MOLINE, Ill. — It's Global Meetings Industry Day Thursday, March 30, and Visit Quad Cities is spreading the message of the importance of meetings.
Global Meetings Industry Day is a time to celebrate all of the money and tourism, meetings, conferences, conventions, trade shows, sports events and more, bring to a city's economy.
"[It takes] a variety of things to kind of make up group business, but sometimes it just gets missed in the community," President and CEO of Visit Quad Cities Dave Herrell said. "So, whatever we can do to, you know, talk about it, and highlight it from, you know, a global perspective, national perspective, and certainly a regional perspective, we're going to do that."
Visit Quad Cities said in a press release, meetings drive the economy forward. Leaders also said these gatherings play a critical role in bringing in new visitors who stay in Quad Cities' Hotels, eat in local restaurants, shop in local stores, and support more than 8,500 local jobs.
"Tourism generates jobs, it sustains jobs," Herrell said. "And so that's important for our economy, and the majority of them are small businesses. And so, we got to make sure that we're continuing to prime that pump and do what we can just to make sure that we're selling our destination."
Visit Quad Cities reported at its Destination QC! event that they generated $30 million from just meetings.
"We've got to invest in destination marketing and doing the things to try to move meetings forward within the Quad Cities," Herrell said. "We've got a great story to tell, we've got wonderful assets and our community, but the more we can be out there, you know, marketing and promoting our destination as a great place to host meetings."
Visit Quad Cities included in a press release, In 2022, professional events drove nearly $100 billion in travel spending nationwide, accounting for 38% of all business travel spending.
The theme of this year's global meetings industry day is 'meetings matter', and leaders say it's to highlight the benefits of in-person meetings, such as economic growth and business connections.
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