Spokane Posts Strong Numbers For Conventions

Spokane Area Convention and Visitors Bureau staff posted their second-best convention booking month ever in March.

Twenty-five future conventions were confirmed last month with a combined estimated economic impact of $7,520,700. The meetings are expected to attract more than 10,000 delegates.

The top month for conventions, said Mina Gokee, the bureau’s director of sales, was July 1994. That month, the bureau scheduled $11.4 million in meetings, including a Fraternal Order of Eagles aerie with an economic impact of $7.3 million. Last year, bureau staff booked $4.6 million worth of convention business in March.

Gokee said that it can take five or six years of work to book some of the larger conventions.

Bureau staff, for instance, worked five years to get The American Phytopathological Society’s convention business, said Gokee. The group, which studies plant diseases, decided last month to bring its 1,800 delegates to Spokane in July 2004 instead of Portland, the other finalist city.

Gokee said that booking the American Phytopathological Society convention started with a bureau-sponsored visit two years ago by the group’s meeting planner.

“They’re not going to buy Spokane unless they see us first,” said Gokee, who added that Spokane doesn’t have the built-in recognition of cities like San Francisco and Chicago.

Other national conventions booked in March for future dates included the Society of Armed Forces Medical Laboratory Scientists, Serra International and the National Weather Association.

So far this year, Spokane has hosted 38 conventions with a combined economic impact of $6.5 million, said Gokee.

The amount of future convention business Spokane gets, she added, may depend in part on whether the convention center is expanded. Gokee is now tracking conventions that have eliminated Spokane as a venue because the facilities are too small.

“We are losing business because we don’t have the space,” she said. “So I see an expansion as the catalyst for getting more business.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: AT A GLANCE Marching along

Twenty-five future conventions were confirmed by Spokane Area Convention and Visitors Bureau staff in March. The combined estimated economic impact is $7,520,700. Last March, bureau staff booked $4.6 million worth of convention business.