A Fortuitous Thaw
Atlanta turned out to be just the medicine needed for a convention’s ailing attendance.
By Rowland Stiteler
It was the afternoon of March 1, and planner Allison Box found herself and her event looking into the teeth of a blizzard—both literally and figuratively.
“It wasn’t an actual blizzard, of course,” said Box, vice president of association services for the American Rental Association (ARA). “But it was, in fact, what appeared to be pretty healthy snowfall coming, and I was worried about the impact it would have on our event. After all, how often are you going to get snow in Atlanta in March? I was thinking, ‘This is about the last thing we need right now.’”
The event was the annual ARA convention, which typically attracts 10,000 attendees (not bad for an association with about 4,500 members) and more than 300,000 square feet of exhibitor booths. That’s enough to rank the show 61st on Trade Show Week’s Top 200 list. And Box was worried that the sudden and unseasonal Georgia snowstorm would have a chilling effect on attendance at the ARA’s biggest annual event.
Then, of course, there was the bigger storm into which both Box and her fellow ARA staff had been looking for months—the frozen U.S. economy.
“In the months just before the convention, we could see the effect of the economy,” she said. “Bookings were down, and we felt we needed some kind of a lift to improve attendance.”
As it turned out, Box says, Atlanta was just the medicine her ailing convention attendance needed, in terms of the location and facilities—and the people who manage them.
“I will say that going into this event, I took a certain amount of comfort in the fact that it was going to be in Atlanta this year, because it’s been a good destination for us,” she said. “In fact, it’s one of my favorite places to work. The Georgia World Congress Center is really a great facility, both in terms of its exhibit space and its meeting facilities, and the people who run the place do a really good job of explaining how to use the facilities for their optimum potential.”
Box started getting a little bit of a warm feeling the afternoon the snow rolled in—the day before the convention—when she met with her convention services rep at the center and found that the rep was already “all over the situation.”
“I did not have to bring up my concerns about the snow with our convention center rep,” she said. “She was already making arrangements for the approaches to the loading area to be salted down so that the trucks could get in to load the exhibits, and she was making arrangements for the sidewalks to be cleared when the attendees got there the next morning.”
As it turned out, the sunshine came out for the convention when the event’s first day rolled around. That was in part because of a clear and sudden change in the Monday weather, which melted Sunday’s snow away. But in a big-picture sense, it was because of the help she got from the Atlanta CVB in the weeks leading up to the event.
The CVB staff put together an extensive telephone marketing campaign to potential convention attendees, in this case focusing on the geographic region, the U.S. southeast, to build a drive-in constituency for the convention.
“That freed us up to focus on the other parts of the country,” Box said. “Our staff and some of our board members started reaching out by phone to ARA members who had attended last year’s convention but had not yet signed up for the 2009 show.”
Bob Schuler, vice president of sales and convention services for the Atlanta CVB, says the marketing effort by the CVB staff on behalf of the ARA convention involved reaching beyond the association’s membership list.
“We call not only the members of the association involved, but also businesses within the industry the association is involved with, so we might not only just get more attendees and exhibitors headed their way, but potentially even attract new membership,” he said.
Schuler says the CVB also gave the ARA some Web-based marketing help.
“We create micro-sites for conventions and trade shows,” he said. “We create a link on the group’s own site that allows you to go seamlessly to the site we create. It gives you the ability to book the event, book lodging, get a full rundown of all the pertinent information you will need to know to attend, even a what’s happening in town that is customized for your event.”
Schuler says the CVB recently debuted the addition of video content, made for specific events, on the micro-sites it can create for events.
“We were happy with the outcome, especially in this economic environment,” said Box, who added that the trade show had 335,000 square feet of exhibits this year.
On the peak night of the four-day event, attendees used approximately 2,600 guest rooms in the block.
“We had a shuttle bus connecting all the hotels with the convention center, but in many cases the attendees could simply walk,” she said.
Schuler says that with major hotel openings in downtown Atlanta in the past couple of years, the convention center now has eight 1,000-room hotels within walking distance, giving the center one of the biggest room inventories within walking distance of any U.S. city. And because of the variety of price points in the downtown hotel inventory, it’s an extremely good place for attendees on a tight budget.
Ultimately, Box says, the ARA’s Atlanta convention ended up being a bonding and renewal experience for its attendees.
“It was really useful for our members—who largely come from family-owned businesses that have been in our industry for a long time—to get together to compare notes with each other on how they are coping with this economy going forward,” Box said. One+
ROWLAND STITELER is a freelance writer based in Crystal Beach, Fla.
Transportation Tip
- The Metropolitan Area Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) train is the fastest, cheapest way to get from Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport to downtown Atlanta. The cost: US$1.75 plus 50 cents to buy a fare card, on which you can also load enough credit to pay the $1.75 for the return trip, making the total cost for the round trip $4. The train makes the route faster than a cab or a limo, and you get on the train indoors at the airport terminal and off the train indoors at Peachtree Center Station.
Fun Fact
- The historic Fox Theater in downtown Atlanta is home of the world’s second-largest theater pipe organ, custom-built for the venue in 1929. The organ has 3,622 pipes, spread out over five chambers, ranging in size from that of a ballpoint pen to 32 feet tall and big enough around for an adult to stand in.
What’s New in Atlanta
- A recent wave of downtown Atlanta hotel development is continuing. A new boutique property, the Hotel Indigo Atlanta Downtown, is scheduled to open in the historic former Carnegie Building in August. The 414-room Loews Atlanta Midtown-Mile is set to open in April 2010, and the $285 million, 198-room Mandarin Oriental Atlanta will open in 2011, as will the Hard Rock Hotel Atlanta (also located downtown).