(gentle music) - welcome to Business Forward.

I'm your host, Matt George joining me tonight, J D Dalfonso.

J D, is the president and CEO of the Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Welcome J D - Thank you, Matt.

It's a pleasure to be with you today.

- [Matt] Well, I appreciate We've got a lot to talk about.

So, let's just get right down to it.

What is the role of the convention and visitors bureau?

- What I'd love to tell is, where we drive our purpose.

Why do we show up every day?

And I, I really try, our staff took a deep dive last year two years ago to determine, what do we show up, right?

What's the purpose of what we do and that's to promote and advocate central Illinois, as the most desired destination in the country for wholesome memorable experiences.

That's for residents, that's for visitors alike.

And so, how do we dive in the mission and promoting quality of life, economic development for the region, you know pride in our own residents, all of that factors into how we execute what we do as a destination marketing organization, management organization as well.

So, in a sum we try and promote central Illnois region as the most desired place to live, work and play when it comes down to it.

- Yeah.

And I think sometimes when people hear what you are, they're surprised by some of every you know, you have, you cast a wide net because I think you know, years ago, I just thought, well, it had just to do with hotels.

- It's a large part of it.

The hotels are an engine to the car in which we drive.

- Okay.

- Right.

And, but it's become more in the times in the new era of destination marketing and management, it's more than what we say, heads and beds.

It's more in the stories.

It's cheeks in the seats, torsos through turnstiles.

I mean, the rhymes go on and on, but it explains more to that because it's, an economic opportunity driver for further development.

And so when people come into town, the heads and beds portion attribute to about 25% of spending for somebody's trip.

Well, we're there to promote how are we going to spend the other 75 in our communities?

How do we generate more sales activity from the outside to support our tax base?

And so, that's where it expands further than the hotels but those hotels are our engine still.

- Does it matter because we talk about shop local all the time, but does it matter in your eyes as long as you're eating or shopping period, that's all it matters.

Right?

- Its a large part.

Yes, absolutely.

But, I think as we see the current times, our shop local is put on the forefront even more.

- [Matt] Right.

- We see how far that dollar goes when we support local now than when that one has been cut back for so long.

- Yeah.

I, when you say, okay, so you Peoria Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, when you say that it's really more than that, it's a region, right?

- [J D] It is.

- So what does region mean to everybody here in central Illnois?

- Absolutely.

So we stretch for about seven counties through the Illinois Valley region.

So, through North of Peoria to down to Havana.

- [Matt] Okay.

- So start counting down to folks that-- Yeah but, there's so many assets that fall within that.

Now Peoria plays a large part, is one of the largest metropolitan areas South of Chicago.

We're seen as a desired destination for meetings and conventions and other activities.

But we have so much to offer it within that region.

So, it's a wonderful balance that when Peoria does well or a rising tide lifts all boats.

But, how do we promote the other areas that when they search for our destination in central Illinois, it's been proven through our research and analysis that they searched for Peoria to get to other surrounding communities.

And so, Peoria is a bit of the hook to get them here.

And their experiences as is proven through the numbers exceed further outside of our Peoria, our township lines.

- I mean, the bottom line is as long as you can come to central Illinois you've to come to our area that's what we want.

- Absolutely.

- Right.

So, you know it's been a tough year and I think almost sick of talking about it at times, but at the same time there's a lot of learning opportunities here.

And so, you know, what is the economic impact of tourism this past year compared to maybe what you're looking towards this upcoming year or two?

- We're right now, as we talk today it's a perfect barometer as to, or measurement as to where tourism is hitting hard in a growing economy versus a full calendar year, essentially of being under a pandemic, right.

And roll back.

Now, in 2019, before COVID hit our worlds, we saw that in central Illinois that's our seven County region.

We saw $686 million of domestic travel tourism spending.

As people that relates to tourism spending here in central Illinois.

That's broken down County by County.

And those statistics are analyzed by US travel association partnership with destinations international, Illinois office of tourism, numerous parties to get that number.

What we need to know is that's roughly it's just over $19 million worth of tax revenue throughout our counties.

