It could be a sign of brighter skies ahead. After the final tally, the number of attendees for ASAE’s 2010 Annual Meeting rang in at 5,522, an increase of 700 association professionals and 100 exhibitors compared to last year. “We believe the positive growth is a good sign that associations and the entire nonprofit community are slowly rebounding from the down economy,” said ASAE President and CEO John H. Graham IV, CAE. ”This doesn’t mean the tough times are behind us, but it’s a promising indicator that we’re trending in the right direction.”

News of an increase in ASAE attendance numbers follows a few other promising meetings reports from earlier in the summer. The U.S. Travel Association, which recently launched a few initiatives in an effort to boost tourism, predicts a seven percent increase in meetings and convention spending by the end of 2010 after 2009′s 15 percent decline. In June, Meeting Professionals International conducted a survey that indicated that two-thirds of the meeting planners who responded said they’re experiencing a healthier market this year, with higher attendance numbers, slightly bigger budgets and an increase in the number of meetings. Hotels are also seeing increased group and meetings business, as recently reported by Rejuvenate.

DMAI President Michael Gehrisch (left) and a fellow attendee help at Feeding South Florida.

Social responsibility is one of the buzzwords floating around corporate America, and it has spread quickly throughout the meeting and convention world. Service projects, donation drives and volunteer days at conventions are ways for meetings to give back to cities in which they’re held (in addition to the innate economic impact).

Public relations efforts, websites and business plans of large corporations like Gap and Coca-Cola reflect the belief that social responsibility can attract business. Whether it’s a McDonald’s Happy Meal that gives a donation to the Ronald McDonald House or Ethos Water, the premium bottled water company that helps children around the world get clean water, companies not only feel the need to be responsible, but to allow customers to join in.

“How do you create business models that inspire people to engage with you?” Jonathan Greenblatt, co-founder of Ethos Water, asked attendees at the July Destination Marketing International Association (DMAI) annual convention. He suggests that you have to do it from the bottom up, in a tangible way.

“In a world where everything is discoverable,” he says, referring to the 24-hour news cycle, Internet and social media, “you have to be authentic.” Rather than just touting green efforts or charitable donations, many conferences are encouraging attendees to get involved.

More than 500 members of the international Jewish fraternity AEPi teamed up with B’nai B’rith International to clean up a New Orleans city park during the fraternity’s 97th Anniversary Convention in early August. “It is our responsibility to give back to the community,” AEPi Executive Director Andy Borans said before the event. “During our convention we are taking time out of our fraternal business to not only fulfill the duty of our fraternity, but of our faith as well.”

Harris Rosen, founder of Rosen Hotels and Resorts, is well known around the hospitality industry for his generosity through the Harris Rosen Foundation. In addition to its recent work in Haiti, the Rosen Foundation adopted the community of Tangelo Park in Orlando, where Rosen’s  hotels are located, 25 years ago. Meeting attendees using his hotels, Rosen Shingle Creek, Rosen Centre Hotel or Rosen Plaza Hotel, can volunteer in the community in which Rosen has created nine preschools, helped send hundreds of kids to college and improved the community through clean-up efforts and rebuilding projects.

“More and more groups are asking for charity initiatives to take part in,” Rosen says. “It is amazing the response we get from associations and businesses looking for ways to give back and they are so thankful that we provide something for them to do.”

In July, DMAI welcomed representatives from destination marketing organizations, which are often the connecting point for meeting planners looking for volunteer opportunities in a host city. The convention showed the benefit of providing such projects with a service day of its own. Attendees participated in a service project at Feeding South Florida, a food bank that serves daycare centers, homeless shelters, residential homes for the physically and mentally challenged, assisted-living facilities for the elderly, youth programs, soup kitchens and emergency food pantries. Watch the video below to see the response of some of the volunteers.

One way cities can raise additional revenue to help bridge budget shortfalls is to raise travel taxes for everything from hotel occupancy (or bed) taxes to rental car, airport, meal and other taxes. These taxes are assessed primarily on visitors, rather than residents.

