Nov. 25–WEST PALM BEACH _ Palm Beach County tourism leaders on Monday launched a $1 million incentive program designed to bring more large-scale events and corporate meetings to the county’s convention center in downtown West Palm Beach.
The incentives vary depending on the size of the event and the number of hotel room bookings, but officials estimate the four-year program could lure as many as 30 groups a year to the area.
The program comes less than three months after crews began vertical construction on the long-awaited, 430-room hotel next to the convention center. The Hilton hotel is expected to open in July 2016.
Tourism leaders have said the lack of an adjoining hotel has hindered the center’s ability to book larger business conventions.
“I think we need to look at the visual reality of the new headquarter hotel as a new era,” said Jorge Pesquera, president and CEO of Discover The Palm Beaches, the county’s tourism marketing arm. “It is a new chapter in the history of Palm Beach County in terms of its image as a convention destination.”
Event planners typically book large convention space more than a year in advance, and sometimes as much as two years. As a result, Discover officials said the program would likely help boost bookings at the new convention center hotel when it opens.
“The attention that we are going to capture is going to help us impact the new hotel,” said Douglas McLain, Discover’s senior vice president of global sales.
Discover officials, however, say the incentives apply to more than 50 hotels across the county _ and are not specific to the new Hilton.
The program will help Palm Beach County compete with tourist destinations vying for the same convention business, McLain said.
The incentives are available to meeting planners who bring new business to the convention center and book rooms in multiple hotels in the county, according to officials with Discover.
“Really, the whole idea for rolling this out now was to present a hook to capture attention in what is a very competitive landscape,” McLain said. “There are lots of cities that are vying (for business). It takes something like this to really differentiate ourselves.”
For a convention with 3,000 hotel room night bookings, the program could amount to as much as $25,000 in incentives, which would be available after the event.
But the return on that investment is far greater, officials said.
The economic impact of a 3,000-room convention is roughly $2 million, according to Discover.
“There is no downside at all,” Pesquera said. ” There are a lot of meeting planners out there that have not been to Palm Beach County or who were here 15 years ago and haven’t been back and haven’t seen all the additional things we have to offer. This is a great way to wave the flag and say to people, ‘Come discover the Palm Beaches.'”
