Each year, the influential California-based Milken Institute ranks America’s most economically stable and vital centers in its “Best-Performing Cities” report. In the latest edition, published in January 2015, Utah appears twice in the top 10, with Provo-Orem at No. 3 and Salt Lake City at No. 6.
Branded the “Silicon Slopes” for its high-valuation, high-tech economy, the Beehive State is buzzing with growth. Count the meetings market in Utah’s well-balanced portfolio, too, as the state’s leading group destinations invest in continuing sweet success.
Salt Lake City
Sector diversity in Utah’s capital city includes education, financial services, outdoor retail and the nation’s 15th-highest concentration of high-tech companies, creating a solidly reliable base for stability and expansion. Technology is a major engine, generating GDP growth 13 percent above the national average over the five years ending in 2013. Other attributes noted in the Milken report are the city’s young, highly skilled workforce, low business relocation costs and visitor- and business-friendly transportation infrastructure.
Tourism and group business are also pillars. According to Visit Salt Lake’s 2013 annual report, the former delivered $1.1 billion in economic impact, with $228 million coming from meetings and conventions bookings. For Scott Beck, the bureau’s president and CEO, the path to growth and enhanced visibility starts with strategic rethinking.
“From my perspective, one that is centered around a strong second-tier city with a very good reputation for being friendly and very service oriented but still struggling with an identity crisis, a major trend for Visit Salt Lake is our shift from being an organization that primarily communicates dates, rates and space to being a strategic marketing partner that adds value to the mutually beneficial goal of increased attendance,” Beck says. “At the risk of sounding simple, it is all about the attendance for both the planner and the destination.
Where organizations used to rely solely on their membership/stakeholder-based communications to drive attendance, there is a shift to utilize the DMO’s knowledge and expertise to partner on promoting attendance at the event, according to Bec “The organic, authentic voice of the DMO as it relates to promoting the destination is becoming increasingly important as planners look to maximize every available resource to ensure robust attendance,” he says.
For Visit Salt Lake, this has required a change in marketing perspective and strategy.
“Specifically, this has involved shifting resources from traditional PR areas into areas dominated by social media, microsite development and the all-consuming mobility of all things digital,” Beck says. “As we work on becoming better and more aware of this new role as a marketing partner, the reality that we must also shift our in-market focus is also creating new opportunities.
“Meeting attendees now rely on their handheld mobile device for nearly everything they need and want once in the destination,” he continues. “Accordingly, from a visitor services perspective, we are shifting from print and traditional event calendar tools to online tools built to fully integrate with an event’s own mobile platform, and to reach the attendee in new ways once they are in Salt Lake.”
Park City
While best known for the annual Sundance Film Festival, along with its ski resorts and leisure lifestyle, Park City also enjoys a diversified economy, which, combined with its location, helps support and enhance its group appeal.
As to the former, the presence of several major outdoor equipment manufacturers is an ideal match for buyers and sellers.
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“With companies like Rossignol, RAMP Sports and Skullcandy headquartered in Park City, it is easy for incoming outdoor retailers to experience these products in the same mountain town where they are manufactured,” says Tonya Sweeten, director of meetings and conventions for the Park City COC/CVB. “This is especially important before the start of the Outdoor Retailer Summer and Winter Markets.”
The two long-running powerhouse industry trade shows are held in Salt Lake City each January and August.
As Park City continues to invest in its visitor and group appeal with enhanced properties and new offerings, the destination is also benefiting from the influx of technology companies in Utah.
“These organizations can take advantage of our convenient location for corporate meetings, conventions and events,” says Sweeten, emphasizing that “given the high importance of accessibility to meeting planners, the fact that Park City is only 35 minutes from Salt Lake International Airport has always set the town apart from other destinations.”
Park City is seeing an increase in meetings, conventions and events during our non-peak season, when lodging and meeting space is less expensive, Sweeten adds.
Before playtime, groups can take care of business in Park City at 30 meetings-friendly properties. Among the top options are Montage Deer Valley, Canyons Resort, Hyatt Escala Lodge at Park City, Stein Eriksen Lodge, Hotel Park City and Park City Marriott.
Utah Valley
With Provo as its main group base, this scenic mountain-ringed region in north-central Utah, just 45 minutes from Salt Lake International Airport, is a versatile meetings magnet with the corporate, association and education markets bringing in more than half of the area’s visitation, followed closely by sports groups.
Along with two major universities, Brigham Young University and Utah Valley University, the area is a high-tech hotbed, with companies such as Ancestry.com, Adobe and Micron Technology reinforcing the state’s “Silicon Slopes” nickname. Opened in 2012, the Utah Valley Convention Center was the beginning of a major revitalization to downtown Provo, with other large developments since enhancing the character and charm of the city.
From corporate retreats and small meetings to large-scale conventions and sporting events, groups will find a “near-perfect gathering place” in the area’s mountain setting, nature-inspired venues and other treasures, says Joel Racker, president and CEO of the Utah Valley CVB.
Northern and Southern Utah
With Ogden and its massive Golden Spike Event Center complex providing a ready base for large-scale gatherings north of Salt Lake City, St. George (“Everything from A to Zion”) and resurgent Moab in the south continue to woo visitors with otherworldly red rock desert landscapes and national parks.
“When Moab’s uranium economy folded in the ’80s we had to figure out how to operate our economy without a mine,” says Marian DeLay, executive director of the Moab Area Travel Council. “Then we realized that we had another kind of ‘mine’ right in front of us—our natural assets. Since then, our tourism development has strategically followed the scenery, with group properties such as Red Cliff Lodge and Sorrell River Ranch taking full advantage of our location on the Colorado River.”
