A: A CVB is a not-for-profit organization charged with representing a specific destination and helping the long-term development of its communities through a travel and tourism strategy. CVBs are usually membership organizations bringing together businesses that rely on tourism and meetings for revenue.
For visitors, CVBs are like a key to the city. As an unbiased resource, CVBs can serve as a broker or an official point of contact for convention and meeting planners, tour operators, or visitors. They assist planners with meeting preparation and encourage business travelers and visitors alike to visit local historic, cultural, and recreational sites.
A: CVBs offer unbiased information about a destination’s services and facilities. In addition, CVBs save visitors time and energy, as they are a one-stop shop for local tourism interests. CVBs can provide a full range of information about a destination, and most services provided by CVBs cost nothing.
Q: If CVBs don’t charge for their services, how do they make money?
A: For most services, CVBs do not charge their clients - the visitor, the business traveler, or the meeting planner. Instead, most CVBs are funded through a combination of hotel occupancy taxes and membership dues.
Q: What information can CVBs provide about hotels?
A: CVBs keep track of room counts, as well as other meetings coming to the area. In this way, they can help planners avoid conflicts with other events. Moreover, as CVBs have firsthand familiarity with the hotels and meeting spaces in the area, they can help planners match properties to specific meeting requirements and budgets.
Q: Why are meetings and tourism important to CVBs?
A: Travel and tourism enhance the quality of life for a local community by providing jobs, bringing in tax dollars for improvement of services and infrastructure, and attracting facilities like restaurants, shops, festivals, and cultural and sporting venues that cater to both visitors and locals. Travel and tourism are economic engines, and CVBs are the key drivers.
Source: Destination Marketing Association International. For more information, visit www.destinationmarketing.org.



RSS Feed