St. Charles Convention Center Annual Report 2012

The staff at the Saint Charles Convention Center is dedicated to serving the needs of its clients, visitors, owners, and the community of St. Charles. They are the core of the venue’s continued success. Their commitment to the venue and to their jobs is reflected in our volume of repeat clients, consistently high ratings from suveys, and our consistent financial success.

Global Spectrum and the Greater St. Charles Convention and Visitors Bureau constantly work in tandem to solicit the best business for the facility. Together, their goals are to earn revenues for the Center, bring in out-of-town guests to generate room nights for local hotels, and maximize the overall economic impact to the City of St. Charles. To streamline these efforts, last year a new Director of Tourism was brought on, who also serves at the Director of Economic Development for the City.

BothBoth CVB and Convention Center representatives commonly attend trade shows and events together and are both involved in FAM trips and site tours of the facility for long-term business prospecting and booking. Clients can coordinate with the CVB to explore Historic Main Street and the thriving tourism community here in St. Charles.

The attached Embassy Suites Hotel is an award winning, all-suite, 296-room facility managed by John Q. Hammons and is connected to the Convention Center on both the upper and lower levels. This attached property has proven valuable in attracting groups needing large, flexible meeting space with an adjacent full-service hotel. Global Spectrum and the Embassy Suites staff work jointly in securing business that utilizes space at both properties.

The St. Charles hospitality industry consists of 15 limited-service hotels and two full-service hotels. The total room inventory is over 2,100 rooms from 17 hotels with over one fourth of those rooms from hotels that are within walking distance of the Convention Center. The staff at the Convention Center continues to foster relationships with these hospitality partners to secure pieces of business for the facility and surrounding industry partners.

In an effort to better serve our clients, relationships have been forged with a variety of business partners, including beverage, phone and data, banking, and print providers. In addition to a vested business interest within the facility through direct product offerings, signage, and exposure, many of these sponsors also exist to provide additional marketing support for the facility and events.

In 2012, the Center renewed or forged new relationships with New Frontier Bank, YP.com, Charter Business, and Webster University.