A Message from the President & CEO
and Board Chair
The past year has brought about transformative change
at Visit Baltimore. In April, we moved to our new home at 400
East Pratt Street. It wasn’t just the gorgeous harbor views
that sold us; the new space allowed us to design an office that
reflects the core values our staff created and embraced earlier
this year. We believe that our space should make it easy for
all teams to participate in a values-focused work culture—
one that places an emphasis on practicing mindfulness,
empowering collaboration, exemplifying adaptability and
celebrating diversity.
While we’re living those values, we’re working harder than
ever to drive visitation, book meetings, tell compelling
stories and reinforce the power and impact of tourism
throughout our communities, in City Hall and around
the nation. The marketing and communications team is
working in earnest on a robust rebranding effort that will
be launched in spring 2020. Stay tuned for the big reveal!
community, we made big strides toward forming this BTID.
The final steps in the process will take place next month, and
we hope to begin collecting funds before the end of 2019, for
use in 2020 and beyond.
While we enhance and broaden our own capacities, our
eyes are also on the expansion of the Baltimore Convention
Center. The Visit Baltimore sales team continues to
aggressively pursue and secure business that fits within
the current convention center space. However, we must
look towards the future of the building to ensure it
remains functional and competitive. Over the past year,
we’ve worked closely with the Maryland Stadium Authority,
convention center, city officials and other important
stakeholders to develop an expansion plan. There’s more
work to do before the plan moves forward, but we remain
optimistic that a convention center expansion is on the
horizon for Charm City.
In the meantime, the establishment of a Tourism
Improvement District in Baltimore will help us expand
our destination sales and marketing capacity, to include
new national and international marketing initiatives. With
the vision and tremendous support of Baltimore’s hotel
In the pages that follow, you’ll learn more about what we were
up to in FY19 and how tourism remains impactful in many
ways. Thank you for your support of our organization
and for everything you do to help push Baltimore to new and
greater heights!
AL HUTCHINSON
President & CEO
JOHN FRISCH
Chairman, Baltimore Convention
& Tourism Board of Directors
2