Convene - February 2016

opinion post-tour than what had existed prior to their arrival, and there were a lot of different perspectives on the issue that everyone brought with them. In many cases, the influence of the media on how they felt about the issue was discounted after they saw it for themselves.”

The meeting prompted Explore St. Louis
to hold two additional focus groups — one
with association CEOs, another with meet-
ing planners who weren’t all that familiar
with St. Louis — to gauge opinions beyond
the CAB’s scope. “The results from that were
different,” Ratcliffe said, “because we were
talking with groups that we didn’t necessarily
already have a relationship with. It was help-
ful to have all perspectives.”
Those insights helped Ratcliffe coach her
team on how to talk about the issue when
it came up with clients — including that
it wasn’t necessarily something to avoid.

Per the CAB’s recommendation, Explore
St. Louis posted an FAQ on its website, and
several CAB members agreed to tape video
testimonials that were posted to the DMO’s
You Tube channel. “As you will probably
remember, the national media just kept
showing things on fire, confrontations in the
street. Many people didn’t have any under-
standing of where that was actually taking
place,” said Ratcliffe, who noted that no
groups canceled their meetings as a result of
the protests. “We were able to provide those
tools to those customers to … very quickly
calm their concerns.”

‘A BUSINESS NEED TO MOVE FORWARD’ CABs are also playing a larger role in helping to get the ball rolling on challenging projects, such as a publicly funded convention-center expansion or a new headquarters hotel. Because CAB members are often a destination’s best customers, they can sway opinions in a way that other partners or stakeholders can’t.

The Industry’s CAB

Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI) formed its Meeting Professionals Advisory Board in 2013, and has held three meetings since then in an effort to better understand what challenges the DMO industry faces. DMAI’s Christine “Shimo” Shimasaki, CDME, CMP, calls the group “an advisory board for the industry. We brought together what I consider some of the brightest minds in the meetings industry.” Currently, the board has 16 members, including senior-level meeting professionals from a range of industries, from Microsoft to the American Bar Association. A handful of senior sales executives from DMOs were also invited to participate, along with DMAI’s senior executives.

“I think some of the biggest takeaways so far — and we see this as an ongoing evolution — is we need to really address the changing needs that planners have of a [DMO serving as a] partner, and what does that mean to our sales professionals,” Shimasaki said. “In other words, our customers are changing, so we can’t really continue to work the same way.” Topics addressed have included how DMO sales professionals can more effectively serve meeting professionals by, for example, identifying destination assets that draw better attendance. “It’s not good enough to change at one destination,” Shimasaki said. “We have to make it change across the industry, across destinations, in order for CVBs to always be at the forefront of helping [find] solutions for meeting professionals.” DMAI’s advisory board has influenced a number of recent initiatives from DMAI as well as from the broader industry, including The Event Room Demand Study, which revealed that one in three group rooms nights is booked outside of the block, and DestinationNEXT, which is design to provide DMOs with practical actions and strategies for success in a changing marketplace. The board has also advised on an in-the-works training curriculum for DMO sales professionals that DMAI hopes to launch in 2016 or 2017.

“[DestinationNEXT] is a perfect example of how our advisory board lends its expertise to really help frame next practices and best practices,” Shimasaki said. “Because customers like the ones we have on our advisory board have witnessed a lot of different destinations, and saw what worked and what didn’t work in terms of their services.”