Raising travel taxes can be an effective revenue generator and is usually popular with local citizens since the taxes are paid primarily by out-of-towners. But for cities that rely on tourism and conventions, raising taxes too much can hurt that all-important visitor business.

Politically Popular Strategy

Bonnie Wallsh, CMP, CMM, chief strategist with Bonnie Wallsh Associates meeting management consulting firm, says that she hasn’t heard of any cities that are decreasing travel taxes. “Cities and states are in dire need of money, so I’m seeing a growing trend toward increasing travel taxes. In effect, these are taxes on non-voters, and most politicians are very nervous right now.”

In Charlotte, N.C., city leaders didn’t want to require local citizens to foot the bill for the new NASCAR Hall of Fame, so they raised the hotel occupancy tax by one-half percent to finance it, says Wallsh.

Los Angeles is now planning an increase in hotel occupancy taxes. Hotel owners have proposed a 1.5 percent hike in the city’s current 14 percent occupancy tax to help finance more tourism and convention marketing and promotion for the city.

The fee would not affect small hotels; it would be levied only by hotels with more than 50 guest rooms, raising an estimated $10 to $11 million per year to be added to the $11.4 million Los Angeles currently spends on tourism marketing and promotion. This amount is far lower than comparable cities like Las Vegas and San Diego, hotel owners note, which spend $71 million and $24 million, respectively, on tourism promotion. The Los Angeles City Council will have to vote to approve the measure.

The state of New York also plans a 20 percent increase in hotel occupancy taxes assessed to third-party travel intermediaries (like travel agencies and online travel companies) of 20 percent as part of the currently proposed state budget. This would raise the occupancy tax in New York City for hotel rooms booked through a travel intermediary from 5.875 percent to 7.05 percent.

State officials say the increase intends to capture revenue that’s not being collected from travel intermediaries due to the fact that they pay taxes on the rates at which they purchase rooms, not the higher rates at which they resell them. (See Battle Over Internet Booking Tax Heats Up for more on this issue.) Intermediaries dispute this, claiming they earn revenue from service fees and commissions, not room markups, and that the tax hike would raise money to help promote tourism.

Remaining Competitive

Despite the need to raise funds during this tough economy, some cities are saying no to additional travel taxes. Carling Dinkler, president of Custom Conventions destination management company based in New Orleans, doesn’t see travel taxes going up in the cities where he primarily does business. “I don’t see anything on my radar indicating that any city that wants to be competitive has plans to raise travel taxes,” he says. “Tourism has been in a deep depression for the past couple of years, and it may be a while before it starts to come out of it.”

Nikki Nicholson, vice president, convention sales, with the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, says that the city’s 13 percent hotel occupancy tax is on the low end for cities of similar size. “This tax has held steady for at least 15 years,” she notes, “and I’m not aware of any plans to raise it.”

However, she understands the plight many cities face in the current economy. “While it’s certainly difficult to raise travel taxes, it’s the only way many cities can generate additional marketing dollars and remain competitive.”

This tax also provides a lot of bang for the buck, Nicholson points out: While a 1 percent bump in the hotel occupancy tax only raises a traveler’s bill about $5 on a typical three-night stay at $175 per night, it can generate an additional $1.75 million a year for a city with 1 million annual room nights.

In Las Vegas, the hotel occupancy tax recently rose from 9 to 12 percent after a voter-approved ballot initiative, with the increase helping fund education, according to Jeremy Handel, a spokesperson for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. The CVA receives approximately 34 percent of the revenue the occupancy tax collects, he says, adding that no current plans are in place to increase the tax further. “Like most organizations, we have had to make adjustments to our operations due to declining revenue,” he says. “However, we continue to promote travel to our destination through advertising, marketing and public relations campaigns around the world.”