So that's, through 2019.

Now with 2020, some of the numbers that we're compiling we know from tax figures show an incredible loss as you can imagine' it's almost a perfect opportunity to see the direct ROI of domestic tourism to the region.

And so, we're calculating based of numbers we found in Peoria city alone, right now what we have access to.

We're calculating at least a hundred million dollars shortfall of spending that's done throughout the year.

It's up to 120 million.

If we were shut down all of last year, and we didn't have any inkling of sports tourism that we did.

So, we did have some wins last year, but really we're seeing millions of dollars with shortfall and spending, which translates into millions of dollars of tax revenue as well.

- Which translates into what, - Jobs - Jobs - Right - It is a shortfall of jobs.

In 2019, the reports came back that the tourism spending supported at least 5,000 jobs.

Now, when we all shut down the economic development council had data and statistics that indicated that we had 10,000 jobs in hospitality that were laid off around that.

Those data well back, we can dig further into those weeds but, it was interesting seeing that tourism supported 5,000 but we lost far more than that due to the pandemic.

- So give us examples of jobs lost - Civic center, shut down.

Those are hundreds of employees that are providing meals to the banquets meetings, that are cleaning up, that are serving you at our local rescue-- - Bradley games, hockey games, or whatever It may be-- - Absolutely.

current events or the new events these concerts, we were hitting hard.

Rick Edgar you know, bringing Luke Combs and kiss.

That was some of the last events you know, we opted to attend.

The number of personnel that go on to put on those events alone.

Now you're talking, and then you go into the hotels.

How many staff help operate a hotel?

When they're at 80%, 90% occupancy it was dropped down to 17 last year in March 17% occupancy.

You know, I knew GMs that were doing laundry to support the reserve guard that was here at the civic center.

General managers doing laundry at 4:00 AM.

- Yeah.

There's a lot of stories like that.

I think if you even peel it back even further and most people don't think of this, but, I mean you're talking about maintenance at the civic center, janitorial you're talking about concessions.

You don't think about those.

You think of you.

How, I think about it is is how I'm going to have fun with my family.

- Yeah.

- So I'm thinking about man so-and-so is not gonna be able to have a concert.

- Yeah.

- But it's not that, that piece isn't that important to me.

- Think about that, when you show up to an event like that, you're bringing your family, you're focused on getting your popcorn and your sodas, your beer for yourself, and getting to your seat comfortably.

The number of jobs that go to support it, that behind the scenes that you can't recognize and they do a great job when they're not recognized right?

And when they're not doing a good job-- - cleaning the bathrooms.

- Very important, - So many moving parts behind it and it comes down to jobs and personnel.

- So, how do we get back?

I mean, what if there're some of these reopening plans that you're seeing or feeling talking to businesses?

- It's an exciting time right now, because tourism hospitality is on the forefront of knowing that, this is part of a large economic driver towards recovery.

How do we get that?

We need people to get back safely together.

Reopening plans consist of, hotels being able to operate under new measures and procedures.

Hotels have been incredibly innovative towards how they service a guest and the experience when you show up to a hotel, - They really have.

- They have, I mean, the changes you'll see when you travel to a hotel will be significantly different.

That's because the hotel industry has now been forced into thinking differently when it comes into experience.

I think all of us can take a lesson from how we think differently throughout these times.

Hotels but civic center I think about a lot too, where there was a safety committee that was established, that walks through the new protocols and new initiatives that can be taken to one, enhance your experience, make it more convenient, safer and cleaner.

And so, I think-- - Efficient coming in and out.

- Absolutely.

Work crowd flow is one sanitizing stations to sanitation after events, to contactless payment at the concessions things of that sort that we've seen before.

But now it's been, you'll see them here at your hometown - And it's changed the way everything's done.

- Yeah.

- I mean, it's very, very interesting so-- - I think to that point, if I've heard, you know there's a reflection of what the great depression did to a generation and conservative, you know being conservative in spending - yeah.

- Penny pinching, per se.

I think this is going to have a similar effect on our generation moving forward of what cleanliness looks like.

