Durham Celebrates 25 Years of Success as a Visitor Destination

“That’s billions – with a B,” said Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau (DCVB) President and CEO, Shelly Green referring to visitor dollars spent in Durham over that last 25 years. Since 1990, when the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau (DCVB) started tracking metrics, 124 million visitors have experienced Durham and they spent $12.9 billion in Durham’s economy. The growth over that period, according to Green, is “pretty remarkable.”

The last four years coming out of the recession have seen steady growth. “Given the resources available, I am extremely proud of all that Durham has accomplished. The DCVB team is really skilled at spinning gold from hay,” Green said referring to Durham’s visitor growth measured against its investment promoting the destination.

DCVB benchmarks metrics annually that paint a picture of Durham’s performance as a visitor destination. The numbers are estimates for the past 25 years in total.

• $24 Million Visitors to Durham
• $12.9 Billion Spending by Durham Visitors
• $139 Million Occupancy Taxes Collected 
• $578 Million Local Tax Revenue Generated by Visitors
• 14.7 Million Visitor Inquiries Generated
• 15,764 Conventions and Groups Serviced
• 102,905 Conventions and Meetings Held in Durham
• 3.5 Million Convention and Meeting Attendees
• 5,149,485 Hotel Room Nights Used by Conventions and Meetings
• 1,172,662 Hotel Room Nights Booked by DCVB 
• 21,833 DCVB-Assisted Stories in the Media 

These statistics become more meaningful when considered in the context of real examples of praise and accomplishments earned by the community. Durham consistently ranks highly on measurements of quality of life, business climate, education, healthcare, and more. Fueled by its ranking as the number one retirement destination in the US and its title as Tastiest Town in the South, as well as the combination of diverse population and an engaged and welcoming community, Durham’s pattern of growth looks assured. A searchable database of Durham’s accolades is online here.

“Durham is successful because it is a great community that prides itself on things like authenticity and being genuine. These things matter more and more to visitors and residents alike, and we are now benefitting from that trend,” Green said. “To look back on the last 25 years at today’s Annual Tribute Luncheon has been a tangible validation of our work at DCVB, and of the community we represent. I couldn’t be more proud.”

A video shown at the luncheon traced DCVB’s inception back to 1982 when discussions of the need for a destination marketing organization dedicated to Durham were first chronicled in municipal and economic development circles. Legislation in 1986 permitted the collection of an occupancy tax on hotel room sales beginning in 1989 when DCVB started out with a modest office in Brightleaf Square.  Included in the video were former board and staff members as well as President Emeritus Reyn Bowman who ran DCVB from its inception in 1989 through 2009 when Green took the helm.   Watch the 25 year retrospective video online here.

The Annual Tribute Luncheon is produced by DCVB to celebrate Durham’s unique sense of place. Former honorees include Pastor Shirley Caesar, Dr. John Hope Franklin, Coach Mike Krzyzewski, Durham festivals, and acclaimed Durham chefs, among others.

DPAC #3 in the US; Five Year Impact Tops $175 Million

With the release of its third quarter rankings, Pollstar magazine again recognized DPAC - The Durham Performing Arts Center as one of the top 10 venues in the world as measured by ticket sales - a global industry standard used to measure performance. Attaining the #6 spot in the world and #3 spot in the US (missing #2 by a mere 1255 tickets sold), this state-of-the-art facility in Downtown Durham plays host to some of the most popular performances on tour.

This recognition is ideally timed and serves as punctuation of DPAC's many contributions in its first five years.

"Occasions like this are a great opportunity for us to celebrate DPAC's success and highlight its economic contributions to Durham," said Shelly Green, the President and CEO of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau (DCVB).  "They've certainly been an important contributor to Durham's continued growth and popularity as a visitor destination."

Through its first five seasons (one partial and four full seasons) the 2,700+ seat theater has sold 1.65 million seats.  That means each seat has been sold more than 600 times on average. Another telling number is that the 1.2 million non-resident visitors sitting in those seats spent about $175 million in Durham.  Patrons typically spend much more than just the price of their ticket.  They visit restaurants, stay in hotels, buy gas and shop in stores here, too.

DPAC has hosted many of Broadways hottest touring shows.  The current Suntrust Broadway Season features several blockbusters including The Book of Mormon, Once, Ghost, Evita and The Wizard of Oz. Click here to see the full line up and purchase tickets.

Stay up to date on all that is happening with the Durham Event Calendar.

Durham Visitation Tops 9 Million in 2012 - Part 1

According to data recently released by D.K. Shifflet and Associates, Durham hosted just over 9 million visitors in 2012, the largest number since measurement began more than a decade ago.

*in Millions

Almost 30% of these visitors, or 2.64 million, were here for business purposes including meetings and conventions.

