Richard N. Velotta
VEGAS INC Coverage
It’s been nearly four years since the Governor’s Conference on Tourism made an appearance in Las Vegas.
Not coincidentally, that’s roughly the same time frame as the span of the Great Recession and former Gov. Jim Gibbons’ term of office.
The conference, launched by Richard Bryan, the state’s 25th governor, was a strategy to educate and share industry information while coordinating the state’s tourism marketing efforts. It gave rural Nevada tourism leaders the opportunity to mix with their counterparts from Reno, Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas.
The state was starting to feel the effects of the recession in 2008 and as the date neared for the conference, scheduled that year in Reno, Gibbons called a special session of the Legislature to address a $340 million hole in the state budget. The date of the session was in the middle of the conference, and its cancellation was one of the first indicators that the state’s tourism industry was in trouble.
The Nevada Commission on Tourism was one of the many state agencies that saw its budget slashed. While the case was made that tourism was an industry that generated revenue for the state, the 2008 conference was never rescheduled. The cost of putting on the three-day event was prohibitive, and the state was going to lose thousands of dollars because financially strapped industry professionals were saving money by not attending.
Even though many industry leaders pleaded for a conference in 2009 — if nothing else, they could talk about how companies could dig out of the recession — there was no event that year.
Many looked to Gibbons for leadership to salvage an event that bore the name of his office. But, like many aspects of his four-year run as governor, it was a failure. Gibbons often portrayed himself as a victim, taking office during the worst economic downturn since the 1930s, but the reality was that he never was that engaged with the tourism industry, making token appearances at the conference in 2006, after he was elected, and in 2007.
Gibbons had a poor relationship with the Nevada Commission on Tourism, trying to appoint one of his friends, former US Airways Reno manager Kirk Montero, as its director without going through the proper commission vetting process when Director Tim Maland resigned. Maland’s eventual successor, Dann Lewis, scheduled a scaled-down, 1 1/2-day event for 2010 at the Peppermill in Reno, the same site the 2008 conference had been planned.
Flash forward to this week.
The 2011 Governor’s Conference on Tourism runs Tuesday and Wednesday at the Rio. It’s the same 1 1/2-day format, but there are new players and a mix of new ideas woven into a few old ones.
There’s a new governor — Brian Sandoval, who seems far more engaged with tourism than his predecessor and who is a scheduled speaker. Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, chairman of the Tourism Commission, will be part of a panel on the state of the state. And a new director with a new title — Claudia Vecchio, director of the Nevada Department of Tourism and Cultural Affairs — will make an appearance before even getting her first state paycheck.
Several vital topics are on the conference agenda.
Finance expert Jeff Thredgold will discuss the economy. San Francisco-based Chinese Consul General Gao Zhansheng and Tourism Commission China representative Karen Chen will talk about the Chinese market. Representatives of the health industry have a panel on medical tourism. And attendees will get an update on tourism branding efforts from consultant John Rubino a day after R&R Partners’ Billy Vassiliadis checks in on building and protecting the brand.
Attendees also will get an update from Brand USA CEO Jim Evans on the new national marketing project developed as a result of the Travel Promotion Act.
Tourism leaders also are going to get to know their new family. As a result of the Sandoval administration’s merging of state departments, the Tourism Commission includes Division of Museums and History, the Nevada Arts Council and the Nevada Indian Commission, and representatives of those organizations will attend.
One disappointment: One of the highlights of past conferences has been a panel discussion by resort executives. Although there’s a vast pool of high-level executive experience here, this year’s panel will include Ryan Sheltra, general manager of Reno’s Bonanza Casino, and Ferenc Szony, president of Affinity Gaming, which operates the Terrible’s branded properties and resorts at Primm.
It should be a lively week.