Promote Your Event with a Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB)

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Anyone involved with planning an event knows all too well the challenge of making the event popular. In other words how are you going to promote your event? And there are many aspects to promoting your event. For example, at the beginning stages you’re more interested in hearing from potential suppliers as they are going to be instrumental in ensuring your event is a success. Of course, once you are set up and ready to go, you now want to promote your event to potential attendees.

CVB’s Can Be Very Helpful with Ways to Promote Your Event

We have talked in the past about how to promote your event potential attendees. There are a few related articles below that’ll provide you with information for attracting attendees whether it be through social media, your contact list etc. For this post were going to focus on how you can use the Convention and Visitors Bureau in the city where you are planning your event.

Some people that I have talk to said they haven’t used a CVB because they thought their groups were too small. So I talked to a couple of my contacts that work at CVB’s to ask them for their opinion on group sizes. I’m pleased to tell you that CVB’s are there to help groups of any size. And having been a member of a CVB I can tell you firsthand that they are very instrumental in helping match planners with hotels and suppliers that are necessary for a successful conference.

One of the first ways a CVB will help promote your event is to put any RFPs out to potential suppliers. Communication is the key with your CVB contact. From the information that you provide, your CVB rep will then go out to its members and ask them to provide a quote for you to review.

CVB’s Promote Your Event to Related Suppliers

Another way that CVB’s are helpful is that they can also alert the various sub industries that should be aware of groups that are in their cities. A great example of this is when I was once in a taxi in Chicago. The driver asked me if I was with a particular group. I wasn’t but I asked him to tell me a little bit about that group. He knew their dates and what hotels they were using. Then he picked up his clipboard and handed it to me to take a look (I guess he realized I was in the industry and he wanted to share how he got his information). On his clipboard was a sheet of paper with the date on it. It had a list of all of the groups that were in the city on this particular day and what hotels they were staying in. I noticed that the top that it was provided by the Chicago CVB. He told me that it was common practice that his cab company provided him with a group list each day so that he could be prepared to be in particular parts of the city as needed.

If you have an event that you’re about to get underway then I strongly suggest you consult the local CVB for assistance. Whether it be for a list of suppliers that you can have your request for proposal sent to, or maybe it’s just for a few attraction flyers, a CVB is there to help you promote your event. Think of a CVB as the local ambassador of the city that they’re in. They are there to welcome you, provide you with the information you require to promote your event, and make sure that everybody in the industry is aware that you are there and they’re ready to serve you.