- In just a little over two months, Detroit is gonna welcome hundreds of thousands of visitors who will be here for the NFL draft.

Now this is the National Football League's second largest event behind the Super Bowl.

I had a chance to chat with Visit Detroit President and CEO Claude Molinari at last month's Detroit Policy Conference given by the Detroit Regional Chamber.

We talked about what the city can expect from this major sporting event.

We gotta start with what I think is maybe some of the biggest news of the year in just a few weeks, really, we are gonna host an event that I think most Detroiters don't really understand how big a deal it's gonna be.

I'm not sure we're ready for the crowd that's gonna come here for the NFL draft.

- We're gonna have fans from all over the country, probably all over the world coming to Detroit.

And when you think about last year in Kansas City, they had 300,000 fans.

There was not one other NFL city within a five hour radius of them.

We have six NFL cities within a four hour drive of Detroit plus Canada.

I mean, this is gonna be a worldwide phenomenon.

60 million people are gonna be watching on TV, and we think hundreds of thousands descending on Detroit.

- Can you compare this to other events that we've had here in Detroit?

- No, there's nothing that compares to this.

It would have to be like a South by Southwest or the Olympics, which we don't host.

- We don't do those things.

- But this is as big as it gets as far as people here for a three day event and being all over the city.

- So talk about how an event like this kind of fits into the picture, the overall picture of conventions and tourism in the city.

Obviously this will be a big shot in the arm.

But there's a lot of other things also going on and going well for us right now.

- No doubt, and having the NFL choose to have maybe their second biggest signature event in the city of Detroit, that's a huge validator for our region, our city, our state.

And a lot of times when we're trying to sell our city for conventions, meetings like you talked about, well, when I can say, "Oh, by the way, the NFL chose Detroit," that immediately changes the narrative a little bit.

Like, wow, if a brand like that thinks this is a place to hold my big event, maybe I should consider it as well.

- That sell, come to Detroit, visit Detroit, what does it look like today?

And compare it to maybe 10 years ago when we were just starting to really focus on that and make some improvements that would attract more people.

Where are we on that?

- The perception of Detroit and Michigan has changed significantly.

When I first moved to Detroit in like early 2012, 2013, people would say, "Where are you from?"

I'd say Detroit, they're like, "Oh, so sorry."

And really now, I mean, I was just in California for an event and everywhere, people were like, "You're from Detroit, Detroit's killing it.

I'm hearing all this great stuff."

The excitement about it, the perception change is really great.

And I love it, and it's funny.

We always say, if we can get them here, we'll get them here.

And once we get an event here and the people start to see it, they're like, "I'm shocked, I can't believe how great this was."

And it's almost insulting because I'm like, what did you expect?

But this is a great place to live.

And we have so much industry here and there's 20 cranes dotting the sky, skyscrapers being built everywhere.

I think that, again, it's just a great feeling right now to know that we've really turned a corner and we're starting to change that perception.

- One of the things that was a knock on Detroit for some convention business for a long time has been hotel space.

The number of hotel rooms in downtown Detroit.

Talk about how that played into the NFL's decision.

I mean, this is a lot of people, they didn't seem to blink.

Why wasn't it an issue?

- Big sporting events, as long as we took care of the NFL's VIPs-- - They're not worried about everyone else.

- About 2,000.

But they were happy that we have 45,000 hotel rooms in Oakland, Wayne, and Macomb County.

So we have enough to handle these huge events because even cities that have 15, 20,000 hotel rooms downtown, they're not gonna be able to support 300,000 plus fans.

It's gonna go all over the suburbs and that's great.

But when we have those meetings and conventions that really wanna focus on seven, 8,000 people, and they want them downtown right around the convention center, we're excluded from those events.

So it was a problem.

It is a major problem right now.

In the last five years we did a study, we lost 600,000 room nights for the sole reason that we did not have enough hotel rooms downtown.

- We don't have enough.

- So if we were to double our hotel capacity, that would only put us in the middle of our competitive set.

But that would be worth probably $250 million to the region of southeast Michigan.

- Wow, so speaking of hotel rooms and building hotels, we are building a hotel here in Detroit.

I was a little surprised to learn that the former Joe Lewis site was gonna include a hotel.

I knew it was gonna be an apartment building.

I didn't know that there was gonna be a hotel.

It's a big hotel.

600 rooms.

Talk about how that will change the picture, especially being right next to, not Cobo Hall, but now Huntington Place.

- So it won't be next to, it'll be connected.

- [Stephen] It's connected.

- So it's gonna be, and 600 rooms, it steps in and it'll be immediately the second biggest hotel in the city of Detroit.

So, again, huge benefit, being connected.

I mean, that immediately is a game changer.

And when we announced that, again, I was at this recent convention and so many show managers were like, "Let's start talking about it.

When's it gonna be ready?

'27, I got an event in '28 or '29 or '30 that we're already booking it.

And I can tell you that the US Travel Association, they put their big international travel event in Detroit in '28.

The caveat was that we have to have that hotel.

- You gotta have that hotel.

- They would not have chosen Detroit if we were not building that hotel, and that's a fact.