I think it's always gonna be on the forefront of our minds for years and decades to come.

- Yeah.

I mean, and you think about the everyday person out there that's wanting to work and you do think about restaurants.

I love eating out.

So you know, I know my servers at the restaurants that I go to and the bartenders and so on.

And you ached for those people, but you know, something that you really don't think about as much would be like the zoos.

And if you look at wildlife Peoria park and the Peoria riverfront museum, John Morris, I mean, he'd talk about someone who has taken something to a different level, and then all of a sudden this hits in the cat visitor center.

So, you think about all those different things and then the effects that it has on the restaurants.

And then all of the, I don't know other venues and restaurants, hotels it really is sad because it's not just central Illinois.

You multiply that times the state of Illinois, United States.

And you can almost picture the pain even more.

It doesn't even include the sickness and the death.

- Right.

Absolutely a great observation.

I mean, you see people making large strides in what they do and to have it all rain back think of the restaurant owners I think about all the time.

I walked downtown and it's tough to find restaurants that are open.

Why would you open a restaurant downtown?

You have the Civic Center with events that are continually going on during the night, You have Fortune 50 company Caterpillar employees down there, You have healthcare systems two large ones down there.

I mean, all driving daytime traffic to those storefronts it's now been halted.

And the events at night have been halted.

So as we see, you know boarded up shops and small businesses.

And I keep thinking those employees as well.

- Do you go around in your job, and this just came on my mind but, do you go around and talk to a lot of people and just hear their stories and is that what you do?

- All the time?

But you can't, you can not but you know, it's you know, you see the effect of small business owners who have taken a risk to open up, right?

Or take pride in where they work.

And, you know, it's always uses the talking like put food on the table it's literal expression today, right.

They put all their heart, sweat, blood, and tears into a business and taking on this risk and to have something at no fault of their own come across and halt their direction in life.

It hits you.

It really reminds me.

And I portray this to my staff, the reminder of why we do what we do, because we have to be a catalyst towards the solution recovery.

- Right.

So, you know, you have to build a lot of partnerships in what you're doing.

What do you do personally, to get everybody kind of talking the same language, speaking the same thing.

- Yeah.

In my staff or in the community?

- Yeah - I think one of the large, one of the things I try and do the most in my year and a half, is making sure we can reach solidify where we as a convention, visitors Bureau serve in a lane of multiple community organizations.

We get confused for the EDC all the time or the chamber.

And I understand why it's reiterating to Chris Steadley at the EDC and Joshua Gunn at the chamber and the DDC the downtown development corporation, CEO council.

This is where we're gonna be experts.

And this is where we belong.

And we're here to support you in every aspect that we can without merging into other people's lanes.

In doing so, we're focused on what we do best and supportive of the other organizations around us.

And my staff has understood that that's strong collaborative effort that I believe this region can thrive on.

And so just understanding what tourism and destination marketing and management consists of and how we support other organizations all continuing to try and drive central Illinois in a more prosperous direction.

- Yeah.

Chris Steadley he was recently on this show.

And one of the things that we spoke about was, you know COVID has really made everyone step back and check egos at the door.

And I think collaboration is a overused term or it's a term that people don't know what the true definition of collaboration because I think you're having to look at Chris and Josh Gunn and all these other departments and say, you know what we're here for the better good of people in our community.

And we do have to stay in our lanes, but boy we sure could help each other, right?

- Yeah, absolutely.

Chris Steadley and I worked together Joshua Gunn, Chris Steadley and I get together once a month just to touch base on what's going on.

- Yeah.I guess it's been great to understand what everybody's doing and how we can support.

Chris Steadley has an immense amount of data that we feed off of.

His direction with the community, Comprehensive Economic Development strategy.

The CEDS, is gonna play a part in our strategic planning that's gonna be initiated in next month.

And then how do we help promote businesses and provide relief to chamber initiatives?

While we try and promote hospitality initiatives?

It's been wonderful.

I know I close with the, an example we saw in our office just the other day.

