CONVENTION SALES

The Convention Sales team has been diligently working on creating new lead opportunities and meeting with planners in a variety of different ways. Nothing beats face-to-face encounters, so we are planning several client events this summer and fall. We will be heading to Houston, Dallas, San Francisco, Boston, Denver and Chicago, just to name a few places, with opportunities for our partners to join along.

Brand and Marketing continue to create great content for our team to help promote the destination as a fabulous place to host meetings and events. We are excited about the new meetings campaign and our video series that pushes out our message and keeps Greater Palm Springs top of mind to the planners.

April was up on room nights by 16% and leads are up 9% YOY, but our year-to-date numbers are down due to large bookings in the first quarter of 2018. Seeing a trend of slow lead generation in the Mid-Atlantic region of the country has been a concern. We are working with Brand to come up with clever ways to reach out to planners to initiate lead opportunities and promote site experiences to generate more interest.

Highlights

Virtual Tradeshow
We implemented a 2-day virtual tradeshow May 14-15, where our team and 10 Partners interacted with planners on a virtual platform. We had 96 planners, who opted in “virtually” to a designated digital platform and interacted with our partners and CVB sales members. This gave us the opportunity to reach a variety of new planners and educate them on how their meetings could best fit in our meeting oasis.

CALSAE Elevate
Greater Palm Springs CVB and Omni Rancho las Palmas hosted this year’s Cal SAE’s Elevate annual conference, and California’s premiere Association Executives from around the state. This gave us an opportunity to showcase the destination to our key association planners, hosting over 300 guests. Following the conference, a group of C-level executives stayed at La Quinta Resort & Spa for additional education and a chance to do some hot laps at the BMW Experience.
New Video Spots

Brand continues to work on our new convention sales vignette video spots. We have completed three and have been filming additional videos of unique venues, offsite options, group activities, attractions and food venues. Here are three of the new videos for you to enjoy.

Ease of Travel

Venue Spaces Rentals

Unique Meetings/Dinners Receptions
Upcoming Missions and Events
The team is gearing up for an incredible summer of sales missions and trade events to reach potential and existing clients. We will be hosting 200 planners at MPI World Education Conference, stressing the importance of wellness through the menu we are serving, and our keynote speaker, Jay Nixon, is a local fitness and wellness trainer and author.

We will be hosting clients in the Lone Star State, meeting with planners in Houston, Dallas and Austin in the middle of June. It’s been awhile since we have taken a team to Texas, so we are very excited about the opportunities and group potential it has to offer.

The team is also working on new missions in Chicago and Boston for July and September to help boost our destination exposure and promote air service in those markets.

If you'd like to participate in one or more of our joint share missions, below is a list of our upcoming summer opportunities. Your team's participation will include the following:
- Save-the-date and customer invites
- All organization and payment of venues
- Attendance to all organized client events
- Amenities and gifts presented to the customer
- All branding showing participation
- Pre-trip call to review details
Summer Programs
June 3-6 | Sacramento Sales Mission | $1,250
June 17-20 | Southeast Sales Mission | $1,500
July 23-25 | Chicagoland Sales Mission | $1,895
August 10-13 | ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition | $1,895
August 13-15 | Canadian Meetings & Events Expo | $2,095

You can sign up online here and get a full list of our joint share opportunities through December 2019.
Booking Production Analysis - April 2019