CVB, hotel collaboration breeds success in Houston

Hotel & Motel Management, Nov 1, 2004 by William Atkinson

HOUSTON -- The Hilton Americas-Houston, a 1,200-guestroom hotel that was a collaboration between the city, the convention-and-visitors-bureau and Hilton Hotels Corp., is an example of how partnerships can help a hotel and a destination be successful.

The city owns the convention-center hotel, which was developed with city funding, but Hilton manages it.

"The city realized that, with all of the large hotels Hilton had in its system and its large presence in the convention market, it had a large pool of convention customers that it could encourage to meet in Houston," said Janice O'Neill-Cox, director of sales and marketing for the Hilton Americas-Houston.

Hilton created a profile of customers that would fit the hotel and merged this with the list that the bureau already had.

"[Hilton's] worldwide sales office has been very instrumental in bringing business to our city," O'Neill-Cox said. But the Hilton story is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to hoteliers and the CVB working together in Houston. What is unique about Houston is the CVB's commitment to hotelier representation on its board and the resulting cooperative atmosphere.

"The bureau has always had a lot of hotel representatives on the board, and it's a concept that really works," O'Neill-Cox said.

The architect of this concept is Gerard Tollett, president and c.e.o. of the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau.

"We probably have more general managers, hotel reps and directors of sales on our board than any other bureau in the country," he said. "The reason is that they are our first line of product, and they are the most important benefactors of our efforts."

The hotelier members are heavily involved in the management, administration and decision-making processes of the CVB, including playing important roles on the group's executive committee.

"Everyone is challenged to come up with different incentive programs, such as coupons and discounts," Tollett said. "Since we are always sitting around together discussing ways to increase occupancy, it leads to new ideas for partnerships."

Tollett said he has always believed that it is easy for hotels to throw stones if they are not adequately represented on a CVB's board.

"However, when they are participating in the marketing decisions, the financial decisions and the tourism decisions, they can pat themselves on the back when things work, or step back and ask why certain things didn't work," he said. Conversely, because they are so involved in the decision-making processes and have such a stake in the results, they are much more inclined to help Tollett and his staff do the things they need to do to make the mutual efforts succeed. "For example, the cooperation allows us to be much more responsive to requests for information, such as transportation information, hotel rates and convention-center costs," he said.

Tollett said it is critical that the communication time between the CVB and meeting planners be no longer than 24 hours.

"One of our keys to success is the speed with which we can gather and provide all of this information to the client," he said.

Another strategy in Houston is the fact that the directors of sales of the hotel community also meet on their own, along with CVB representatives, to discuss cooperative initiatives.

"We look at grassroots ideas and develop selling strategies, such as looking at markets that we feel would be appropriate to target," O'Neill-Cox said. "The result is a multipronged approach, where everyone is in agreement, and we all end up targeting the same markets. This type of cooperation has yielded us some tremendous results."

Another venture involved what O'Neill-Cox called an "excellent grass-roots marketing campaign" spearheaded by the CVB. "They looked at people in our own back yard who sit on different boards around the country," she said. "The CVB then educated them on Houston's ability to host conventions, then encouraged them to suggest to their organizations to bring their conventions here."

hmm@advanstar.com