When it came time to select a site for her company’s 2006 International Convention, Donna Thomas, events manager for Greenville, Tenn.-based multilevel marketing, air-purification firm EcoQuest International, was charged with finding an affordable destination that could handle her organization’s first citywide without spreading attendees too thin.
“When I got the company to look at what their strategic goals were, for 2006 they wanted to start making the convention as affordable as possible, so my first inclination was to look at second-tier cities,” says Thomas, who used the Cook Convention Center for major events. “I visited several, but I just fell in love with the charm and character of downtown Memphis, and the enthusiasm of everyone at the Memphis CVB. I had to come back and make everyone else fall in love with Memphis, and they did.”
Thomas says she was initially concerned about where to put her approximately 2,200 guests over the four nights of the convention, as Memphis does not contain any mammoth hotels such as a Gaylord property, which she used for the company’s previous two conventions.
“We do our housing in-house,” Thomas says, “and using seven hotels just about gave my staff a heart attack.”
Because Memphis boasts a compact downtown core, Thomas put her trust in the city’s Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) system, which added extra trolley cars during the convention’s peak times.
“MATA was very cooperative,” she says. “We never had a complaint from our attendees.”
Since her firm is comprised of corporate headquarters personnel and off-site business-owner/dealers, Thomas’ task at hand was to bring the two entities together, and perhaps throw a little competition in the mix. A three-inning softball game at AutoZone Park fit the bill.
“We announced to all of our business owners that we were going to choose a team from the field and a team from the corporate office,” she says. “Our business owners in the field are an enthusiastic group, and just love activities like this—it was a great success. The business owners team absolutely trounced the corporate office team, so they absolutely loved that.”
Thomas says AutoZone provided bats, gloves, an announcer’s booth, and fireworks on the field after the game, along with a buffet ballpark dinner.
For the gala evening at the convention center Thomas hired, fittingly enough, Elvis’ original Taking Care of Business Band, who also happened to use EcoQuest air purification products on the road.
Noting the success of the event, held in an older city with a revitalized downtown as opposed to a site where everything could be held under one roof, Thomas says her company is headed for Columbus, Ohio, for its 2007 International Convention.
