A delegation from Phoenix was in Washington D.C. last week with a singular mission: To book more conventions into the Phoenix Convention Center and area hotels and resorts.
Sales professionals from Visit Phoenix, the Phoenix Convention Center and nine of the city’s largest hotels and resorts spent three days meeting with national associations and nonprofit groups—hundreds of which were headquartered in and around the nation’s capital.
The Phoenix delegation conducted face-to-face meetings with association executives and convention planners who represented 130 meetings and conventions and an estimated $414 million in potential direct spending for Phoenix’s economy.
“Washington is an incredibly important market for meetings and conventions, and Visit Phoenix maintains a strategic presence there with in-market offices and annual events like this one,” said James Jessie, senior vice president of sales for Visit Phoenix, which is spearheading the sales mission.
Jessie said that metropolitan Phoenix’s appeal as a meeting and convention destination is bolstered by reliably sunny weather, a broad spectrum of hotels and resorts, and a sophisticated convention center located in the heart of one of the nation’s fastest-evolving downtown cityscapes.
“The Phoenix Convention Center was expanded with big association groups in mind, and the downtown footprint it sits in the middle of is more dynamic than it’s ever been,” Visit Phoenix President and CEO Steve Moore said. “Our focus on this sales mission is to keep the convention center, the hotels and resorts, and the destination as a whole at the top of mind for meeting planners in D.C. and beyond.”
The mission consisted of three full days of sales calls across the Washington D.C. area, in addition to three client luncheons and a reception.
This targeted outreach to D.C.-area clients comes on the heels of a fiscal year that saw Visit Phoenix’s sales staff achieve its second-best production year in history. Between July 1, 2014 and June 30, 2015, Visit Phoenix’s sales staff booked 450,000 future meeting and convention attendees who will spend an estimated $575 million.
“We’re coming off an extremely successful year,” Moore said, “and we hope to continue the positive momentum in D.C. by reconnecting with repeat customers and cultivating some new ones.”
