At Friday’s annual meeting of the Dallas Convention & Visitors Bureau, chief executive Phillip Jones has good reason to focus on the future. It looks better than the past.
After several years of eroding convention business, advance bookings are on the rise for the next decade.
Credit the 1,000-room Omni hotel under construction next to the Dallas Convention Center. But don’t discount convention organizers wanting to escape the glare of Sin City for more businesslike cities such as Dallas.
For the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the bureau booked 471 meetings that will account for nearly a million room nights at local hotels through 2019. That’s the second-best showing for room nights – rooms expected to be used by attendees – in the five years the bureau has used its current accounting methods.
