While the pandemic brought most Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) activities and bookings to a halt for the previous 18 months, most are now in hockey-stick marketing mode promoting their town, city, or region to meeting planners around the country.
However, CVBs can do much more than marketing to make a conference or convention a smashing success. Below are the five things many bureaus do exceptionally well and how you might capitalize on them.
Convention and Visitors Bureaus Sweet Spots
They can provide the following five services:
A plethora of local service providers
Most CVBs are membership and category-driven, meaning they have members in every area you can think of for your event. In addition, they have relationships with transportation providers, presenters, entertainment venues, and hotel general managers or owners. Just ask, and their staff is more than willing to help you find the perfect venue or presenter for your next meeting.
Cost savings and exclusive offerings
Many CVBs offer rebates, discounts, or VIP tours of local attractions during your attendees’ conference stay.
Small meeting space knowledge
Even though the word convention is the CVB name, many bureau organizations help market venues that can nicely accommodate smaller events. In fact, according to Hotel Executive, 80% of all meetings in the U.S. have fewer than 50 attendees and represent more than $10 billion annually in spending.
Help with above and beyond requests
Many corporations are looking at ways to give back at their next event. For example, if your group wishes to collect food for the local pantry, spend a half-day on a service project, or contribute to a local non-profit cause, all of this can be orchestrated through the CVB.
Additional above and beyond examples include a cooking class with a hotel’s chef, learning more about wine or beer pairings by visiting a local winery or brewery, or kayaking as a group down a river or lake.
The point is, whatever your requests, CVBs will work with you to make it happen.
Provide staffing
Suppose you need additional feet on the ground to help keep in sync with CDC guidelines for large gatherings; the CVB can often provide the staff to disinfect and clean registration tables, direct individuals to sanitation stations, and serve as tour guides of the area. Sometimes these staff members function as volunteers while other bureaus charge for this assistance. When you are on your final site visit, indicate how many staff and over what period you need them, and the CVB will coordinate this effort to ensure a seamless event for your attendees!
Conclusion
Think of a Convention and Visitors Bureau as being a destination’s marketing department. Their job is to drive awareness about all the wonderful things their region offers, which they do through articles, blogs, videos, guides, and social posts.
Rentacomputer serves many second and third-tier cities and works hand in glove with the local CVB and convention center. Some of the many cities we serve include:
Tampa
Pittsburgh
Austin
Portland
Charlotte
Lexington
Toledo
Buffalo
Norfolk
Baton Rouge
Convention Vendor Services
Are you interested in renting equipment for your upcoming festival, convention, trade show, expo, concert, or another event?
Rentacomputer.com works with many CVBs. We are committed to helping you with all the logistics for your meeting. So let us be your first call at 800-736-8772 for more information about ways we partner and support CVBs.
Rentacomputer.com has a large stock of equipment that is meticulously maintained to the highest professional standard by our quality control teams who inspect and test each piece of equipment before it’s delivered to your door. With suppliers around the globe, Rentacomputer.com can deliver your equipment to your office or venue at a moment’s notice, so you can focus on delivering an outstanding event.
Our friendly rental representatives, or Tech Travel Agents, are trained to know everything there is to know about event equipment, office equipment, and other technology in order to recommend the best possible products for your unique event.
Contact us if you’re looking for laptops, HD and 4K monitors, iPads, tablets, iPhones, WiFi hotspots, video conferencing equipment, PPE like sanitizing equipment and temperature screening, office equipment rentals, and much more!
*We are a Business to Business (B2B) rental firm. All rental orders must be placed by an authorized representative of a qualified business. First-time business customers are screened for compliance to ensure the order is legitimate and authorized. In short, you must be a business that has been established for a minimum of 2 years with an email address connected to a corotate domain and a ship to address that also meets our requirements. To see the full requirements, visit our Requirements to Rent page.