Las Vegas places conference call: Party atmosphere makes attracting corporate meetings a challenge

Friday, June 29, 2001 | 5:04 a.m.

It's a story that's still making the rounds of boardrooms in corporate America.

A man scheduled to be a convention speaker for a garment manufacturing association meeting in Las Vegas hadn't shown up for his appearance. A frantic meeting planner eventually found him -- gambling in the casino.

"We found him on the gambling floor and that wasn't a pretty sight," said Kathy Mautz in a recent accounting of the incident in the publication Crain's New York Business. "He'd lost track of time."

Mautz, assistant director of the meetings division of Talley Management Group Inc. of Mount Royal, N.J., says that incident occurred about 12 years ago.

Yet it still illustrates some perceptions in boardrooms across the country about gathering in Las Vegas to conduct business. And it illustrates the daily challenges of Las Vegas convention sales representatives, who work to fill the 6.6 million square feet of meeting space in the city with conventions, trade shows and meetings.

The issue is important because Las Vegas is a big player in the nation's convention industry -- but it could be a lot bigger.

The city is home to six of the top 10 trade shows in the country. But Tradeshow Week, a trade publication, reports that of the nation's top 200 shows, Las Vegas hosts only 34.

Las Vegas' reputation as a gambling city affects the perceptions of executives who make decisions about where to conduct meetings. But Nancy Murphy, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority director of meeting sales, says it shouldn't be a big factor, since 48 out of 50 states have some form of gambling.

What meeting planners need to look at, she said, is the size and quality of facilities, the level of service and the fact that the city's entertainment experience is available after business hours.

Pat Stemple, president of the Society of Corporate Meeting Professionals and an expert in meeting planning, said some types of conferences and conventions work for Las Vegas -- but corporate America is still skittish about how the public perceives any kind of business meeting at a resort locale.

"It is somewhat unfair for places like Las Vegas because a successful meeting can be done there," Stemple said. "It's kind of an unfair reputation they have to carry around."

Incentive meetings

Stemple said incentive meetings, where corporate leaders are rewarded for doing a good job, are appropriate for Las Vegas. But a business meeting where decisions are made and corporate policies are hashed out might not be right.

"Unfortunately, the public doesn't ask what kind of room rates or parking deals you got," Stemple said. "They just see 'Las Vegas,' and automatically assume people are just there to have a good time."

Rossi Ralenkotter, LVCVA vice president of marketing, said it's easy to understand how some meeting planners have received mixed messages about Las Vegas: The city is marketed as a party destination to leisure travelers.

Ralenkotter explained that the message to the leisure traveler was developed after months of research by his staff and R&R Partners, the authority's advertising agency. The result was the recent "freedom" campaign, which encouraged prospective customers to consider Las Vegas as a place to party and escape from everyday life.

"The freedom campaign showed the emotional side of our brand," Ralenkotter said. "It evoked the image of the destination as our customers see us."

Corporate meeting planners are going to be exposed to the consumer campaign, Ralenkotter said, and sometimes that image is what sticks with them.

"But the reality is: Many of the people who come for a meeting or a convention also are here to have some fun and the destination is ideal for that because we have the great restaurants that close late and the entertainment for companies to treat their clients."

Adelson's beef

Advertising portraying Las Vegas as a place to drink and party irritates Sheldon Adelson, owner of the Venetian hotel-casino and its attached Sands Expo Center.

Adelson, who created Comdex, said the notion that Las Vegas can't attract certain types of shows is archaic because the city is changing.

"I broke the barrier on drug companies, and now we have pharmaceutical conferences here. One day, bankers will come here as well," Adelson said. "We just have to be more sophisticated about how we advertise Las Vegas. We can't do it by showing open convertibles of people holding beer cans. We can't sell topless reviews on one hand and tell them this is a dignified resort environment on the other. We have to dissipate the perception that Las Vegas is Sin City."

Adelson said his contribution to presenting a more dignified Las Vegas is to open two art museums -- the Hermitage and the Guggenheim -- at the Venetian.

The perception of Las Vegas has gradually changed because of recent articles that have portrayed the city as family friendly and a growing center for entrepreneurs, Stemple said. She said sales representatives for meetings can go a long way by offering quiet, secluded rooms and assurances that distractions will be minimal.

Most conventioneers are delighted with deals in Las Vegas because air fares in and out of the city are low and hotel prices are lower than in many cities -- except during big conventions such as Comdex when room rates soar.

