Antidotes For Mega Facility/Event Addiction

Riding past the Charlotte Convention Center early Sunday morning on my return to Durham along NC 49, I didn’t realize that within 48 hours I would be reading another op-ed asking whether it is finally time to stop building convention centers?

I remember when Harvard-trained public policy professor, Dr. Heywood Sanders, asked that question in a 2005 report for the Brookings Institution, and the convention-industrial complex indignantly responded by throwing up 44 more of the monstrosities while shouting down the few voices, such as my own, who felt his alarm timely.

Charlotte is a city, similar to Raleigh, long in the habit of “paying” groups far more to hold events there than the events actually bring in return to the bottom line.

Many in Charlotte may finally be questioning the wisdom of that strategy in light of the recent scandal related to the CIAA Tournament and the mega-cost of hosting the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

Numerous analyses, conducted over many decades, have soundly refuted anecdotal prophesies that mega-events are a strategy to accrue either fame or fortune to a community with the most recent analysis of political conventions confirming that any benefit is “elusive.” 

If bringing enduring publicity to Charlotte is the goal of the $37 million being raised by the local organizing committee for the Democratic National Convention, there are far less convoluted as well as far more enduring ways to leverage that amount of publicity or “earned media” as it is now known.

Lest this be misconstrued as a partisan issue, Tampa is raising $50 million to host the Republican National Convention and local fundraisers in both communities will tap into lots of corporate and special interest money.

The two parties also receive $18 million each in public funds which if you agree with New York Times columnist Gail Collins, is sufficient if the conventions were shortened to one day business meetings.

Overall conventions and meetings began a long, slow decline as a form of tourism less than half way through my now-concluded 40-year career in community-destination marketing, accounting now for just 10%.

Only 25% of convention and meetings use convention centers and as noted yesterday by associate editor Amanda Erickson in The Atlantic Cities, attendance at the 200 largest conventions peaked in the mid-1990s.

The frenzy of overbuilding was spawned nearly a hundred years ago and it has been kept on life support by combinations of “old school” destination development, hijack-economic development thinking and hubris-fueled seduction of civic and business leaders.

Once the egos are locked in, all energies become fully invested in justification and rationalization.  Only when a new mega-facilities trend comes along and the former supporters are no longer in control will the full story usually emerge.

No community is immune from this addiction but the antidote is a cocktail including:

• Data-driven destination marketing insight
• Embedded policies against “buying” events
• Depoliticized economic impact analysis
• Unwavering commitment to unique sense of place

And yet even a place such as Durham, where all four antidotes are firmly in place, can fall victim to a seductive perfect storm now and then.

Another Blow To Big Game Hunting For Mega-Events!

It is getting harder by the year to ignore the reality that meg-events such as the Super Bowl, World Cup and conventions like the Republican and Democratic party events just don’t add statistically significant impact economically or in terms of image.

The most recent of many to come to my attention is this excellent analysis of major political conventions from the 1960’s through the ‘04 events was conducted in 2008 but only came to my attention recently.

There may be other cultural or political reasons to pursue them but it is impossible now with any credibility to play the economic impact or image cards, at least with a straight face.

I understand why many in the tourism-industrial complex remain loathe to acknowledge these well proven realities but what puzzles me is the number of DMO execs who still appear oblivious.  Hubris may be a factor but how far will that get you.

Growing the number of visitors to a destination has never been about more, more, more, bigger, bigger, bigger.  It is about prospecting for those visitors or visitor related events that can be feathered in to complement existing demand without dislocating (or distracting in the case of resident consumption) more impact than they generate.  Pure and simple.

But those subtleties are also lost on far too many in corporate American and far too many elected officials, especially if they live on a “one way street.”  So I know it isn’t always easy to have the courage to stand up to big game hunters.

But that’s part of the job and sooner or later, there won’t be room for DMO execs to remain in denial.  It will be a step forward when we get to the point where even internally we can have an honest and open discussion of these findings.

Regardless how you feel personally, you owe it to your community to read reports like the one linked above.