Convention Center brochure controversial

A marketing brochure paid for through a lodging tax and designed to sell space in the Spokane Convention Center has stumbled into a bit of public relations trouble.

The full-color, tri-fold brochure will be used to entice meeting planners to schedule conventions and trade shows in Spokane. It lays out every possible detail regarding Convention Center space. It includes a diagram of the buildings, the square footage of all the rooms, the ceiling heights, banquet room capacities and even the dimensions of outside patios.

However, some local hoteliers are upset that it also includes the names and locations of two of their competitors. The hotels named are the Red Lion Hotel at the Park and the DoubleTree Hotel.

“Everybody should be there or nobody should be there,” said Walt Worthy, owner of The Davenport Hotel. “If it had just said ‘hotel’ we would not be having this conversation. At all.”

Hoteliers met on Monday with staff members of the Spokane Public Facilities District and Spokane Regional Convention and Visitors Bureau to hash out their concerns. The CVB produced the brochure and the PFD owns and manages the Convention Center.

CVB Vice President Keith Backsen said the brochure will be used in conjunction with a facilities guide that includes every hotel in the county. However, he agreed that the brochure could have been more “sensitive” to other hotels.

Complicating matters was the fact that the $25,000 spent to print 3,000 brochures came from Tourism Promotion Area funds.

Authorized by the Legislature in 2003, Spokane County’s Tourism Promotion Area took effect in June. It allows for a fee to be added to hotel room nights, ranging from 50 cents to $1.50, based on where a hotel is located and its annual revenues.

The money collected – estimated to be at least $1.4 million annually – is used to promote tourism in Spokane.

A panel of eight hoteliers decides how the money is spent, but most of it, about $950,000, is directed to the CVB for marketing and promotion, said Ron Anderson, chairman of the Tourism Promotion Area Commission and general manager of the Hotel at the Park.

The commission also includes representatives from Sterling Hospitality, the DoubleTree, the Davenport, and other hotels.

Anderson said the local tourism industry was applying a lot of pressure on the CVB to finish the brochure at a time when the organization’s director had left to take another job.

“Everyone was trying to do the right thing, they really were,” Anderson said. “The commission did not proofread it. There was a big deadline, we were probably a little behind schedule. But we have learned from it and we want to make sure going forward we have as many eyes on everything as we can.”