Because of the economic advantages, there are more meetings and shows booking in Las Vegas than leaving. The number of convention delegates has increased nine out of 10 years since 1991. In 2000 an estimated 3.9 million people visited Las Vegas for a convention or trade show.

In fact, Murphy is hard pressed to think of many shows that have abandoned the city.

Carey Rountree, Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau executive vice president, said it's difficult for the largest trade shows to make a move because there are only about a half dozen venues that can accommodate them, and dates usually are locked up well in advance.

But shows that require less than 1 million square feet of exhibit space have more options with convention center expansions going on nationwide. The number of venues with more than 800,000 square feet of space has grown to about 15.

So, when a megashow such as the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association Super Show that had been in Atlanta for years makes a move to Las Vegas, it's big news.

"It was more of a political issue and a media issue than any problem with Atlanta," Rountree said. "We have had and still have a great relationship with them. But after so many years here, it was time for a change for them. The (sporting goods) industry was in a decline, and the show was struggling a little bit, so sometimes a new destination can spark new interest, which was what they were trying to do."

Rountree said Atlanta, a popular convention destination in January and February when the Super Show was conducted, quickly leased the space to other organizations, keeping the city from missing an economic lift.

Rountree and Murphy concur that attracting annual shows rests with decisions made by the organizations.

Some organizations, Murphy said, have rules within their charters prohibiting them from meeting anywhere more than once. Some have rotating convention schedules that place the group in different parts of the country every year. Some, such as the World of Concrete exhibition, meet in Las Vegas every three years. The National Association of Home Builders' show, which met regularly in Las Vegas for several years, moved to Dallas and is now in a meeting cycle with Atlanta.

Some failures

One show that never returned to Las Vegas was SIGGRAPH, an association specializing in the production of computer graphics. Its only show in the city was in 1991.

Cindy Stark, SIGGRAPH conference manager, said the show was a success even though attendance was down -- many shows and tourism in general were down that year because of the Persian Gulf War.

But Stark said the organization never came back because of the way its managers were treated during weekend planning sessions.

Stark said because SIGGRAPH officers are volunteers, they had to do their organizational work in Las Vegas on weekends -- and casinos weren't very accommodating.

"One time, some hotels called us up a week before one of our organizational meetings and kicked us out of our rooms because they had to accommodate high-rollers for a fight in town that weekend," Stark said. "The message that came through was very strong: Group business is not really that important, but the individual gambler is. It left a bad feeling with the whole group."

Stark said what's even more amazing is that her group has never been contacted about returning to Las Vegas. But she acknowledged that the reason for that may be that the dates SIGGRAPH wants to meet may not mesh with room and facility availability for the show, which draws about 50,000 people.

The Video Software Dealers Association is among a small number of shows that came to Las Vegas, left, then returned.

"We decided to rotate the location," spokeswoman Carrie Dieterich said. "After we were here, we took it to Dallas. We found out after doing that, that a lot of our attendees really like Las Vegas."

So, after a three-year hiatus, the Encino, Calif.-based VSDA returned. The organization next tried Los Angeles for a year, then settled on Las Vegas for good. It has a five-year contract to put on its 8,000-delegate show at the Sands Expo Center.

VSDA delegates find the entertainment and restaurants are an incentive to attend and not a distraction, Dieterich said. Las Vegas seems to draw a larger number of international attendees than Dallas and Los Angeles, she added.

The association learned a valuable lesson about leaving Las Vegas -- it isn't always easy to get the same dates when you return.

Not surprisingly, the Internext Expo, a sex industry convention, has found Las Vegas to be a friendly place.

Jay Kopita, communications director for show exhibitor YNOT Network of San Diego, said Internext isn't as conspicuous in Las Vegas because the adult- entertainment industry is a bigger segment of the local economy.

A major religious organization that met once in Las Vegas but never returned did so because of the weather, not a philosophical showdown with the city. Bill Merrell, Southern Baptist Convention vice president for convention relations, said most delegates considered its Las Vegas meeting in 1989 a success.

Merrell said the decision to meet in Las Vegas was controversial within the organization and, in fact, members ordered a vote to reconsider the decision before the event. The dissension, motivated by a group concerned about meeting in city where gambling was the top industry, was quieted, and the vote to reconsider the site failed.

"To most of us, the Sin City identification of Las Vegas doesn't carry much weight," Merrell said. "One of the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith is that everybody's a sinner. We weren't looking to be meeting in someplace heavenly, but we wanted to go where there are people in need of the Lord. We wanted to be where Baptists labor and live."

