Letter From Scott Beck, Bad Brad Wheeler, & More
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What a Summer!
And just like that, the summer of 2018 is almost over. But what a summer it’s been, particularly in terms of our meetings, conventions and sporting events held in the Salt Palace Convention Center. With a few remaining city wide conventions this month, including doTERRA and its 30,000 attendees, we experienced yet another record summer season with 14 city wide events and more than 230,000 attendees attendees gracing our community and generating nearly $111 million in direct delegate spending. This despite not having hosted Outdoor Retailer for the first summer in more than two decades, a testament to the hard work of our sales team and the accommodating nature of our Salt Lake’s hospitality community.
Yes, it was a very good summer here at the Salt Palace Convention Center as well as at venues throughout the County, including the Mountain America Expo Center and the many sports complexes, many of which hosted a number of events and youth tournaments that brought to Salt Lake tens of thousands of participants as well as their sizable contingent of friends and families. The impact of meetings, conventions and events this summer was large, a fact that benefits all sectors of our community and economy.
As we look forward, I encourage you and key members of your staff to attend the annual Utah Tourism Conference being held right here at the Salt Palace Oct. 9-11. This annual conference brings together the tourism industry, state leaders, agencies and travel experts to explore and discuss the latest trends and opportunities for our industry. Register today here – I promise you’ll walk away with a wealth of new knowledge and ideas.
As always, thank you for your continued support of our efforts and for helping make Salt Lake the premier destination for meetings, conventions, events and leisure travel that it is.
Scott Beck
President/CEO
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Upcoming Conventions: The Financial Forecast
Visit Salt Lake has developed occupancy forecasting models by using STR Analytics daily hotel data. STR Analytics produces a ‘Daily Trend Report’ (DTR). The DTR is a report of hotels’ daily percentage occupancy, average daily rate, and resulting RevPAR. Visit Salt Lake has purchased a subscription to DTR for Salt Lake in two sets. One for total Salt Lake County (approx. 18,000 rooms), and the other for the Salt Lake County Convention District (“SLCD,” approx. 6,400 rooms). By simple interpolation, we derive the data set for Salt Lake hotels that are located outside the SLCD (approx. 11,600 rooms).
VSL has DTR information from January 1, 2012, to the present. Hotels in the SLCD are located in the downtown area, and 98% of their hotel reservation systems are directly linked to STR Analytics. This enables STR to produce its DTR with a high degree of accuracy and provides reliable insight into the effects of events in Salt Lake. Approximately 80% of the hotels inside Salt Lake County but outside of the SLCD link their reservation systems to STR Analytics. The other hotels participate in surveys conducted by STR.
The graph above shows hotel occupancy forecasts for November 2018. Occupancy forecasts are estimated by the number of convention attendees, day-of-week, seasonality, and location.
There are two graphs for each forecasted month:
- Hotel occupancy inside the SLCD
- Hotel occupancy outside the SLCD
The graphs also show historic year-over-year occupancy rates, convention dates, and claimed convention attendance.
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The Utah Tourism Industry Association and the Utah Office of Tourism, in partnership with Visit Salt Lake, are proud to present the
2018 Utah Tourism Conference
October 9 – 11, 2018,
at the Calvin L. Rampton Salt Palace Convention Center.
The annual Utah Tourism Conference brings together the tourism industry, state leaders, agencies and travel experts to explore the latest trends and opportunities for our industry. Attendees will leave with actionable takeaways, feeling connected, inspired and ready to implement new strategies in their work.
Please visit the UTIA conference webpage for the latest information on registration, updated schedule, speakers list, sponsor opportunities, and hotel booking.
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Bad Brad Wheeler - Salt of the Earth: People and Places of Salt Lake
Familiar voice on the radio, blues musician who’s played with Willy and Joe McQueen, and Salt Lake mainstay, Brad Wheeler is another Salt of the Earth character. Brad is easy to spot—at 6ft 7in and bearded like Brigham with a hat that often tops it all off, “Bad” Brad Wheeler stands as a singular character in our city. Beyond being a leading voice of independent radio, Brad is also extremely involved in local festivals, charities, and other cultural outlets. Whether it's Pie and Beer Day at the Beer Bar (Brad founded the burgeoning event), a small concert at Kilby Court, or an afternoon wrangling tracks on 99.9FM, Brad stays busy in the Salt Lake scene, and we love him for it.
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Tip of the Month - VSL Upcoming Events
End of year planning can be difficult, especially when each organization has their own festivities, so Visit Salt Lake (VSL) wants you to mark your calendars early for our upcoming Board of Trustees' Meeting, Member Connections, Family Nights and our annual Ski Biz Expo.
Board of Trustees' events are hosted once a quarter and open to all of our membership. These meetings provide a progress report on how and what VSL is doing as Salt Lake County's destination marketing organization. We welcome your attendance at these events to learn how your investment continues to grow our community. The next Board of Trustees’ meeting is a luncheon on September 27th at Vivint Smart Home Area.
Member Connections and Family Nights are social evenings where you can relax and network with fellow VSL members. We highlight new and exciting features in our city so these are great opportunities to grab a bite and get familiar with our ever-growing hospitality and tourism community. The next Family Night is on September 11th at the Utah State Fair and the next Member Connection is on September 18th at 50 West.
Lastly, the most anticipated event of the year has been announced! Ski Biz Expo is VSL’s way of kicking off the ski season and updating you and your staff on all that Salt Lake County has to offer in the winter season. With giveaways, food and vendors, this is the event you can’t miss. Ski Biz Expo is on November 28th at Keys on Main.
Invitations are sent by email about two weeks prior to each event. There are plenty of other VSL events throughout the year, so be sure to check https://www.visitsaltlake.com/rsvp/ often.
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Featured Member Highlight - Show Your Badge
A shout-out to the 19 VSL members that helped us launch the “Show Your Badge” program last month when 4,000 Connect Marketplace attendees were in town. This brand new program is one that will be offered to all city-wide and large groups through a mobile platform. Participating convention groups send a link to their registrants to load the coupon offers from VSL members that have chosen to participate in this program. The coupons are available in an easy-to-use, web-based smart phone application, so when attendees frequent a participating member business, they pull up the “Show Your Badge” pass and redeem the offer right there. When the coupon is marked “redeemed,” it helps us track the number of passes redeemed at all VSL member businesses. Check out the program and the awesome members that participated last month: Show Your Badge (scroll up to see the program presentation). Post your "Show Your Badge" coupon on your listing in the Member Portal and bring more convention attendees to your business.
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Meet Our New Members!
Upcoming Member Events:
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You are subscribed to Visit Salt Lake's Destination News as: kdalby@visitsaltlake.com
This newsletter is an important part of our communications with the Salt Lake County community and Visit Salt Lake's members. The Member News section is part of the benefit of membership.
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