want.”
There is a bubbling optimism that is clear when bureau officials discuss their recent success but it’s tempered by the knowledge that there’s more work to be done.
“I don’t know if you would say it’s a significant increase, it’s more of a steady increase right now,” said Van Parys. “There’s more we can do.”
Hartford has issues of its own that bureau officials would like to see remedied or improved to continue the momentum.
“If we had a wish list, I think a shuttle service from Bradley Airport to Hartford would be on the top,” said Van Parys. “More retail downtown is another and extended hours past 5 p.m. for people to do things.”
The restaurants also have to be told that maybe opening on Sunday would be a good idea when a big convention is in town.
Thanks to the Hartford Hospitality Task Force, there has been improved communication between the bureau and various entities, such as restaurants, the city and police, to insure these events go smoothly.
An example of this cohesiveness will be seen during the Aircraft Owners and Pilots (AOPA) Expo during the first weekend of October as Brainard Airport and one runway at Bradley will be dedicated to the expo.
“We starting talking to AOPA a couple years ago and now it’s here,” said Phelps. “We’re looking at this as a really big event for us and the city.”