Baltimore City Councilman Jack Kraft will seek to tie funding to the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association to its ability to bring in convention dollars.
“We have the ability in our budget to place certain review provisions that would allow us to hold up funding of the agency, and I am considering asking for that type of language,” Kraft said.
Presently, 85 percent of BACVA?s budget comes from the city?s hotel/motel tax, which accounts for about $8 million. The rest comes from its members and marketing partners for a total operating budget of $9.9 million.
However, across the country many convention centers are operating at a loss, and the new head of BACVA has projected a 60 percent drop in bookings for 2008.
“Conventions are booked five to seven years in advance, and I don?t know what happened with my predecessor; they did good in 2004-2005, but bookings for 2006-2008 have a gap, and that?s the drop we are seeing currently,” said Tom Noonan, president and chief executive officer of BACVA.
“We are trying to close that gap with more corporate and pharmaceutical bookings, but there is a dip. However, we will have a strong showing for 2009 through [the coming years],” he added.
Noonan hopes to open a New York office, launch a new ad campaign for the 757-room downtown Hilton Hotel, and increase his sales and marketing staff.
Trends Analysis Projects LLC, a third-party consultant, also will come in to evaluate the destination.
Jeff Eastman of TAP said his company outlines strong and weak months almost eight years into the future.
He has conducted studies in more than 35 other cities across the country and can benchmark regions against each other for measurement.
“I mean, we lay it all out there, the good, the bad, the ugly,” Eastman said. “It?s transparency at its best.”
Noonan praised the objectivity of the study.
“What I like about it is, it?s not us saying it, and it?s not the hotel community,” Noonan said. “It?s a guy who?s a pro saying what we should be doing it.”
Eastman said the single largest advantage of using TAP reports is to get the hotels, convention centers and bureaus working on the same page.
For Kraft, that is not enough.
“I want them to have the money they need to do this job, but I want the job done,” he said. “We have a lot of money invested in BACVA?s success, and we owe it to the residents of the city to ensure a return on their investment.”
