A Successful Year with More to Come

'It has been another great year for the Convention & Visitors Bureau and San Francisco's visitor industry." said Cleopatra Vaughns, 1998/1999 SFCVB chairman and manager of community relations for Blue Shield of California. "The city ranks among the only four major U.S. destinations with average hotel occupancies of 80% or more."

Incoming CVB Chairman Tom LaTour, president of Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group, Inc., addressed the goals for the coming 1999/2000 fiscal year, which begins July 1.

Two prestigious travel industry groups will be in San Francisco in the coming year. In January, San Francisco will host 2,500 members of the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA). United Airlines, Coach USA, Marriott, and SMG, the management company for Moscone Center and Civic Auditorium, will be major co-hosts in this event. 

In June of 2000, the city will host 500 representatives of the International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association.

Two exciting sporting events will be held in San Francisco in the near future, both bringing the city worldwide television coverage. The ESPN Extreme Games begin this week. In February, the NBA All-Star Game will be played at the Oakland Coliseum with the majority of the ancillary fan events and lodging taking place in San Francisco.

Construction on the expansion to Moscone Convention Center will begin later this summer at the corner of Fourth and Howard streets. When completed in February of 2003, it will add 300,000 square feet of meeting and exhibit space to San Francisco's convention facilities.

Goals for the Convention & Visitors Bureau for the next year are aggressive: 

• The Convention Division has committed to produce 1.5 million definite and 4 million tentative room night bookings for future years; 
• The Tourism Division will coordinate familiarization visitors for more than 2,300 travel trade professional to better prepare them to sell San Francisco; 
• More than 780,000 walk-in visitors are expected at the Bureau's soon-to-be-renovated Visitor Information Center at Halladie Plaza; 
• The Public Relations Division will assist more than 1,600 journalists from around the world, hosting close to 400 on site in San Francisco; 
• The Bureau will also represent San Francisco at more than 40 trade shows and sales opportunities.

New officers for fiscal year 1999-2000 were introduced. Chairman Tom LaTour will serve with Vice Chairs Bill Poland, president of Bay West Group, and Gianni Fassio, president & CEO of Palio d'Asti and Palio Paninoteca. The new secretary/treasurer is Hank Biddle, general manager, San Francisco Marriott.

The Bureau's board of directors comprises 54 seats. The Board meets regularly throughout the year to review and set policy for the Bureau and it's ongoing marketing efforts. Annually the Board approves and oversees an annual program of work to be executed by staff.

Four Bureau members have been elected as chairmen of standing committees that provide general policy direction and oversight to Bureau staff.

• Convention-- Donald Timbe, managing director, The Argent Hotel
• Marketing -- Louis Meunier, executive vice president, external affairs, Macy's
• Membership -- Susie McCormick, publisher, WHERE Magazine
• Tourism -- Jon Handlery, senior vice president & general manager, Handlery Union Square Hotel

The Bureau honored Visa U.S.A. with the prestigious Silver Cable Car Award which is presented annually to an organization or individual who has made a significant contribution to San Francisco's visitor industry'. The award was accepted by Becky Saeger, executive vice president of brand marketing for Visa U.S.A.

Visa is one of the Bureau's most active cooperative partners and the main sponsor of the 'Preferred Travel to San Francisco with Visa," the popular affinity program that rewards visitors who use their Visa card for shopping, dining and lodging at participating establishments.

VISA was joined in the cooperative marketing program by American Airlines, Avis Rent-a-Car, Forest Glen Wines, Buick and Colavita USA.. This program has generated responses from over 100,000 potential visitors annually.

The national advertising campaign, targeting individual pleasure travelers, was supplemented with advertising within California, in which Amtrak, the California Academy of Sciences, PIER 39, Red & White Fleet, San Francisco Shopping Centre, and Skydeck at Embarcadero Center joined with the Bureau to promote off-season visitation.

Commenting further on the power of partnerships in promoting San Francisco, Vaughns continued: "Many of our ongoing accomplishments are a result of successful partnerships. In fact, the Bureau itself was created 90 years ago as a partnership of businesses committed to attracting visitors back to the City after the 1906 earthquake and fire. That relationship has evolved over the years to include the City and County of San Francisco as a key partner.

"A primary focus of this public-private partnership is to sell the City's convention facilities. We work together with SMG to ensure their success.

"Over the last several months, our members partnered with the Bureau on two major sales missions featuring our leading spokesperson, Mayor Willie Brown. The first, last fall to London, Frankfurt and Paris, strengthened our partnerships with the travel trade who influence our valuable European pleasure travel market. And just last month, Mayor Brown accompanied members to Chicago and Washington DC to express San Francisco's appreciation to our major convention clients, and deliver a progress report on the Moscone West project, and several other exciting developments in the City.

"Co-op ventures with many other tourism member partners made it possible for us to target the international pleasure market at promotion programs in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Berlin, Geneva, Brazil, Argentina and Australia.

"The Bureau generated valuable exposure for San Francisco and its restaurants by partnering with Ito Tours and All Nippon Airlines to have a San Francisco chef, Ron Siegel of Charles Nob Hill, successfully challenge Tokyo's famous Iron Chef in front of 20 million Japanese television viewers.

"As a partnership of concerned businesses, our organization remains the largest destination promotion organization in the U.S. with 2,200 members 25% more than the country's next largest convention and visitors bureau. That partnership remains strong throughout the year, as members participate in Business Exchanges, educational seminars and the annual May Fair, the Bay Area's largest hospitality industry trade show which drew more than 1,200 participants this year."

Featured Speaker Burt Wolf

Television travel and food journalist Burt Wolf spoke enthusiastically about his affection for San Francisco. He explained how the gold rush of the last century lead to the multi-cultural city of this century  As a result, San Francisco's new gold rush - tourism - is fueled by the traveling public's desire for dining experiences and meeting interesting and diverse people.

Host and author of six internationally syndicated television series that deal with food, travel and cultural history, his series "Burt Wolf Travels & Traditions," is currently appearing on public television. He also reports on food, travel and business for the Cable News Network (CNN).

Earlier this year, Wolf appeared with San Francisco chef Joyce Goldstein in two Bureau television commercials for the "Preferred Travel to San Francisco with Visa" program. The spots ran on cable tv's "TV Food Network" to an audience of 35 million households.

The San Francisco Convention & Visitors Bureau is a private, not-for-profit membership organization whose mission is to market the City as a leisure, convention and business travel destination. With some 2,200 member businesses, the Bureau is one of the City's largest business membership organizations, promoting San Francisco's $6.5 billion tourism industry. Tourism employs over 61,000 people in San Francisco and generates over $300 million in revenue for the city's treasury.