The remaining 6.37 million were in Durham for leisure and personal reasons.

This represents an increase of 15.8% over 2011 when 7.77 million visitors came to Durham.  Overall visitation in the United States grew by 5.4% during this same period.

The largest growth was in leisure travel which grew 20.9%.  Business travel grew a modest 5.6%.

"I'm very pleased with the data," said Shelly Green, DCVB's President & CEO.  "Because business travel has been on a long slow decline, not keeping pace with the growth in overall travel, we've been putting more emphasis in marketing to leisure travelers," she said. "These numbers demonstrate a great return on that investment," she added.

*in Millions

To put this into perspective, 15 years ago, in 1997, there were 1.74 million business travelers to Durham and 3.15 leisure and personal visitors, for a total of 4.89 million.

However, growth in the number of people travelling to Durham for leisure and personal reasons has far outpaced growth on the business side.

That trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future.

Next up in Part 2:  A closer look at the data, specifically looking at the type of travel, whether day visitation or overnight travel.

When Big Isn't Big Enough - OP/ED

This is an opinion/editorial from the desk of Shelly Green, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau.

I read a great article yesterday in Forbes by Patrick Rishe, Director of Sportsimpacts and an Associate Professor of Economics at Webster University in St. Louis, MO., entitled "Educating Sports Commissions and CVBs about the Economic Impact of Sports."  He was summarizing a presentation that he made earlier in the week at a conference of the National Association of Sports Commissions (of which DCVB is a member.)

In the article, Rishe does a great job outlining in simple language the basics associated with measuring the impact of sports events.  He bemoans the fact—as do I—that there are still people and organizations out there inflating the economic impact of events for either political, financial or public relations reasons.  

Some just blindly take the impact amount reported by the city that hosted the event the prior year and mark it up 5 or 10%.  Some just do the math in their heads, i.e., “Let’s see.  I’ll bet each person spent about $1,000; times 50,000 people; equals…” with no basis to substantiate the numbers.

Rishe advises organizations to do the type of things that DCVB has espoused for 20-some years:

·       Don’t include spending by local residents.  If residents hadn’t spent money at this event, they would have likely spent it elsewhere in the local community. 

·       Report the net income of the event.  That includes the direct spending, the indirect and induced impacts (sometimes referred to as multipliers) but it also includes SUBTRACTING the amount of leakage that occurs when local businesses and vendors buy their supplies outside the community or when national and regional suppliers send a portion of the proceeds back to their corporate headquarters.

·       Consider displacement and how that impacts the bottom line, particularly when looking at mega events.  If a huge sporting event is supposed to bring 50,000 people to the community, it will have much less impact if it displaces any of the community’s existing business.  Think Super Bowls and Olympic events.  If hotels are typically 70% occupied during that time frame, the true impact is only the difference between the typical occupancy and the total occupancy achieved during the event (which is rarely 100%.)

As I noted in the comment section at the end of the article, the bottom line is, a CVBs job is to stimulate economic activity in its community AND generate tax revenue for local governments.  This reaps great rewards.  There is no reason to inflate these numbers...unless of course you need to cover up the fact that the huge incentive you ponied up (using public money, of course) actually made the event COST your community more money than it reaped.  But don't get me started on that...

The Crimson Tide Brings its Green

Yes, the national champions Alabama Crimson Tide Football team is beginning its descent on Durham. And it's a beautiful sight.

Not only will the home town Duke Blue Devils (who beat the 'Tide in 1944) bring their A game to the field at Wallace Wade Saturday afternoon, but the Crimson Tide fans will bring with them significant visitor economic impact.

Duke added about 4,000 extra seats to the for spectators for this upcoming game which speaks to the fact that 'Bama fans travel.  The economic impact from this game in Durham this weekend is $5.9 million -extremely high for a weekend event. Some of the reasons include much higher percentage of overnight visitors than most events, longer stays - particularly from the Alabama folks, and of course, ticket prices.  No tickets are available through Duke Athletic's ticket office for this game, according to the Duke Box Office.

Hotel rooms around Duke and 15/501 are sold out. There are still rooms available in S.E. Durham in and around Research Triangle Park which provide direct and easy access to Wallace Wade Stadium. 

Parking around town might be a touch challenging so use this map to see where spectators can park for the game or where to avoid if the game is not on Saturday's agenda. Local businesses will likely see a major influx of visitors in the early evening when the game lets out so residents should make plans accordingly for any dining or entertainment plans they might have. 

Sure, the Devils have an uphill battle on the field, but let us not forget that sports are a game and in any game there are chances...remember ASU in Michigan a few years back?... so there's a chance that the Blue Devils may make the Crimson Tide a little red in the face.  One thing not left to chance is that Durham will be a touch more green as the Tide subsides, and for that thanks go to Alabama.