L.B. Puts on ‘Beach Bash’ for Convention Planners

This city threw quite a “beach bash” this week.

Young women in tight-fitting shorts roller-skated next to T-shirted men throwing Frisbees. Male and female bodybuilders wearing skimpy bathing suits flexed their muscles while a band played surf songs nearby.

As some guests indulged in such traditional carnival fare as throwing darts at balloons and baseballs at milk cans, others gorged on sumptuous refreshments including clams, lobster tails, sushi and sausage.

Never mind that it was mid-December. Forget that the nighttime temperature was a brisk 51 degrees. The party was in a tent, near the heated lobby of the Hyatt Edgewater Hotel.

“This is wild,” said one delighted guest from Indiana. “It’s sort of kitschy.”

Which is a fitting description of what this city was like for an organization of people who plan, organize and manage at least 30,000 conventions a year. About 1,400 members of Meeting Planners International were treated to three days of glitzy parties, tours, special events and promotions.

The city and the local hospitality industry--represented primarily by the Hyatt Edgewater, Ramada Renaissance, downtown Sheraton and Queen Mary hotels--spent about $500,000 and provided another $200,000 in donations to show the visitors a good time. The city contributed about $110,000. Organizers say it is the most ever spent here on such a promotion.

It is also the first time that Long Beach has hosted such a large gathering of meeting planners.

The message: Long Beach, a good place to hold your next convention.

“Meetings don’t just happen,” said Doug Heath, executive vice president of the Dallas-based organization. “They have to be planned. Part of that is deciding where the meeting is to be held.”

Twice a year, he said, the group holds its own national gatherings in cities considered potentially hospitable to conventioneers. Long Beach was chosen this year, he said, because it is an “emerging destination” still unfamiliar to many organization members.

“Having people come into a city like this gives them information,” Heath said. “You can’t take a city into someone’s office. We felt that (Long Beach) is a viable destination and an alternative to such traditional destinations as Chicago or New York.”

The potential benefits to the city are substantial, according to Chris Davis, president and chief executive officer of the Long Beach Area Convention and Visitors Council, which orchestrated the event. “This is a very cost-effective way to get exposure,” he said. “We certainly expect to generate some business out of this.”

It is no secret that the city has held aspirations of becoming a major tourist and convention destination at least since 1967 when it purchased the Queen Mary. Slightly more than a decade later came the Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center. But the effort did not get under way in earnest until 1982 when the Hyatt Edgewater was built and the city created the Convention and Visitors Council, an independent agency with an exclusive contract to book conventions and promote travel to Long Beach.

At that time, there were only about 1,800 first-class hotel rooms in town. Today there are about 4,200, with another 2,100 already approved or in the planning stages for the next several years.

Although the current average occupancy rate in Long Beach is 65.5%, slightly higher than the national average, Davis said, it is still 2.5% lower than it was last year. And in downtown Los Angeles, he said, the rate is about 70.8%.

“Nobody here is bleeding to death,” Davis said of the local hoteliers, “but they’re not making as much money as they projected they would.”

Of the 2.7 million visitors who spent $343 million in Long Beach during the last fiscal year, Davis said, only about 800,000 stayed in hotels.

One reason, he said, is the slower-than-expected growth of downtown Long Beach. While many new office buildings have opened, he said, new businesses have been slow to arrive. Another reason, Davis said, is the long delay in a planned expansion of the convention center that would attract larger conventions. Funding for the $80-million project is still being worked out, he said. A completion date of early 1993 has been projected.

Davis said conventions organized by members of Meeting Planners International could help bridge the gap until the expansion is completed. The organization’s members specialize in small to mid-size corporate conventions, some of which are attended by as few as 20 people.

The city in 1988 hosted 124 conventions attended by slightly more than 316,000 people, Davis said. This week’s gathering of convention planners should net Long Beach at least 20 new conventions, which would generate a minimum of $450,000 for the city economy, plus less tangible dividends such as increased exposure, he said.

Meeting planners were exposed to a variety of events during their visit this week.

While some conventioneers attended seminars on how to select meeting sites and put on special events, local planners were scheduling side trips to Santa Catalina Island and Universal Studios, auto tours of the coast and bus tours of movie stars’ homes in Beverly Hills.

At the core of the effort were three themed parties, each designed to entertain the guests and impress them with the panache of the sponsoring hotel. One, held at the Ramada Renaissance, featured intricate renaissance costumes. Another, held at the Queen Mary and under the Spruce Goose dome, included professional dancers and fireworks. Sunday night’s beach party bash was heralded by the blaring sound of a local high school drum corps that led conventioneers, most of them dressed in business suits, from a meeting at the Terrace Theater to the huge tent filled with surfboards, volleyballs and bathing beauties.

Several participants reacted favorably.

“I’m very impressed,” said Lisa Kirschner of Boston. “It’s very creative, alive and electric.”

Said Les Tuerk, a visitor from New Jersey who lived in Los Angeles 12 years ago and remembered Long Beach as an essentially “seedy” town: “It’s obviously gotten a bit more upscale now. It’s beautiful. They’ve done wonders with the city.”

But Maryann P. Moore of Pittsburgh said she had made a wrong turn while touring the city in a rented car and ended up at the intersection of Pine Avenue and Anaheim Street, an area she described as “your basic inner-city ghetto.”

She said she later had a less-than-enjoyable walk along a downtown street en route to a convention event. “There are street people,” she said, “and as women walking we felt very uncomfortable. I expected more of a beach town. It’s much more urban than I expected. It doesn’t strike me as a particularly pretty city.”

Other complaints focused on the lack of downtown entertainment and the difficulty of adjusting to Christmas amid palm trees. “It’s a different world,” chortled Ed Graygor, of Williamstown, Mass. “Today I saw a pink Christmas tree.”

The mood generally seemed upbeat, though. “The cab drivers are friendly and helpful,” commented an amazed Martin Ferris of Bloomington, Ind. “And any town that can put up with a 200-decibel drum corps in the evening is OK in my book.”