Staff from Visit Anaheim, Anaheim Convention Center, and the city’s three biggest hotels within walking distance of the convention halls—Hilton Anaheim, Anaheim Marriott and Sheraton Park Hotel at the Anaheim Resort—have traveled four times in 90 days to bring convention business to the city and have scheduled two more jaunts for the fall.
The group promotes something it’s calling the Anaheim Campus for its focus on the city in general—and on the Grand Plaza area of Convention Way specifically—as ideal settings for trade shows and conventions.
Group members include Jay Burress, chief executive of Visit Anaheim, which markets the city; Shaun Robinson, general manager of Hilton Anaheim; John Kalinski, general manager of the Anaheim Marriott; Rosa Cook, general manager of the Sheraton; and Anaheim Convention Center Manager David Meek.
The “Campus” collective was in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and northern California in May and June; is traveling in Australia and New Zealand this week; and plans to hit Colorado in September and Japan in October.
“We’ve been in some key markets,” Burress said.
Chicago and D.C. are home to trade associations that hold regular major conventions and other events. A Visit Anaheim spokesperson said the Northern California trip included a pitch at Google’s headquarters, and Burress noted Colorado has a strong presence in natural products, an industry Anaheim already has a strong connection with through the Natural Products Expo West show, which drew 75,000 people to the convention center in March, according to show organizers.
Trip itineraries include group presentations, receptions, and one-on-one meetings or on-site pitches, such as that at Google, said Visit Anaheim spokesperson Tania Weinkle. Participants include clients, prospects, meeting planners and association managers.
To Markets
Weinkle said the three U.S. trips so far this year averaged 14 appointments or meetings each and that some events attracted up to 50 guests.
Most haven’t recently booked in Anaheim—and some never have—Dan Shaughnessy, director of sales and marketing at the Anaheim Marriott.
Hilton’s Robinson said that in the Campus group’s inaugural year in 2014, it took two trips, visiting Dallas and Chicago in the same week and a second set of meetings in New York City, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C.
Robinson said group members meet monthly over breakfast to pinpoint markets.
“We’re not going to Chicago on a wild goose chase,” he said. “We’re going after this-and-this association with this many attendees … how many groups are [in the area] and how many room nights? We target these businesses,” he said, explaining that group representatives are focused on the goal during the trips.
The Marriott’s Kalinski said one group, the American Hospital Association in Chicago, “is looking at 2018 and 2021” for possible events to hold in Anaheim.
Larger groups can have dozens of events in a single year.
“The AHA has [events that need] 1,500 to 4,000 or 5,000 rooms,” Kalinski said.
The three big Anaheim hotels have 3,100 rooms among them, according to Business Journal data.
“We can go up to 8,000 or 9,000 rooms with other hotels” added in, Kalinski said.
“We’ve got the open public square, a million square feet (coming) at the Convention Center [a two-minute walk from the three hotels], 250,000 square feet of meeting space—and they don’t have to go out to each hotel” when looking for rooms, he said, referring to meetings booking agents.
In Sync
Kalinski said he had worked in Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., and hadn’t seen hotel cooperation at this level.
“We’re able to look directly at these customers, show them the city, show them the campus, show them known, world-class hotel brands, and make the booking as pleasant as we can.”
Burress agreed.
“Clients don’t always see the GMs of major hotels,” he said. “Then they walk into our meeting and see the convention center director and our Visit Anaheim people, too, and we can all put together a package right now in the room. We can say, ‘Let’s craft a deal right here.’ ”
Burress ran a similar program when he marketed the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau for tourism and conventions. That effort “started off as a hotel co-op” with four hotels kicking in about $50,000 each to co-promote the area.
“We took the concept here,” Burress said.
He said the co-op side is limited in OC so far—including portions of an existing website devoted to the effort, collateral pieces and some marketing—but that he’d “like to see a substantial cooperative element” in the future, meaning more funding for the effort.
The program is also similar to a wider effort by Visit Anaheim called Synchronicities under which Visit Anaheim works with convention and visitors groups in Baltimore and San Antonio to co-promote their venues and sign large groups to multiyear deals for conventions and trade shows by offering locations in different parts of the country.
The three Anaheim hotels’ cooperation mimics that larger work and includes coordination on room blocks, meeting space, and other aspects of hosting large conventions.
Industry sources say the typical wheeling and dealing for associations can offer benefits such as free wireless service, bonus points in the hotels’ frequent traveler programs, and credits and rebates on hotel stays and event space.
Big Fish
Cooperating as a group also keeps hotels from battling among themselves and clients from playing one hotel property against the others.
“That’s not the message, but that’s a benefit,” Shaughnessy said.
Another bonus is the large size of many events relative to Anaheim’s size, which increases the value of a large show.
Anaheim’s 2014 population was 347,000, according to a U.S. Census Bureau estimate.
The convention center’s largest trade show is the NAMM Show for the Carlsbad-based music products industry nonprofit National Association of Music Merchants. The annual event draws about 99,000 people.
“When a major meeting planner books us, they own the city,” Kalinski said. “When we bring people in, the whole
campus of Anaheim is focused on that. You’re a big fish in the pond, not one of a hundred different groups in town that week.”
Kalinski said the group “understands the higher mission, which is to go and represent Anaheim.”
The cooperating hotels have all spruced up their properties in the past several years, something that doesn’t hurt when it comes to marketing.
The work collectively totaled more than $50 million.
Burress said the group could expand to include more than just hotel representatives.
“I had lunch the other day with a restaurant owner who heard about this, and he said, ‘How do we get involved?’ ”