We're working on a collaborative effort to promote population in central Illinois over the next 10 years, a longterm project.

And I looked in our boardroom at the time and you're socially distance and everybody's wearing masks but we had two employees from the CEO council and pull you from the chamber and pull you from the CVB collaborating for what we can do for the next 10 years.

I'm just proud to see that all of our-- - You should be proud.

- You know, it needs to happen more often actually.

So one of the goals you have is to enhance quality of life, right?

So what are some examples of that?

What does that even mean?

- Yeah, I know it's a wide term, right.

But-- - it's wide, but what does it mean to you?

- It means pride comes to mind first, quality of life.

I think we can showcase our quality of life the most when we take pride in ourselves.

One of the easiest things you can do, and I see it all the time.

I'm sure you see it.

People can complain about their own home towns.

Why would you move to central Illinois?

- You're taking all my questions I'm joking.

- But we believe that positive conversation leads to positive action and influences positive actions.

When we can speak positively about ourselves.

One of the prime examples is when I was, you know was it eight years ago maybe seven years ago, Tim Cundiff a good friend of mine asked if I'd be a part of this All-America city program.

I had no idea what I was getting into.

I said, yeah, Tim, absolutely I've got time.

But in that moment, I could see somebody who is incredibly prideful of central Illinois and bring home this national distinction to central Illinois, Peoria.

Now, I people are probably sick of me talking about that cause it's seven years ago.

But to me, it was the first indicator of first sight of how when you take real pride and where you come from, it resonates across the nation provenly do so.

So, what I try and do and what we do at the CVB is gonna make sure we can share those stories be it an instrument to promote more of those positive conversations, we can take pride in ourselves.

There's a lot we've forgotten about in our 340 year history here in central Illinois, that we can be proud of.

And I think a lot of it's still resonates today and the more we can push that, I think the better off we are towards that quality of life.

- Yeah.

I think a big step.

And I, when I talked to Chris Steadley about all us having the big table I'll ask a couple of years.

- Fantastic.

- It's huge.

I mean, we had 700, 800 people that from all positions of all you name it and all getting in a room and actually caring.

- Yeah.

- Caring about the community.

- Absolutely.

And it wasn't just leaders of organizations.

It was the-- - it was everybody.

- Everybody has a say - Everybody has a say, so one of my questions I'm gonna kind of, you already answered it but I'm gonna ask it a different way.

You know, you talk about attitude and you know, maybe that's my word.

But people that live in this area are not always optimistic.

And there is a pessimistic thread, I guess that is throughout all communities.

What can we do?

What else can we do as a community to get on the same page and put some of this past year behind us and some of this, ah, behind us and, start having fun and start making money, and start making change, and start loving each other again and getting back to work.

- Yeah.

I think it's a conscious effort that I mean times are tough.

They've been tough, It's hard to tell people to be positive in the times we just had facing, but it's a conscious effort to again share positivity.

I think social media plays a great platform there's so much power.

As we see in social media, it's always a talking point.

How do we communicate?

There's a lot of harm that can be done with negative stories or sentiment out there, but it's exponentially more positive.

If we take that positive approach, the rewards are far more.

When people in my world and tourism, when they see a positive story, it can translate to up to 700, no a thousand visits per positive experience.

- Okay.

- So when somebody comes into our community and they come and experience Peoria for the first time or a repetitive, another time family, friends or whatever business, they go back and speak positively.

That affect in whatever way, social media or across the coffee table can resonate in a thousand more visits.

That's done with the Longwoods professional survey that we've done in our industry.

So, that's the direct power of positive conversation.

That's why our role is to put those positive stories out for people at least share.

- Yeah.

The CEO council talks about it all the time.

Yeah.

So let's go back to hotels for a second.

How many rooms are in our region?

Thousands-- - Thousands, thousands of rooms.

- And so, when new hotels pop up, is that good sign?

When hotels pop up, it usually means restaurants pop up because there's still a couple of hotels that are popping up here and there around our area.

That's a positive sign, isn't it?

- Absolutely.

Oh, it's a positive sign that the businesses would support a hotel.

