Grand Opportunities Pending

One important audience will be business and association executives at the convention who have influence over where they send their organizations’ convention business. Kevin Lewis, vice president of convention sales at Meet Minneapolis sees in their gathering here the equivalent of years’ worth of work already done for him.

Lewis spends much of his time luring convention prospects to visit the Twin Cities for what he calls a “destination education experience.” Getting a group of a dozen prospects into town is a process that can take four to six months, he says.

Last fall, he attracted 15 convention planners to Minneapolis for a visit that centered around a Vikings-Bears football game. He estimates that organizing it took four months, from securing a suite from the Vikings to hosting his visitors, who took in A Christmas Carol at the Guthrie, toured major Minneapolis hotels, and concluded their stay with a brunch at Macy’s. The itinerary went through 10 iterations. Getting commitments from prospects for such an event takes three or four invitations, Lewis estimates.

With the GOP convention, those prospects “will already be here,” he says. “We need to identify who they are and reach out.” He and his staff will work closely with the convention host committee in St. Paul and with the Republican National Committee’s Committee on Arrangements to do that, and will try to engage those key influencers in meetings and facility tours while they’re here.

Lewis is even preparing to prime the pump. In May, Meet Minneapolis and its counterpart in Denver—the site of this year’s Democratic National Convention—hope to host a reception in Washington, D.C., home to the country’s largest concentration of association executives.

But the most persuasive event, Lewis says, will be the GOP convention itself: “People are going to say, ‘If they can do this, they can certainly handle our event.’”