COLUMBUS, Ohio (April 6, 2010) – On March 23 and 24, Experience Columbus’ sales team members teamed up with others from the SMG-managed Greater Columbus Convention Center as well as 18 local hotel representatives for a concentrated sales blitz. The goal was to promote Columbus as a meeting, trade show and convention destination, enticing groups to hold meetings in Central Ohio and add to the economic impact that visitor spending has on the local economy.

The two-day event, held at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, involved over 30 SMG, Experience Columbus and area hotel sales professionals, who contacted more than 700 industry professionals and event planners by phone. This concentrated sales effort resulted in 92 "expressions of interest," representing both short-term and long-term bookings varying from 50 up to 10,000 attendees and totaling 239,000 potential hotel room nights. The leads not only serve the Convention Center, but introduced potential new business for area hotels as well. Eight of the 92 meetings who expressed interest are citywide-bookings, requiring rooms in multiple downtown-area hotel properties.

The target audience for this project was drawn from a proprietary database developed specifically for Columbus. Points of discussion during the calls included upgrades to the Convention Center’s package, including the recent $40 million renovation of Battelle Grand, as well as recent and future hotel renovations and new community development.

“This sales blitz showed the collective power of the Greater Columbus hospitality community that is more committed than ever to working together to bring business to our city that we can all benefit from,” added Brian Ross, vice president of sales for Experience Columbus. “For years we have had a great convention and meeting package here in Columbus but with the recently enhanced convention package, we are even better positioned to take a greater share of the national meeting market. It is efforts like this that allow us to get the word out there about all that Columbus has to offer groups.”

“We are more than pleased with the results of our collaborative effort,” said Craig Liston, regional general manager of the Greater Columbus Convention Center. “Our goal was to secure interest from more than six city-wide bookings and not only did we do that, we also received great leads from several short-term bookings that could come to town still in 2010 and provided quite a few leads to area hotels for smaller meetings as well.”

The Greater Columbus Convention Center, located in downtown Columbus, hosted an estimated 2.5 million visitors in 2009. The facility is owned by the Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority and is managed by Philadelphia-based SMG.

Experience Columbus is the destination sales and marketing organization for the Greater Columbus community. Formerly the Greater Columbus Convention and Visitors Bureau, Experience Columbus works with the Central Ohio community to create a competitive distinction for Columbus in the visitor marketplace, attracting leisure visitors, conventions and meetings.

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