Cities Battle to Win Ground in Military Reunion Market

Hardly a week goes by without letters in the mail urging the USS Holder Assn. to have its annual reunion of former Navy shipmates in one city or another.

“At one time I was collecting all the brochures and pamphlets and magazines,” association secretary-treasurer Bruce Rambo said in a telephone interview from his Charleston, S.C., home. “I ended up with a whole boxful.”

Mail solicitations are just one part of the growing competition in a niche tourism business: hosting military reunions.

Bob Brooks, president of the Reunion Network Inc. in Hollywood, Fla., estimates the military reunion market is worth about $15 billion a year. Brooks bases his estimate on a database of 10,000 reunion groups he has compiled. It includes spending on air travel, hotels, food, drink and entertainment.

Some convention and visitors bureaus wine and dine reunion planners on familiarization tours, and at least one offers donations. They advertise in military newspapers and veterans magazines. Many hotels offer special rates and free meeting rooms.

Brooks’ company publishes a newsletter and an advertising directory of “reunion-friendly” hotels and cities. It also offers seminars for veterans and those seeking their business.

“We thought the business would start to die at this point because a lot of the World War II veterans are dying off,” Brooks said. “But it’s not so. The reunions are continuing because there are a lot of Vietnam veterans and a lot of Desert Storm veterans.”

Rambo’s group includes shipmates who served aboard two ships, one a destroyer and the other a destroyer escort, from 1944 through 1976, when the second vessel was decommissioned.

Reunion planners say military towns have an edge because veterans like to visit their old haunts and tour bases, ships and museums.

The famed Flying Tigers had a reunion in Pensacola last May in conjunction with a symposium on their exploits sponsored by the National Museum of Naval Aviation at the Pensacola Naval Air Station.

The Pensacola Convention and Visitors Center mails brochures and advertises in military newspapers but primarily relies on its history as “the cradle of naval aviation,” said marketing manager Leslie Benz.

“Pensacola just has a natural appeal for military reunions because many of their members have been stationed here,” Benz said. But she added: “It’s like tourism in general. It’s very competitive.”

With the 50th anniversary of World War II in mind, the Montgomery, Ala., Area Chamber of Commerce four years ago began going after reunions because the Air Force keeps its historical records at a base there. The reunions now have an estimated $10-million annual impact on Montgomery’s economy.

“If we didn’t have Maxwell Air Force Base we really would not have pursued any of that,” said chamber marketing manager Kelly Mott.

But cities with few or no military connections also are joining the reunion wars. For instance, Dubuque, Iowa, without a base within 100 miles, hosted 20 military reunions last year.

“We’ve taught these people they can go all over the country,” said the Reunion Network’s Brooks.

“It’s just as easy to go to Oshkosh as it is to [go to] San Diego, and it’s probably a lot less expensive,” he said. “They’re basically looking for a lobby where they can sit and meet their friends.”

The St. Petersburg-Clearwater Convention and Visitors Bureau is a newcomer to the competition for reunions, which usually range from a couple dozen to a couple thousand people.

“I’ve got a lot of smaller hotels . . . that have meeting space and rates structured such to be very attractive,” said Sam Johns, executive director of the bureau’s sales organization. “So we made a very conscious decision to go after this part of the market.”

The first step was attending a conference for reunion planners. It produced 20 solid leads, Johns said.

One of the fiercest of the competitors without a military base is Covington, Ky., across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. In September, Covington hosted about 250 members of the AGC Flagship Alliance for crews of amphibious assault command ships.

“The Northern Kentucky Convention and Visitors Bureau is very aggressive, and they provide a lot of help . . . the best one we’ve ever dealt with,” said Ted Branthoover of Pittsburgh, the alliance vice president.

His group usually meets near a naval base but selected Covington because of its central location, good facilities and hospitality--not the financial contribution it made, Branthoover said.

Reunion-goers are very price sensitive, so most events are held in the fall, when hotel rates usually go down, said Brooks, a Vietnam veteran.

Brooks expects to add Bosnia peacekeepers to his network of veterans groups some day.

“Since this country seems to be a leader in taking the stand of ‘wherever there’s trouble we’re going to go,’ ” he said, “we will always have reunions.”