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Most city boosters focus on their exciting tourist destinations, their plethora of affordable hotels and strong transportation infrastructure when they're selling themselves as a convention destination.
That's what Houston did when it pitched the city as the site of the 52nd annual meeting of the International Congress and Convention Association in 2013. Houston is on the short list, along with Shanghai and the Gold Coast of Australia, to host about 1,000 conventioneers.
But the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, which is a member of the global meeting organization, quickly discovered that the group wasn't as interested in Houston's restaurants and nightclubs as in its university research surrounding biotech, the Texas Medical Center and the nitty-gritty oil and gas industry concentrated here.
Every good convention city can throw a great party, said Martin Sirk of Amsterdam, CEO of the International Congress and Convention Association, who was in Houston recently to review the city's bid.
But what he calls “wrapping paper” isn't enough, he said. It's the unique qualities — the expertise, industries and research — that set a city apart.
Sirk said that's not well understood in the U.S., where cities tend to see convention business as an end in itself. The domestic meeting business is so large that U.S. cities haven't had to chase international confabs.
But that's changing as the recession has dampened domestic convention attendance and traditional convention cities are realizing that international meetings are more recession- resistant.
“Your biggest asset is sitting right next door to you in your hospital or university,” Sirk said. “These are the guys who can influence the decision-making.”
Officials at the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau got the message.
“Although I thought we had played up our connection to industry, we can definitely do more,” said Jorge Franz, vice president of tourism and international group sales for the bureau, who spent two days squiring Sirk around.
He is revamping the convention offerings to include speakers from the Medical Center and the oil and gas sector, and arranging specific tours like the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
The Congress and Convention Association, which has 900 member organizations in 85 countries that plan conventions, would be a good “get,” raising Houston's profile as a desirable destination for groups interested in its energy, medical and transportation industries. The group hasn't met in the United States since 1987, when members got together in Albuquerque, N.M.
Houston is ahead of other cities, but it still has a long way to go, Sirk said.
“Singapore does it brilliantly,” he said, noting that the sales teams responsible for convention bidding know key Singapore government officials and leaders in the university, read professional magazines in a variety of fields and are well-known in the venture capital community.
Until about five years ago, Singapore used to focus on its convention facilities, said Kershing Goh, regional director for the Americas for the Singapore Exhibition & Convention Bureau in New York. But other nations started muscling in on the action.
“Everyone has a spanking new convention hall,” she said, mentioning Shanghai, Hong Kong and Beijing.
Convention officials realized they had to shift their strategy and examined what sets Singapore apart. It's got a lot of biomedical research going on, including important stem cell work, she said, and realized the nation could get its key researchers on board to go after those meetings.
Now Singapore includes tours of its biomedical labs and offers networking opportunities with those researchers, Goh said. That has attracted U.S.-based medical conferences including the American Association for Cancer Research in 2007.
Singapore similarly has given other convention prospects chances to meet with the nation's experts in banking, finance, logistics and distribution.
Franz has taken Singapore's example to heart. He has just stepped up his involvement at the Medical Center by becoming chairman of its International Affairs Advisory Council, the group that coordinates international activities. It is the first time a nonmedical professional was chosen as its leader, said Franz, whose knowledge of medicine is little more than basic first aid.
That role will give Franz insight to the key players at the Medical Center who sit on boards of prominent associations that can attract meetings to Houston.
“I'm pretty knee-deep in this one,” said Franz, who also plans to start subscribing to medical journals so he can keep track of trends.
One of his colleagues is focusing on energy and putting together a bid committee to go after the World Petroleum Congress in 2014. Houston is up against Moscow and Bogota, he said, and a bid committee is a great way to get to know the industry's key players.
That meeting, which usually attracts about 5,000 participants from the petroleum industry, will be in Doha, Qatar, next year.
It's not just positive attributes that can sell a meeting destination, Sirk said. Advocacy groups like to fix problems, so many are interested in going places where their help is needed.
Officials from Romania approached Sirk about how they could attract meetings without the advantage of world-class universities, a renowned medical center or big international companies.
Sirk said Romania might not have those features, but it does have some of the most polluting coal-fired power plants on the planet.
“There are probably about 20 groups that would like to solve those problems,” he said, including environmental associations and vendors for filters and cleaning products. “You can tout your strengths — and your weaknesses.”
Houston will get the word toward the end of May, after making a presentation in Frankfurt, about whether it's the winning city for the International Congress and Convention Association.
It would be a big coup, Franz said.
“We want to show off that we're a player in the international meetings market.”
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