Merrell said he and other conference attendees ended up making many friends among Las Vegas' Southern Baptist community and discovered that the city was a good place for a meeting.

Summer heat

But the summer heat kept many conventioneers indoors and away from evangelical pursuits.

Merrell said attendance was light for the convention, which normally draws 13,000 to 20,000 people, but he attributed that more to the distance Las Vegas is from the core of the Southern Baptist membership than a distaste for Las Vegas. He said the best-attended conferences occur in the South and Midwest, the heart of the faith. But every three years, the conference goes west or northwest to visit areas where membership is growing fastest. Convention attendance, he said, always falls off in the West.

Possibly the most notorious Las Vegas convention that disappeared from the local landscape was the Tailhook Association, a group of U.S. Navy aviators whose 1991 party at the Las Vegas Hilton got out of control. According to numerous accounts, several female guests were groped by drunken airmen, leading to allegations of sexual misconduct and a series of disciplinary actions, demotions and forced retirements.

While the event was organized by a private group and not the Navy, the association quit meeting, resurfacing for the first time two years ago in Northern Nevada. Statistically, the incident didn't put a dent in the city's convention traffic and the biggest black eye landed on the Navy and not Las Vegas.

Michael Hughes, Tradeshow Week's director of research services, said the incident reflected the culture of the meeting rather than the culture of the city.

"I wouldn't blame that (the Tailhook meeting) on Las Vegas," Hughes said. "We actually think Las Vegas has a pretty rosy future ahead in the meetings and trade-show industry."

No chance

Still, some companies and associations won't give Las Vegas a try because of what executives think the city stands for.

Talley Management's Mautz said she wouldn't recommend Las Vegas for corporate meetings and some associations.

"These are mostly scientific meetings where the people attending would rather talk about how to make a heart beat more efficiently" than raising their blood pressure in the casino.

"They'd rather read a book than go to a show. That's just the way they are," she said. "What recreational time they do have, they'd rather spend on a golf course."

Murphy counters that Las Vegas can be sold as a city where business can be conducted by day and the wining, dining and entertaining of clients can occur at night.

"In some places, the distractions occur at the same time as the meetings," Murphy said. "People will sneak away from convention centers to play golf or go sightseeing. Here, at least, we have a lot of entertainment occurring after the trade-show floors close."

Walter Charnizon, New York-based Continental Exhibitions executive vice president, said fears that meetings in Las Vegas are a bad bet are the result of a myth.

"I've never heard of anyone who suffered (in Las Vegas) because exhibitors or attendees were at the tables," Charnizon said.

"Go over to the Las Vegas Hilton during a convention. During the day, the casino is pretty quiet, but at night, it's crowded. Then walk through the convention center and you'll see all kinds of people talking business.

"There may be a few people who take a break away from business in the afternoon, but most people are there because their companies expect them to conduct business," he said.

Chuck Bowling, MGM Grand senior vice president of sales and marketing, said those who think of casinos and entertainment as distractions are thinking of Las Vegas' past.

"That probably came from someone who hasn't been to Las Vegas in a long time," Bowling said. "That may have been the Las Vegas of old, but the new Las Vegas has a great infrastructure of restaurants and entertainment that actually enhance the business-meeting experience because it's a way of entertaining clients and customers.

"And we look at gaming as a part of the entertainment experience."

Danielle Babilino, Mandalay Bay vice president of hotel sales, concurs. She said it sometimes takes just one or two companies to break from that view before a whole industry takes a fresh look at the city.

"Roche Labs, a private pharmaceutical company, took a gamble on us," Babilino said. "They trusted us with a small corporate meeting just as we were opening. The hotel opened in March 1999, and we had them here in the second week of April. They were so happy with us that they booked some of their larger meetings here."

That success led others in the industry to look at Mandalay Bay -- just as Adelson got the industry to look at his property. Babilino said Mandalay Bay's successes with the drug industry convinced the company to press ahead with a major expansion of its convention center.

Murphy and her team will continue to sell Las Vegas, with or without the refinements that are being planned. She knows there are some shows that simply aren't going to come to Las Vegas -- certain medical professionals, banking organizations, religious groups and some industry-specific events.

And along the way, there are a few surprises, such as the Internal Revenue Service requesting information for a gathering of 2,600 managers from Washington who plan to meet in late October or early November.

"I know that we have a good chance at attracting a lot of different kinds of shows and some have already found out how well we can accommodate them," Murphy said. "But I know, for example, that we're never going to get the Miami Boat Show because we simply don't have the water they need to do that show right."

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