Dallas has created the Dallas Arts District, now the biggest such district in the nation at 68 acres, which has museums, performing arts centers, churches and an arts school. Pritzker Prize-winning architects designed four of the buildings, and the district fits neatly into the larger downtown landscape near dozens of hotels and thousands of square feet of convention space. In North Carolina, Charlotte’s Wells Fargo Cultural Campus brings museums and green space to a city known for banking and car racing. And Kansas City, which is home to internationally known museums including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, unveils a $413 million Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts next fall. The center will be near the new Kansas City Power & Light District, popular for dining and nightlife, and the Crossroads Arts District.

Art associations, which represent everything from architecture and painting to literature and conceptual art, have a number of meetings and events nationwide every year. Many of the planners of those events want destinations for their conferences that appeal to the interests of their members. Pamela Meister is the executive director of the Southeastern Museums Conference. She helps select the site for the group’s annual meeting each year, which brings about 200 museum professionals together from 12 Southeastern states, as well as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. “We are a little unusual because the most important thing for us is the local museum community,” says Meister. “A really important goal of our annual meeting is to visit the local museums. Beyond that, we’re much more like a regular association and we’re looking at good meeting space, headquarter hotel and so on.”

“When we’re selecting a site we insist that we’re invited by the museum community,” she says. In 2009, Meister took the conference to Charleston, W.Va., where she organized events at the newly renovated West Virginia State Museum, the governor’s mansion and the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences, which includes an art museum, science center and performing arts center. Next month, the SEMC Conference takes place in Baton Rouge, La., where attendees will have a private tour of the Louisiana State University Museum of Art and will work on a project at a local historic house museum. A number of events will be held at local museums. “Museums are fabulous event spaces and all of our members will certainly tell you that,” says Meister.

Leaders of Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI) addressed the importance of the arts for destinations at its annual convention earlier this summer in Hollywood, Fla. “One of the most important tasks of a destination marketing organization is to thoroughly understand, market, and nurture the programs, activities and events that give their community a true sense of place,” says Michael Gehrisch, DMAI president and CEO. At the annual convention, Gehrisch announced a new partnership between DMAI and Americans for the Arts (AFTA). The goal of the partnership is to improve the relationship between DMOs and cultural institutions within their cities.

Dan Fenton, former DMAI board chair and Team San Jose CEO, says, “Having all partners of a community working together on behalf of the visitor, to create ease and a valuable experience, is a shared goal for all of us.” At next year’s DMAI convention in New Orleans, one DMO will be honored as the Arts Destination of the Year, recognizing that city for effectively and innovatively using the arts to market its community.

“One of the strongest ways to reinforce a destination’s brand is by weaving a community’s cultural-heritage story into its overall community message, effectively developing a truly distinctive locale,” said Gehrisch. Eligibility requirements and application information for DMOs will be available later this year on the DMAI website.

The new VisitFrisco iPhone app allows users to search local events, hotels, restaurants and shopping information. “We continue to look to technology to help increase awareness of the great attributes Frisco has,” says CVB Executive Director Marla Roe, citing the app as the latest tool that does that.

Fifteen destinations along the Mississippi River where it separates Iowa and Illinois have created a joint website, travelmississippiriver.org, to make planning a trip to the Mississippi River Valley region easier. From Dubuque, Iowa, south to Quincy, Illinois, convention and visitor bureaus and chambers of commerce offer itineraries and themed trip ideas for groups coming to the area.

Fairmont Pittsburgh received LEED Gold certification from the United States Green Building Council (USGBC). It’s the first LEED certification for a Fairmont property. The hotel, which opened in March this year, is located in Three PNC Plaza, a mixed-use building in downtown Pittsburgh. A few of the hotels green practices or features include: energy-efficient lighting and appliances; water-reducing fixtures, including low-flow toilets and automatic sensors in public restrooms; building materials and furnishings made from recycled materials; organic bedding and linens; and sustainable cuisine in the restaurants and in-room dining. Fairmont Pittsburgh has 12,000 square feet of meeting space with a ballroom, boardroom and three meeting rooms. All meeting space is equipped with wireless Internet.

