Grand Rapids, Mich., offers all the infrastructure and amenities of a much larger city, with none of the hassle. The safe, clean, compact downtown is anchored by DeVos Place Convention Center, a 1 million-sq.-ft. facility connected via skywalk to riverfront hotels—including the luxe-hip JW Marriott Hotel and the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel ranked one of North America’s best by Condé Nast Traveler. Visitors will encounter more than 90 restaurants, nightclubs, museums and theaters within a five-minute walk of hotels. Downtown attractions include the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids Public Museum and Grand Rapids Children’s Museum.

Two major highway systems provide fast and easy transport between downtown and other parts of the city, including the Gerald R. Ford International Airport. Meeting spaces abound in the four corners of the city surrounding downtown. Each area offers its own unique personality, from an outdoor adventure-oriented northwest corner to a southeast corner dominated by one of Michigan’s busiest commercial districts.

Grand Rapids has earned international recognition as an arts destination. Every autumn, the city hosts 2,000 artists and 300,000 spectators for ArtPrize, the world’s richest art competition. Frederik Mejier Gardens and Sculpture Park has been named one of the world’s Top 30 Must-See Museums, while downtown is jam-packed with outdoor public art. The city is also adept at the art of dining, thanks to a renowned culinary school and a rich agricultural bounty that ensures fresh, delicious, farm-to-table cuisine.

Other major attractions include Lake Michigan, named one of the world’s Top 25 Shorelines; Michigan’s Adventure Amusement Park, home to one of the world’s Top 10 Wooden Roller Coasters; and John Ball Zoo, a classic urban zoo just five minutes from downtown.

For more information, click here or call 800-678-9859.

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This just in: Technology innovation never stops. In the last issue of Connect, we shared the Tech Tools Planners Need Now. Already, there have been updates to tools we told you about, announcements from tech companies, new products and an entire event dedicated to event technology. Here’s some of what’s been happening:

Email marketing provider Constant Contact has expanded its event management product to include registration and promotion for online meetings and webinars through MeetingBurner, an online meeting platform. Information from MeetingBurner, including the event website, invitation, registration and post-event communications, flows directly into Constant Contact’s system.

The New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center enhanced its distributed antenna system throughout the 1.1 million sq.-ft. facility to extend and boost data coverage. Six area hotels have also implemented the Corning MobileAccess system. [Connect Marketplace will be held at the facility Aug. 16-18].

Swissotel Chicago has introduced the Bonfire by Nervana app, which has custom information for meetings at the hotel including schedules, session descriptions, bios, and session materials in real-time. Planners are also able to collect attendee feedback and input immediately.

The email plugin Contactually launched out of beta mode last week. It now includes features such as Contactually for Teams, which allows users to see who their colleagues have contacted and share contacts, support for Microsoft Exchange, and an updated Gmail plugin with reminders and categories for contacts.

CrowdCompass, a mobile app made specifically for events, focuses on social media at events with a central activity feed. Its new feature, Click, is a photo-based scavenger hunt. Document sharing, sponsorships and notifications are other features.

In April, Google enhanced its cloud storage tool, formerly Google Docs, and now offers a more comprehensive tool called Google Drive. It stores up to 5 GB of documents, spreadsheets, pictures and presentations for free. Enhanced features from Google Docs include the ability to comment and reply to comments on any file, receive notifications when other people comment on shared items, install it on your Mac or PC, or use the app on Android devices.

Molly Hackett, principal of Nix Conference and Meeting Management

In the United States, 200,000 children are at risk for exploitation every year. Child sex trafficking is a widespread occurrence, and many meeting planners don’t realize they can help stop it, says Molly Hackett, principal of Nix Conference and Meeting Management. She plans to change that.

Hackett visits about 50 hotels each year in the course of planning events for her clients. In 2008, one of her company’s clients, the Federation of Sisters of St. Joseph, was looking for a location for its 2011 conference. The federation asked Hackett to inquire about policies on human trafficking during hotel site visits. Trafficked children are often taken to hotel rooms, and many properties have no victim protection system in place.

The nuns asked Hackett to find a hotel that agreed to sign the tourism code of conduct developed by End Child Prostitution and Trafficking, or ECPAT-USA, an organization that protects children from commercial sexual exploitation. Its business code of conduct helps travel and tour companies create programs and policies to identify victims and traffickers. Hackett used the ECPAT-USA business model to create the Meeting Planner’s Code of Conduct, which was signed into existence in January on National Human Trafficking Day. The Millennium Hotel in St. Louis, site of the Sisters of St. Joseph conference, was the first hotel to sign the ECPAT-USA Code of Conduct for hotels.

We talked to St. Louis-based Hackett to find out what impact meeting planners can have on stopping such a widespread problem.

Why is child sex trafficking so prevalent?
It all comes down to the basic economics of supply and demand. There’s a demand for it and somebody’s supplying it. The demand is for younger and younger girls—those in 7th grade represent the average age group.

