Convention Center Stage

Bigger, greener and better equipped, convention centers are taking their turn in the spotlight.

By Libby Hoppe

If you build it, they will come. That’s the conventional wisdom around convention centers. Cities, in an effort to boost a visitors’ market or in some cases build one from scratch, commit to building a building, a very large and expensive one. Few businesses operate the way a convention center does. Operational 365 days a year, it needs to get enough people to fill it for a number of those days to be profitable. Not to mention there are dozens of other convention centers across the country in similar markets competing for business.

The good ones thrive—the ones that are innovative, the ones where management teams listen to the needs of clients. “We have to be more creative in how we package things,” says Eric Blanc, president of the Association for Convention Operations Management and director of sales and marketing at the Tampa Convention Center. It’s a competitive market for both destinations and convention centers, says Blanc. “Meeting planners have all of the leverage and the smart ones know it and they use it to their advantage,” he says.

Convention centers have responded, providing features that set them apart from the rest. The Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans is upping the ante on its food services, launching a competition-style search for its next food provider. Boston’s John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center opened Towne Stove and Spirits, a 300-seat restaurant with an outdoor patio and big-name Boston chefs in the kitchen. The $9 million, 14,000-sq.-ft. restaurant has two floors, three bars and enough space for small receptions, but it also makes the center a draw for Boston residents, boosting business. Many centers, like those in Virginia Beach, Va., and Pittsburgh, are going green, moving beyond energy-efficient lightbulbs to include sustainable food, composting, recycling and natural-air ventilation as major components of their sustainable initiatives.

But perhaps the most popular trend in convention centers is technology upgrades. “Wi-Fi and technology are probably the biggest [wants] that we’re beginning to see from meeting planners, and it’s Wi-Fi that is reliable, secure and free, and not necessarily in that order,” Blanc says. “Meeting planners are beginning to look at other streams of revenue and trying to combat decrease in attendance by offering webinars or live feeds from the convention floor. For a facility, we have to be wired for that,” he says. The Tampa Convention Center is currently upgrading its infrastructure for the second time since it opened in 1990. “That’s a direct reaction to what our customers want,” he says.

Bonnie Wallsh, CMP, of Bonnie Wallsh Associates, has been in and out of dozens of convention centers over the years, and she sees the industry moving in a more tech-focused direction. “People want to be able to use their laptops in a convention center,” Wallsh says, which in a group of 500 requires a center that can accommodate heavy Internet usage. “Also, one of the first questions I ask is, ‘Do you have capability for satellite communication?’” says Wallsh, who adds that planners are finding it more and more important to be able to broadcast education sessions remotely.

After a slow 2009 and 2010 that saw some cutbacks in meetings and events, Blanc expects to see a steady 2011. “The free fall stopped last year,” he says, and events, including those large-scale conventions that need lots of space, will return. And if there’s one thing convention centers added in recent years, it was space. The 10 largest centers in the country all have more than 1 million square feet of space, with Chicago’s McCormick Place topping the list at more than 2.7 million square feet. Cities with already sizable centers are making them bigger: Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis and Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia are both undergoing major renovations and expansions this year.

It’s not just large cities adding convention space, either. Second- and third-tier cities from Kansas City, Mo., to Atlantic City, N.J., to Reno, Nev., have centers with large exhibit floors. In those smaller markets, the relationship between the convention and visitors bureaus and the convention centers is key to bringing in groups, says Blanc. “When you’re small and you don’t have 5,000 rooms within walking distance of the convention center, you have to be more strategic in soliciting business and the best way to do that is [with] teamwork where everybody has the same goals,” he says.

Dexter King, president and CEO of the International Association of Venue Managers, says that venues and destination marketing organizations really have begun working together within the last decade. In 2007, IAVM and CVB professionals who are members of Destination Marketing Association International developed a best practices guideline for facility managers and CVB representatives to follow. “Recent discussions have set the stage for a joint DMAI/IAVM effort to further enhance the relationships by addressing the next 10 years in a collaborative way with an initiative called Destination 2020,” says King.

The movement in 2011 and the foreseeable future is toward bigger and better (read more here), and convention centers play a large part in propelling that forward. Facility managers and operators respond to demand, and the current demand is for bigger space, more flexibility, advanced technology and reasonable pricing. And don’t forget food and service—that’s what attendees like to Tweet about.