Sunny days beat away an economic dark cloud as conventions booked for warm weather are carrying Orange County’s 2008 meeting calendar.
But things don’t looks as hot for the near future as the shaky economy could cause a fall off in smaller meetings.
OC’s conventions represent a broad cross-section of industries and organizations, but the biggest chunk of those arrive in the first quarter of the year when weather is far better in Cali-fornia than in the Midwest or on the East Coast.
Roughly one-third of OC’s overall conventioneers arrive between January and March.
Overall 2008 convention attendance is expected to be flat compared to a year earlier, bringing 1.16 million people to the area, versus 1.2 million in 2007.
Anaheim,the center of OC’s convention business,is holding steady from last year. As of the end of July, there were 699 events booked for 2008, compared to 650 at the same time in 2007, according to Jim Kissinger, vice president of convention sales for the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau.
Anaheim’s convention center and large amount of hotel meeting space keeps it ahead of the curve as smaller events continue to shrink or disappear altogether.
“Large conventions are not affected by economic downturns as much as corporate meetings,” Kissinger said, because they book several years in advance. “They may be a bit concerned about exhibit sales and attendance in the short-term, but they are continuing to book their future dates.”
And some are even growing, such as music products trade show NAMM and Natural Products Expo West.
The NAMM Show was up 4% to 88,128 attendees; Natural Products attendance was up 13% to 53,110 (see related story, page 48).
The real test of where the convention market is headed may be the upcoming winter, when big shows return during what promises to be a sluggish economy.
Right now, things are holding steady.
“We haven’t seen much slippage yet,” said Rhanda Richardson, director of sales at the Anaheim Marriott.
Richardson said expected 2009 business at the Marriott is strong, but some groups looking to book after 2010 are holding off because they fear high airfares.
At the Hilton Anaheim, the area’s largest convention hotel, large associations are filling the majority of their reserved rooms without a problem and they have seen a ramp up of bookings for 2009, according to Brad Logsdon.
But smaller groups have had some last-minute falloff.
“People are cutting back on the number of meetings they’ll attend,” said Logsdon, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing.
The Hilton isn’t taking any chances. Logsdon’s staff is trying to prevent cancellations among groups by staying in touch with the planners to work something out if their projections appear too high.
The Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau and the Convention Center are stepping up as well and trying to drum up business for fall, a traditionally slower time for Southern California meeting centers.
The biggest group set to come after Labor Day is the Itasca, Ill.-based National Safety Council, which will bring around 20,000 people here next month, including 800 exhibitors showcasing their safety and security wares. It’s the largest gathering of safety professionals in the world.
A spokesperson for the National Safety Conference said that Anaheim’s considerable efforts in the safety and security arena were a major reason the group chose to meet in OC.
The National Safety Council found there were about 3,000 safety and health professionals within a 100-mile radius of Anaheim and more than 4,500 within a 250-mile radius.
“Anaheim has a very impressive approach to working with large groups and has a good communication plan with all government agencies in case of emergency,” said communications manager Meredith Morris.
Irving, Texas-based American Association for Respiratory Care, one of 10 healthcare-related meetings and conventions coming to OC between now and the end of the first quarter in 2009, is expected to bring 6,000 attendees in the traditionally slow December.
Also arriving in December is the Green California School Summit. Its convention last year was held in its hometown of Pasadena, but the group needed more space for 2008. About 3,500 people who build and run eco-friendly schools are expected to attend.
“Anaheim is well suited to our attendees, is centrally located in the region and has enough space for our educational programs,” said Racquel Palmese, managing editor for Green Technology Magazine, which stages the show.
Palmese said the group expects more than 230 exhibitors to take part.
Quite a few other events aren’t listed on the public convention calendar, preferring to keep low profiles.
“About 30% of meetings scheduled through the Visitor & Convention Bureau ask not to be publicized,” said Kissinger.
Often corporate meetings, many from the pharmaceutical industry, prefer to stay invitation-only.