Element
Houston Vintage Park recently earned LEED Silver certification from the USGBC. The boutique-style Starwood property also recently won a local honor as best green project by the Houston Business Journal. In addition to recycling and water conservation efforts, the hotel installed a charging station for electric cars and added eco-sensitive bamboo landscaping. “There’s a real
appreciation among guests for all of the thoughtful eco-friendly
practices that have become an integral part of the Element experience,” said Timothy Douglas, the hotel’s general manager.

University financial officer Narvel Weese told the Charleston Daily Mail newspaper that the talks are preliminary, but he mentioned a few possible scenarios that could result from the deal, including a partnership to allow the university’s hospitality program to operate in the hotel, letting the property serve as a “laboratory” for the program, he said. Or the university could acquire the entire building. “It’s just a little early to even talk about that at this point,” Weese told the newspaper.

The Waterfront Place Hotel is one part of a complex of buildings, which includes an university administration building and parking garage. The independent hotel is in Morgantown’s Wharf District and has 10,000 square feet of meeting space, big enough to accommodate seated dinners for 650 and receptions for 1,000.

Source: Charleston Daily Mail

The winners:

• Luxury Segment: Four Seasons Hotel New York

• Upper Upscale Segment: Westin Sunset Key (Florida) Guest Cottages

• Upscale Segment: Homewood Suites Jackson (Wyoming)

• Midscale-with-Food-and-Beverage Segment: Quality Suites Oceanfront Jacksonville Beach (Florida)

• Midscale-without-Food-and-Beverage Segment: Hampton Inn Chicago Majestic Theatre District

• Economy Segment: Days Inn & Suites Jekyll Isle Oceanfront (Jekyll Island, Georgia)

• Independent Segment: White Elephant Hotel (Nantucket, Massachusetts)

Hilton’s renewed focus on resort properties is a positive sign for the company as the travel industry rebounds, but reports are still mixed on just how well the industry is recovering. Airlines posted large profits the first half of the year, but many point to the increase of fees as the reason. AAA forecasts positive numbers for the upcoming Labor Day weekend — airfares, car rental rates and hotel rates will be up as much as nine percent and the number of Americans traveling over the holiday will increase 9.9 percent — but these increases are compared to dismal 2009 numbers.

The research firm Rubicon reports that numbers such as occupancy are not up very much, and the holiday weekend does not show as much promise as early summer projections did.

“Right now, it’s a little more wait and see,” Adam Weissenberg, vice chairman of U.S. tourism, hospitality and leisure for Deloitte, told hotelnewsnow.com, a division of STR. He credits stagnant job recovery and more discussion about the possibility of a double-dip recession for the less positive outlook.

“As our fishing communities, local businesses, and tourist attractions continue to combat these extraordinary economic challenges, it only makes sense for us to capitalize on our thriving industries and act to bolster our region’s other job-generating sectors,” said Louisiana Lieutenant Governor Scott Angelle.

The coalition is petitioning the federal government to invest in economic development in the region, especially in the Gulf Coast seafood industry and local construction contracts.

Follow updates from the organization on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and on its website.

The Louisiana Tourism Coastal Coalition (LTCC) hopes to reap benefits out of disaster similar to the publicity and good will that continue to bring visitors to New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina devastated the area. So far, 10 coast parishes have joined the tourism initiative, aimed at addressing “the immediate and long-term economic impact from tourism losses … and assisting the tourism-related businesses impacted most by this crisis.”

“As the news of the oil spill fades away, this organization will bring to life a new campaign and effort to bring people to the coast,” says Greg Buisson, one of the leaders behind the coalition, which expects most of its initial funding to come from BP. “There has never been an effort like this. We want to get the message out that this is just as beautiful a coast as any other state along the Gulf, with more access to other bodies of water. Ten parishes are joining forces to promote the amenities and attractions of this hidden treasure that is about to get a new spotlight put on it.”

As the LTCC develops, other parishes are expected to join. The current participating parishes are: Calcasieu and Cameron, Iberia, Jefferson, Lafourche, Plaquemines, Saint Bernard, Saint Mary, Saint Tammany, Terrebonne and Vermilion.