Tom Whitehurst

Sunday, September 17, 2000 The facts back up the brag Outsiders extol CVB Web presentation

When Char Beltran stepped down from the Corpus Christi Convention and Visitors Bureau to work for the company that put together the bureau's Web site, bureau chairman Bill Pruet did a bit of cyber-bragging.
   "Our CVB was innovative in getting Internet marketing started," he said, adding that other CVBs want what we already have. Pruet was just being nice and supportive of Beltran, the CVB and her new employer, USDM.net. But his tall talk was worth checking out.
   I had heard the last part already from Beltran and USDM owner Leah Woolford, but it means more when a somewhat less interested party says it.
   Among those big clients are the Nevada Commission on Tourism and the Las Vegas and Fort Worth CVBs.
   "We've checked out a variety of their clients and we liked what we saw," said Kevin Bagger, Internet administrator for the Vegas CVB. "I liked the Corpus Christi site as well as other sites put together by USDM."
   Serving everyone better
   What the Las Vegas CVB especially liked about USDM was that the company has both technical savvy and an understanding of tourism marketing needs, and knows how to link the two, Bagger said.
   That means giving tourists and meeting planners information and services they would find useful. It means they can register onto the site and it'll recognize them and tailor information to individual preferences. It means being able to plan an itinerary and make reservations and purchases through links to hotels and ticket vendors.
   Coming soon, Bagger said, will be the ability to purchase Las Vegas memorabilia and merchandise ranging from coffee mugs to leather jackets.
   Corpus Christi as a model
   So, reviewing what Pruet said, USDM developed a product in Corpus Christi, for Corpus Christi, and is peddling it nationwide, using Corpus Christi's site as an example of what the company has to offer clients. The customers buying the product include the tourism- and convention-dependent state of Nevada and the city of Las Vegas, which has more than 120,000 hotel rooms and is expecting 35.5 million visitors this year.
   So, maybe what Pruet said was more than just rhetoric.
  That was tough to do on the day Beltran's departure was announced - the Sunday before Labor Day, when most folks aren't at the office. Indeed, it hasn't been easy since then because tourism officials are a clannish bunch, heavily networked and given to much mutual back-scratching. They are, or should be, the resident positive spin doctors of their respective communities. And dissing other places is not part of the prescription. Tourism marketing is somewhat opposite of a Jim Mattox political campaign., So, if for example you call the Texas Department of Economic Development and ask if Corpus Christi's CVB Web site is something special, the folks there will tell you it's a really good site but that it's not their business to make comparisons among cities., They referred me to the Texas Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus, whose chairman happens to be the executive director of Kingsville's CVB, Carol Ann Anderson, who had very nice things to say about Char Beltran and USDM.net. She wasn't just being neighborly. It turns out that USDM gave a much-ballyhooed presentation at the state association's last convention., "USDM is a rapidly growing business offering the latest in Internet technology," Anderson said. "TACVB was honored last winter to have this company present one of the best-received educational seminars to date. Many of the larger-budgeted CVBs and related tourism businesses have decided to contract with USDM and, to my knowledge, have been pleased with the results."
  
  

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