Why did you decide to create the Meeting Planner’s Code of Conduct?
When we first started researching [the code of conduct], we called ECPAT-USA and asked if we could sign their tourism code of conduct. We walked through all the steps and went back to our board; we reviewed their model and decided that our goals didn’t exactly fit the ECPAT-USA code of conduct. They weren’t familiar with meeting planners, especially a third-party planner.

How can planners have an impact on child sex trafficking?
Meeting planners have a really unique position. When you are on-site and your group is there for a week, you are the source of income for that venue. Whenever we’ve gone to a venue, we request an audience with the management property team. We thought we had a position where we could spread the word about human trafficking in hotels in our daily business. We talk to hotels every day and this is something we can add to our RFPs and track that information. We can take that opportunity anytime we’re on-site to talk to the management team about the code of conduct and what it means. Meeting planners are able to, without any extraordinary effort, give voice to the cause.

How is the Meeting Planner’s Code of Conduct enforced?
All of our information refers [the hotel or property management] to ECPAT-USA; they are the ones who implement the code. We created a brochure that talks about the issue and encourages meeting and event planners to sign the code of conduct. When planners are in hotels, we will inform the general managers about the human trafficking issue and encourage them to sign the ECPAT-USA Code of Conduct.

What impact do you think your code of conduct will have?
In the short time since the code has been signed, we have been able to reach more people than we imagined. It wasn’t something people didn’t know about; it’s just that they didn’t know it was so prevalent or aware it was in their city. The best thing that could happen is for meeting planners looking at the code of conduct to realize that it’s not so far out of our natural business that it wouldn’t be eventually incorporated into the daily business.

How do you train meeting planners to include the code in their site visits?
It’s hard to wrap your head around the fact that this is happening. We did one training [session] and it became clear that people are struggling with [the idea of child exploitation] and the average age of the girls trafficked. We decided we needed more sessions for people to process it and then go back and do the training again.

What happens when a meeting planner agrees to your code of conduct?
Planners who adopt the Meeting Planner’s Code of Conduct agree to establish an internal social responsibility policy, implement an action plan with objectives and timeframes, and report back annually.

For more information or to learn how hospitality and event businesses can become involved, visit ecpatusa.org or nixassoc.com.

Last month, the Emerald Coast Convention Center announced its Treasure Quest Giveaway, an online promotion that was to award five meeting planners with promotional packages that totaled $225,000. Last week, the center postponed the giveaway due to “unforeseen circumstances,” according to a press release, but it’s likely due to an embezzlement scandal that has enveloped the Okaloosa County Tourist Development Council.

Former Executive Director of the TDC Mark Bellinger died on Friday, May 4. An arrest warrant had been issued for Bellinger, who was being charged with grand theft and a misuse of public funds, according to the Northwest Florida Daily News. On May 1, he resigned after admitting to county commissioners that he purchased a $710,000 yacht with public money. He was also being accused of using money that BP gave the TDC after the oil spill to buy a $747,000 home. Other allegations were also being brought against him. He died of a suspected drug overdose.

Greg Donovan, the Okaloosa airport director, is now serving as interim TDC director.

A $10.5 million convention hall opens this week in New Jersey. The Cape May Convention Hall, located in the center of historic Cape May, is a beachfront venue for meetings and banquets up to 600 people. The 20,000-sq.-ft. building is comprised of a large auditorium, lobby pre-function space, community room and retail stores. In the auditorium, a partition wall divides the large room into smaller spaces to accommodate concurrent events. A 42-by-18-foot glass window overlooking the Atlantic Ocean backs the performance area; the glass is tinted to keep out excessive heat, while solar panels on the building provide 35 percent to 50 percent of the power for the facility. Technology throughout the facility includes high-speed and wireless Internet, digital signage, projection and state-of-the-art acoustics. A catering kitchen and pre-function space allows groups to host receptions and dinners at the venue.

In Pennsylvania’s Montgomery County four new properties open this year. The Woodside Lodge at Spring Mountain in Schwenksville is a nine-room boutique property that opened in early February after $1.5 million in renovations. The 1920s-era country manor has a full-service restaurant and more than 1,700 square feet of event space. The Valley Forge Casino Resort in King of Prussia opened at the end of March inside the former Valley Forge Convention Center complex. The 486-room property has 100,000 square feet of meeting space, a ballroom, nightclub and gaming floor. Also in King of Prussia, the Sheraton Valley Forge is set to open this fall. It will have 180 guest rooms, and its 25,000 square feet of meeting space will include an 11,000-sq.-ft. ballroom and 16 breakout rooms. Adjacent to the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center will be the new Hilton Garden Inn Valley Forge/Oaks, which is under construction and scheduled to open in October. The 135-room hotel was have more than 5,000 square feet of meeting space, as well as an outdoor gathering area with a fire pit.

