Meeting News - December 17, 2007 - (Page 34)

Destination Insider: Mississippi Edited by William Ng william.ng@nielsen.com Biloxi Effort Progresses Despite the departure of its CVB head, the destination marches forward with post-Katrina reclamation and revamp The Mississippi Gulf Coast Convention & Visitors Bureau is conducting a nationwide search for a new leader after the Nov. 30 departure of longtime executive director Stephen Richer (who took a position with the National Tour Association, see Dec. 3 MN, p. 22), but the transition period will not impede the Gulfport-Biloxi metro area’s ongoing efforts to rebuild and redeﬁne itself since Hurricane Katrina, according to CVB ofﬁcials. be done, but in many ways, the ‘new’ destination will be better and more balanced than it was before Katrina,” she added. CVB ofﬁcials said the Gulf Coast will ultimately have more and larger hotels, a wider selection of dining and entertainment options, and a bigger convention center when the destination completes the infrastructure rebuilding process within the next half-dozen years. But some major components continued on page 36 MeetingNews Q & A: Jackson Gaining Head of Steam conventions for our expanded size (250,000 gross sf; 90,000 sf of meeting space.) We have had in place, for the past year, the Mississippi TelCom Center [with 74,000 sf of meeting space], and it also will be joined to the convention center, so we are going to have quite a package. Both the amount of convention space and downtown hotel rooms will be doubled by 2010. MeetingNews caught up with Shun Hatten, vice president of sales for the Jackson Convention & Visitors Bureau, who indicates the city is prepping for bigger meetings. Q A As the opening of the Jackson Convention Center expansion in January 2009 ticks closer, are you getting much interest from groups that were previously too large for your center? Yes, we are. As soon as we got approval for the construction of the center a couple of years ago, we started contacting groups that either could not book us in the past or had outgrown our capacity. Right now, we are mainly getting bookings for the new center from groups that want to come in 2010. Most of our 2009 bookings are for consumer shows and public events. It will be closer to the end of 2009 before the various elements around the convention center supporting larger conventions will fall into place. What elements are those? Q A Drawn-up plans for the updated and expanded Mississippi Coast Coliseum and Convention Center “It’s a long, slow process, but we have made a lot of progress in the past couple of years,” said Beverly Martin, who took over in September as the new president of the Harrison County Tourism Commission, which oversees the Mississippi Gulf Coast CVB. Martin said the tourism commission expects to name a successor to Richer in February. And, she said the commission and the CVB’s staff are encouraged by the ongoing rebuilding of the tourism infrastructure, which currently offers about 12,000 hotel rooms, compared with about 18,000 before Katrina.“There is still lots of work to 34 MeetingNews December 17, 2007 The exciting thing is that we are getting two new hotels: a Crowne Plaza that will have just over 300 rooms and a Staybridge Suites of about 200 rooms, both attached to the center via a walkway. Combined with the two existing downtown hotels, we are going to have about 1,000 ﬁrst-rate guest rooms within walking distance of the center by late summer 2009. It will be critical for putting together We will still be largely specialized in the association and religious markets (see Event Report on p. 36). Corporate groups tend to gravitate toward the Gulf Coast, because it has gaming and Jackson doesn’t. But we are a strong association market, and with the new convention space and hotels, we are likely to broaden our marketing from statewide associations to regional associations. We have a new entertainment component coming to the downtown area in a couple of years, the Farish Street Entertainment District, which will have live entertainment like jazz clubs, but because it’s still taking shape and being ﬁnalized, we don’t market that to groups—yet. Q A With the new space, what are your target groups? Rendering of Jackson’s expanded convention center with the TelCom Center alongside. www.meetingnews.com http://www.meetingnews.com

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Meeting News - December 17, 2007

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