SPOTLIGHT ON:
THE CONVENTION SALES
DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
During FY19, Visit Baltimore partnered
with a third party to create a more
tactical booking strategy, called the
“Convention Sales Development Project.”
We worked in partnership with the local
hotel community to analyze historical
performance and clearly define what
success looks like. Dustin Arnheim, Visit
Baltimore’s new VP of Convention Sales
and Services will be leading this initiative
moving forward. As a next step in this
process, the Visit Baltimore sales team
will rate all future business based on the
factors we heard to be most important
BIG
WIN
Baltimore
Tourism
Improvement
District
to local hotels: pattern, rate, pickup and
time of year. With these ratings in hand,
we can and will be more strategic with our
sales outreach and incentives and drive the
most impact for you. It also allows us to
maximize any holes in our calendar.
In May 2019, Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young signed the
Baltimore Tourism Improvement District (BTID) ordinance
into law as part of an event at City Hall celebrating the
economic impact of tourism and the start of National
Travel & Tourism Week. The signing marked another
significant step forward for Visit Baltimore and the City’s
hotel community in its collaborative efforts to increase
supplemental funding for destination sales and marketing
initiatives. Forming a BTID allows Baltimore to be more
effective in selling and promoting our destination and will
help Visit Baltimore receive funding up to $7M per fiscal
year. Visit Baltimore hopes to begin collecting funds before
the end of 2019.
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