The CVB's annual marketing meeting is not typically usually open to non-members, but Perry said the

News Home Business Home Sports Home High School international travel student internship program Sports Entertainment Home Eat, Drink, Cook Participate international travel student internship program Obits Jobs Autos Real Estate Rentals Classifieds FIND SAVE Local Businesses Photos Videos Site Index
Back to Main Menu Crime Courts Politics Education Health Health Care Environment Opinions Traffic, Fires Accidents Weather Hurricane Central Science News by Parish National News Photos Contact a News Reporter Back to Main Menu Real Estate Transfers Back to Main Menu Saints Home LSU Home Pelicans Home Recruiting Tulane Outdoors Running Horse Racing UNO Golf Zephyrs Southern University NCAA Photos Scoreboards National News Contact a Sports Reporter international travel student internship program Back to Main Menu Event Calendar Music Louisiana Festivals Home Movies TV Photos Parties/Society Celebs Arts/Stage Mardi Gras Living Home Contact international travel student internship program an Entertainment Reporter Back to Main Menu Connect Home Photo Contests Your Photos Your Videos Live on NOLA Webcams Forums Talk Saints international travel student internship program Talk LSU Talk Pelicans Talk Food Dining Talk Outdoors Contests Back to Main Menu Local Grocery Ads Special Sections Local Ads Lagniappe Back to Main Menu News Photos Sports Photos Entertainment Photos Featured Galleries Your Photos international travel student internship program Contact a Photographer Back to Main Menu News Video Sports Video Entertainment Video Popular Videos Your Videos Contact a Photographer
The New Orleans Metropolitan Convention Visitors Bureau expects to generate $10.3 million international travel student internship program in revenue, but has expenses of $12.6 million, President Stephen Perry said in a morning meeting at the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel.
The bulk of the agency's costs, $6.7 million, will go to "employee related" expenses, Perry said. Another $1.3 million will be spent on operational costs, while $1.4 million is earmarked for "sales, marketing and travel."
It is still unknown how the deficit, international travel student internship program which was about $5 million last year, will be cured this year. The group could dip into its reserves, but is also pushing to receive cash influxes from other sources.
The CVB has also been lobbying the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation to hand over money in its reserves to the bureau. The NOTMC, as it is called, also markets New Orleans to travelers, though its focus is strictly on leisure visitors. An effort to merge the groups failed last year, but Perry and the board of the CVB are trying to arrange a more informal merger of the two that would include the marketing corporation giving the CVB about $5 million from its rainy day fund in exchange international travel student internship program for the CVB picking up leisure travel promotions.
Perry said the deficit threatens the CVB's ability to keep up the momentum it generated international travel student internship program this summer when a marketing campaign infused with a $5 million grant from BP resulted in a 33 percent hotel tax increase in the third quarter of the year.
Perry and other members of the CVB staff who spoke Friday said that the organization is looking to grow the number international travel student internship program of meetings and visitors who come to the city each year in a number of ways that include focusing on increasing the pace of bookings, using existing research to measure return on investment and find new clients, working closer with third party marketers like travel agents and pitching positive stories to national and local media.
In an example of using research to find new opportunities, the CVB in partnership with the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center- New Orleans last summer began using the TAP Report, which measures trends in the hospitality industry, to seek out potential new clients and to identify weaknesses in its own booking schedule. The effort demonstrated that January was a particularly weak month for the industry but that there was an opportunity to buttress business in the month by going after a conference that left New Orleans for Las Vegas almost a decade ago. A team from both the visitors international travel student internship program bureau and the CVB made a pitch to the Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show and Conference, or SHOT Show, last month and will learn whether or not New Orleans international travel student internship program managed to steal the 51,000-attendee event from Sin City on Feb. 24.
Perry said the CVB also plans to extend use of an advertising campaign it launched international travel student internship program over the summer. The "It's New Orleans. You're different here" campaign showcases international travel student internship program the Big Easy as a fun place to travel. The campaign is targeted to 18 to 35 year olds, an age group that a consulting firm called the Boston Consulting Group said the tourism industry should woo. The Boston Consulting Group examined international travel student internship program the strengths and weaknesses of the local hospitality industry and in a report released last year offered suggestions on how New Orleans could begin attracting 13.7 million visitors annually by 2018.
The CVB's annual marketing meeting is not typically usually open to non-members, but Perry said the center's board decided international travel student internship program to make it open to the public this year in response to recent turmoil in the hospitality industry international travel student internship program following the failure of a plan to merge the visitors bureau with the New Orleans Tourism international travel student internship program and Marketing Corporation .
One reason the merger plan fell through was because the two parties could not come to an agreement about whether the resulting organization would be public or private. The visitors bureau had argued that it should be private, while the marketing corporation believed it should be public because it would receive public funds.
international travel student internship program Of the $10.3 million in revenue the visitor's bureau plans to generate this year, $8.2 million of it is expected to come from the pubic sector. About $2.1 million will come from private sources, the bulk of which is membership dues.