Upbeat tourism chief rolls out welcome mat

Although he’s been on the job since October, William Pate officially began work last week as president of the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau. He talked recently about his challenges, the city’s competitors and things he’s already doing to lure visitors here in 2009.

The economy

“The biggest challenge, obviously, is the economy, particularly in medium- and small-size meetings, when a group comes into town for two days, or business travelers for one night. That business will be down significantly. Typically in a year we would do 400,000 to 500,000 room nights in the city in small- to medium-size business travel. [In 2009] we expect to be down 15 percent, about 60,000 room nights. It’s all driven by the fact that many businesses have stopped corporate travel.”

Downtown night life

“Night life today is dominated by convention traffic. However, as we see more offerings and more residential coming up downtown, we continue to see more vibrant night life emerge. Thirty new restaurants and bars have opened in the last year. And I believe it will get stronger as more and more product, such as 180 Peachtree St., the old Macy’s building [with new shops and restaurants], is brought online. These are smart business people making investments they think will grow and further cements the notion that Atlanta’s night life is continuing to get better.”

Less for marketing

“Orlando outspends us 8-1, Chicago 4-1, New York 3-1 —- and those are our [main] competitors. Depending on hotel taxes particularly hurts us, because when they’re down, we have less to put in the marketplace. Orlando gets a lot of hotel/motel tax revenue and money from Disney [for promotion]. Most everybody else gets their largest portion, the lion’s share, from their hotel/motel tax. But we only get 22 percent. It puts us at a disadvantage. Some of that money goes to the Georgia World Congress Center and some goes back to the city.”

What he’s doing to help

The ACVB has hired a second full-time person in Washington to help promote Atlanta. The bureau also has two full-time people in Chicago. “We get short-term business out of Washington, and we’ll have additional feet on the street there now,” he said.

Three conventions that could make a difference

“The Southeastern Travel writers will be here in April. That’s about 100 writers from all across the country. We’re hoping to get three to five stories out of each of those writers [promoting Atlanta]. Our greatest opportunity in terms of booking will be the IAEE [International Association of Exhibits and Events] and Meeting Planners International shows. Those are two big trade shows for meeting planners. We’ll have about 2,500 planners in the city between those two shows, seeing all the new developments and hotels. Many haven’t been here in five to eight years. We hope to get $250 million in new shows just off those two meetings.”

Long-range prospects

As a member of the ACVB board, “I chaired the Final Four in 2007. We just won the [tournament finale] for 2013. A big part of that pitch was, even though you were just here, when you come back five to seven years from now, there will be tons of new [attractions] open —- the public health museum, the civil rights museum, the dolphin exhibition at the aquarium. The Patriot Museum is getting ready to open. We continue to have a lot of construction. When you look at [new] hotels like the Mandarin, that’s a vote of confidence for Atlanta. Trade shows book five to six years in advance. Over the next eight years, our booking pace is running about 116 percent. We are ahead of our booking pace. And relative to other cities, you’ll see us at No. 1 or No. 2 in future business, future room nights.”