Hyatt French Quarter in New Orleans is open following an $18 million renovation and restoration that converted the property from the Chateau Bourbon Hotel into a Hyatt. The renovation upgraded the hotel’s 254 guest rooms, as well as the lobby, exterior, pool and deck area. Formerly a Wyndham property, the historic hotel is located in one of the oldest and most well-known neighborhoods in the city. “The location is outstanding being only steps away from world-renowned restaurants and most of the city’s main attractions,” says Larry Daniels, general manager. The hotel’s first floor has more than 10,660 square feet of function space, including 10 meeting rooms, and can accommodate meetings and events up to 300 people.

Meeting planners who book the VIP Meeting Planner Package at the Hilton Sandestin Beach Golf Resort and Spa in Destin, Fla., will receive one free night for every 50 paid room nights, luxury airport transportation for up to five VIPs and complimentary transportation to Silver Sands Outlet Mall, as well as an additional perk such as a beach bonfire or an Internet cafe package. A minimum of 200 room nights at a seasonal minimum rate is required, and the offer is valid on all new bookings contracted April 1 to June 28 for meetings held through Dec. 27.

Kimpton’s Florida Hotels are bringing back the Pick Your Perks program. Planners receive discounted savings based on the number of room nights booked, as well as an American Express gift card ranging from $100 to $500, based on the total combined group spend. Visit each property’s website for more details: EPIC Miami, Surfcomber Miami, or Vero Beach Hotel and Spa.

In Fort Myers, Fla., Sanibel Harbour Marriott Resort and Spa’s new Spa-tacular offer combines the property’s award-wining spa and private 100-foot yacht, the Sanibel Harbour Princess, to create a sunset dinner cruise for small or VIP groups. Guests enjoy spa and cocktail combos such as the Smart Phone Hand Relief Cranberry Cream Massage paired with a cosmopolitan. For more information on the Spa-tacular experience and meetings at Sanibel Harbour Marriott, contact Shy Renz.

Planners who book a room block of 20 or more rooms for three nights through the end of 2013 at Wyndham’s Avenue Plaza Resort in New Orleans receive an American Express gift card. For more information, visit the website.

The fallout from the General Services Administration scandal in Las Vegas continues, and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget is instructing government agencies to spend 30 percent less on travel in 2013 than they did in 2010. Jeffrey Zients, acting director of the OMB, outlined new rules in a memo sent to government officials that requires “Deputy Secretaries to review any conference where the agency spending could exceed $100,000” and prohibits agencies from spending more than $500,000 on a conference unless the agency’s secretary approves a waiver. Agencies must use airlines with lower fares and leverage the government’s purchasing power to reduce spending on hotels and rental cars. They must also ensure that they can collect refunds for unused tickets.

Officials in some government agencies as well as professionals in the travel and tourism industry are voicing their concerns over the restrictions. The National Conference Center hosts thousands of government departments and agencies for training meetings every year. NCC General Manager Kurt Krause says he and his team already work hard to keep meetings costs low. “Our government meetings team at NCC works tirelessly with government meetings managers, planners and contracting officers in the federal government to streamline and cut meeting budgets, making sure dollars are spent most efficiently and effectively,” he says. “While we hope that those individuals and organizations that played a role in the recent GSA scandal are brought to justice, we also hope that there aren’t penalties from this for the many government entities that play by the rules,” Krause added.

Eric Whitson, director of sales and marketing at NCC, is concerned about the widespread impact the travel budget cuts will have. He estimates more than 150 hourly employees at the center will be impacted by limited hours from canceled or shortened government training meetings. “The ripple effect of this government initiative imposes a dramatic setback for the industry that was just beginning to emerge,” he says.

Zients’ memo said certain expenses can be excluded from the 30 percent cuts if it is determined their exclusion “would undermine such critical government functions as national security, international diplomacy, health and safety inspections, law enforcement, or site visits required for oversight or investigatory purposes.”

U.S. Travel Association president and CEO, Roger Dow, responded to the cuts in a written statement. “We will continue to monitor this issue closely,” he said, “and work with the administration to mitigate any adverse impacts to travel.”

Mark Liberman

Three large cities are looking to fill the top posts at their bureaus. The Los Angeles Tourism and Convention Board, Anaheim/Orange County Visitor and Convention Bureau, and Visit Orlando are all searching for replacements.

After nine years running the bureau in Los Angeles, Mark Liberman is going to retire to spend more time with his wife, Karen, as well as increase his work with the Alzheimer’s Association. Tom Mullen, the chairman of the board, will lead the search committee along with other members of the board of directors. Liberman will remain a member of the board.

Charles Ahlers, president of the AOCVCB, is stepping down from his position at the end of the year. He has served as president of the AOCVCB since 1992, and has 28 total years of service with the organization. He plans to stay involved in the organization as an advisor and also continue to be instrumental in the current development of the Anaheim Convention Center and the Grand Plaza.

The city of Orlando recently suffered a tragic loss when Gary Sain, the president and CEO of its bureau, passed away suddenly. Sain started at Visit Orlando in February 2007, and helped the city reach a record of 51.5 million visitors in 2010, the first U.S. destination to surpass 50 million visitors in a year. Visit Orlando’s COO and CFO Larry Henrichs will continue to oversee the day-to-day operations of the organization.