Convention Center: Plus or Party Pooper?

When General Electric and 2,000 of its favorite employees arrived in San Diego for a six-day conference this year, Terry Hanks and his party consultants at The Meeting Manager were ready to entertain them.

Finding something to keep 2,000 people busy for six days is what Hanks and his wife, Fabienne, do for a living.

But, instead of the usual dinner parties, sightseeing tours and meetings, GE wanted to build team spirit among employees in its Plastics Division. So Hanks designed a “work party,” at which the GE staffers painted dingy walls, retiled beat-up floors and replaced broken windows for local charities, all in the name of employee bonding.

Drop in the Bucket

A group that size, which drew a bill from Hanks of $1 million, is considered large for most San Diego “destination management companies,” as meeting planners call themselves these days. But when the San Diego Convention Center opens in November, 2,000 may look like a drop in the bucket.

The opening will mean more business for meeting planning firms such as California Leisure Consultants, California Convention Events, Enjoy California Enterprises and Patti Roscoe & Associates. And more work for them means more work for a host of ancillary businesses connected to the convention center, from florists to photographers, modeling agencies to audio-visual companies, janitorial firms to equipment rental businesses.

“We reach out and touch just about every retail situation in the city,” said Carroll Armstrong, the convention center’s director of marketing.

The opening of the convention center should create a trickle-down effect for businesses all over town connected with the service and hospitality industries. When party and meeting consultants take on a client, hotels get more guests, restaurants have more patrons, waiters and waitresses get more tips and so on.

At least that’s the theory held by Armstrong, some local business people and the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau.

But Lex Lyon, unlike his colleagues, wonders whether the center is going to produce the pot of gold many expect.

“Conceiveably, it might be a negative,” said the vice president of Enjoy California Enterprises. “I’m just not sure it’s the ‘E’ ticket ride everybody thinks it will be.”

Meeting planners make much of their money by taking visitors from hotels to party venues around town. Popular locations include Sea World, the zoo and Balboa Park.

But Lyon fears that, once the convention center opens, associations, corporations and other visiting groups that come to town will be content to hold most of their functions at the center. They may no longer want to get on a bus and travel to Tijuana for the Southwestern-theme picnics and parties that consultants say are so popular, or the raucous beach parties often given at the cruise ship terminal downtown.

Lyon cited as an example his pending contract to oversee plans for 4,000 people who will attend the beauty and barber show scheduled for February at the convention center.

“They’re not going to want to take all 4,000 people off the property,” he said. “We may get very little business out of them.”

That could cost Enjoy California Enterprises hundreds of thousands of dollars. When the company takes 1,000 people to Sea World, for example, it earns $20,000 to $30,000. That includes charges for busing, food and organizing.

May Target Smaller Groups

Lyon said he hasn’t tossed his theory around with his colleagues, so he’s not sure how many others believe the convention center might have a negative effect on their businesses.

The solution he has devised is to find more clients who are in town for trade shows and exhibitions, as opposed to corporate clients or associations. The smaller groups may be more interested in leaving the convention center to attend big-ticket events, he said.

On the other side of the fence, Terry Hanks expects the annual sales of $3.5 million at The Meeting Manager to increase 20% to 25% after the convention center opens. Like many local meeting planners, Hanks expects to hire more buses and bus drivers, boats and limousines, musicians, speakers, entertainers, tour guides and decorators.

Still, meeting planners say, one of the less palatable aspects of the convention center opening is the larger groups they expect to receive. As Carol Johnson sees it, it’s a mixed blessing. “It means less paper work” because planners are dealing with fewer accounts, she said. But finding places to entertain thousands of people isn’t easy.

City regulations make it difficult to reserve time and space in Balboa Park, Johnson said, and similar rules set down by the San Diego Unified Port District make waterfront access hard to come by on the Embarcadero, at Marina Park and at other seaside places.

“Basically, it’s almost like you’re going up against a brick wall,” she said. “I’d love to tell you what we could do for 5,000 people, but unless the Del Mar Fairgrounds are open, we’re out of luck.”

More Money and Challenges

Johnson usually deals with groups of 1,000 to 1,500 as senior sales manager for California Leisure Consultants. With the new accounts connected to the convention center, that number has tripled, she said. Although handling larger numbers of people has its logistical difficulties, it does mean more income and greater challenges for the firm.

Other planners, who are finding more people coming with every account, echoed the complaint of Johnson, who said that, although Sea World and the zoo are options, other large and picturesque sites are difficult to find.

At convention center offices, Armstrong likes to stress what he thinks are the positives:

- Conventioneers will spend an average of four days in the city.

- Each person will spend an average of $850 on lodging, meals and souvenirs.

- About 250,000 visitors will descend on the city during 1990, the center’s first full year of operation.

Smelling the Coffee

This fall, ConVis will host a one-day workshop for anyone who might have anything at all to do with the convention center, such as business owners, self-employed entertainers and cabdrivers. Called “Get Ready, Get Set, Go,” the workshop is aimed at mobilizing San Diego’s business community to serve the long-awaited opening.

Said Johnson: “We want people to wake up and smell the coffee before it opens.”

Convention planners in other cities are already waking up. Nancy Hewitt, president of San Diego-based California Convention Events, said a competitor in San Francisco, long a popular convention destination, told her that planners across the country are watching nervously for San Diego’s convention debut.

“You’re the hot spot in the nation right now,” Hewitt was told, “because you’re beautiful, you’ve got great hotels, and you’re right over the water.”