They see the promise in some of our assets whether that's convention centers on the East Peoria side MC suites or gem of civic center and the space that they provide for those meetings conventions.

When they see, they don't play in a hotel just to play in a hotel, they see the economic potential in that.

And so when they see that hotel projects continue to move forward, that is an optimistic look towards the support of the region.

- Yeah.

So I wanna talk about an initiative that you are a part of and maybe the driver behind it but I think it was pretty cool.

It's black owned businesses.

I mean, you know, I have so many friends that own businesses and when I, so many friends that you focused on and when I saw this, I just smiled because it was probably one of the neatest things that I've seen, the Peoria Area Convention, Visitors Bureau do - We appreciate that?

And there's a wonderful story that goes behind it and how we came to that initiative and that campaign.

But the, you know, it goes to the root of we can highlight a demographic that we learn in the self-assessment back in 2019, the South side of Peoria was underrepresented and have wonderful gems.

And it was Doris Panetta who I met at the big table helped bring to my attention when we were able to hire her that she had these gems in her home or her neighborhood that were overlooked.

This, we thought we realized that the business owners had no idea who we were or what we could do for them.

So I told Doris that we need to go to them and provide them at least one year free membership so we can go to bat for them more importantly, we wanna share their story as to why they did it.

So, video interviews and written interviews that's been able to be a wonderful project that's been well received across my colleagues in the state of Illinois.

And I'm proud to say we will be featured internationally in the coming months with international-- - That is awesome.

- A lot of those restaurants, Young's popcorn wraps.

I mean, they're all great places - And they're thrilled with the fact that they get to share their story.

And there's been, we followed up with them regularly.

We stay in touch and we see that our efforts have been a direct success to further business and revenue for them despite the times, which is great.

Furthermore, I want the public to understand that this is this is a program that we want to initiate through.

We've already established.

We want it to grow.

We wannna sustain what we're doing and grow among other demographics.

Women owned businesses, whether that's Hispanic, Latin, X community that we have here has growing.

Strong middle East, you know, representation here large Lebanese in the middle East.

So, we want to grow this to showcase these businesses but more of the stories while sustaining what we've been building over the next few years.

- So I was going to suggest that.

So I'm glad you're thinking it.

I love it.

Now, we have so many good restaurants around here family owned restaurants, and it's pretty cool.

So, what role do you have or just your group have in relocation to this area?

Because there's a lot of people migrating out of bigger cities, Chicago.

I don't want people from Chicago to go to Michigan or Wisconsin.

I want them to come to central Illinois.

What are you doing?

What, what role do you have?

- That's the position we have with that meeting.

It talks about their staffers in our boardroom.

We're talking about just that situation we saw.

I saw firsthand during the pandemic, those that lived in downtown Chicago with the two year old came down for a week and a half to live with their in-laws or their parents for a week to get away and have some sort of normalcy and in a world of a worldwide pandemic.

And the quality of life, the availability to get somewhere quickly understand the real estate market here the opportunity to work remotely, was highlighted throughout the pandemic.

Now what we do, we're going to work with the EDC, the CEO council, the chamber, and ourselves.

We all come together to the table to talk about this is the goals we wanna set forth.

As a marketing organization for the region, we want to use those assets to market that campaign based off the collaborative ideas and goals that come from every organization.

- So there is a plan?

- There is a plan being developed.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

You know, you're seeing a net migration in so many different cities right now and they've gottta go somewhere.

- Yeah.

- Why not here?

- The realisation is People, young individuals.

And we have stories old classmates of mine that have moved back to Morton because they don't want to be surrounded by 5 million hundred closest friends right now.

- Right.

Well, I think you're doing some great things.

I think the collaborative efforts really make me happy to hear, because I think we need to do more of it.

You're a leader in this community and we appreciate everything you do.

J D Dalfonso thank you for coming in Peoria area, convention and visitors Bureau.

We're gonna have you back.

Cause I just I've , I'm not done.

- Can't wait to come back.

So, this is another episode of Business Forward and I'm Matt George (gentle music)