Baltimore isgoing on the road.
Taking an active approach to bringing tourists to Charm City, the Baltimore Area Convention and Visitors Association has leased a bus to show off what the region has to offer. In the decorated vehicle?s inaugural mission Monday, it picked up Mayor Sheila
Dixon and area hotel managers in front of City Hall to go to Washington and meet with convention heads.
And with BACVA reporting that visitors who stayed overnight in Baltimore contributed about $2.17 billion to the economy the last fiscal year, the bus could be worth its weight in gold.
“We had to get a bunch of important people down to Washington, D.C., anyway, so we thought why not make it an advertisement,” said Tom Noonan, president and chief executive officer of BACVA. “We feel like we are getting great support from the mayor?s office.”
The same support Dixon showed during her State of the City address in February, when she discussed the importance of bringing citywide conventions to Baltimore.
The bus is also scheduled to stop in Philadelphia before it goes to Chicago for what Noonan called the “Super Bowl of conventions.”
Here, BACVA will try to appeal to members of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE).
Noonan has already reached out to this group by striking a three-year strategic partnership deal, ensuring that BACVA?s name is front and center in the convention industry.
And with more than 4,000 associations in the mid-Atlantic region alone, this is a deal that can lead to bigger and better things.
“It?s about a public relations splash, a big sales push in several cities [and] great advertisement,” Noonan said. “We are going to see the impact of this for a long time.”
In April, a Frontline presentation outlined that a key for BACVA growing tourism in the area was developing a strong relationships with the ASAE, and Noonan said that only stressed the importance of this relationship.
“This three-year agreement helps us get there,” Noonan said.