Kissinger said some of the business groups not listed will each bring 1,000 to 3,000 attendees to OC.
And some groups meet at other Anaheim locations such as the Grove of Anaheim or Honda Center, which don’t publish convention calendars.
Women of Faith will bring about 15,000 people to Honda Center at the beginning of Sep-tember for a conference that will feature celebri-ties, inspirational speakers and networking time.
Other area hotels and resorts often book their own smaller events that don’t get on the master calendar at all. Many of those are local offsite training or sales meetings that don’t fill hotel rooms but do pay for meeting rooms, food and beverages at area hotels.
Walnut Creek-based Hospitality Information Services, which tracks the most active meetings hotels in various markets, lists the Irvine Marriott, Hilton Orange County Costa Mesa, Orange County Airport Hilton, Balboa Bay Club & Resort and the Hilton Anaheim as the hotels with the most meetings in June, the most recent month for which data was available.
Those five hotels hosted nearly 1,300 events for 375 organizations.
Overall, the dominant sectors for meetings taking place between now and next March are retail/consumer products and sports, with 14 events each. There are three retail organizations that will hold multiple consumer events during that time: the Warehouse Sale, Gem Faire and Sugar Plum Festivals Arts & Crafts Show,all at the OC Fair & Event Center.
Consumer shows dominate at the Orange County Fairgrounds. Organizers of those shows don’t know what their attendance will be until the day of the show, since few of those shows offer presale tickets.
The same often goes for some sporting events,a mainstay for cities like Huntington Beach, which hosts numerous surfing events.
Surfing, cheerleading and basketball groups each have three events scheduled. There’s also the National Throws Summit,a track and field conference for throwing coaches and athletes,and a Disneyland Martial Arts Festival, both new to the area.
Sports association business is good for the city, according to Mark Podolski, executive vice president of convention sales and marketing for the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau. So are professional teams that stay at area hotels.
“Traveling teams are great filler business,” he said.
Organizations
Back in the business world, there are 11 educational events scheduled for fall and winter, the largest of which is the National Safety Council Congress & Expo, which is put on to help businesses prevent worker injuries.
The healthcare industry has 10 events in that time frame, including one put on by Novo Nordisk, a Denmark-based pharmaceutical company that specializes in diabetes treatments.
Some fraternal organizations, like the Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas, get together just for fun. The Santas recently met at Mrs. Knott’s Chicken Dinner Restaurant at Knott’s Berry Farm in preparation for their annual 150-person event at Knott’s Hotel in January.
Large corporate events never have been the mainstay in Anaheim. Some gravitate to OC’s coastal resorts, which could see fewer meetings in the banking, finance or real estate sectors in the coming months.
Other corporate meetings may be booked with very short lead time while companies try to sort out what types of meetings should continue and which ones should be done via Skype Ltd., Web conference or other means.
The Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel is just one of many resorts and hotels reporting much shorter lead times for fall corporate meetings and a dearth of business from financial companies for now.
Markets that have heavy schedules of corporate or government meetings are likely to be hit the hardest in a soft economy.
But a flurry of inquiries about short-term bookings may have an adverse effect on Anaheim’s convention market,the Anaheim Convention Center has plenty of exhibit space but has a shortage of meeting space, which prevents it from booking multiple groups more often.
Anaheim lost one long-time group, Kenneth Copeland Ministries, to Long Beach this year because the only dates Copeland wanted conflicted with the International Brotherhood of Elks’ convention in July.
Meetings and conventions aren’t just about rental fees at the Convention Center and area hotels. Though economic impact is difficult to measure for any event, such estimates sometimes determine how much public funding goes toward convention and visitor bureaus and other visitor-promotion programs.
The most common formula used for economic impact comes from the Destination Management Association International. It measures direct economic impact, or actual spending, based on extensive and statistically reliable surveys. Last year’s 1.2 million convention delegates in Anaheim spent roughly $938 million.
