Meet Chicago Northwest leaders talk tourism, hotel business at annual lunch
The tourism and convention bureau for the Northwest suburbs ended its annual luncheon Wednesday with what may sound like an unusual message for a business crowd: Take a vacation - preferably one nearby.
Two key reasons?
Using vacation time makes good business sense, boosting productivity and performance, and regional travelers are big spenders and prove critical to the suburban economy, say the leaders of Meet Chicago Northwest.
The Schaumburg-based organization also explained how it's selling eight communities before more than 140 people at Level 257, a restaurant and video game venue that opened in February at Woodfield Mall. The bureau represents Arlington Heights, Elk Grove Village, Itasca, Rolling Meadows, Roselle, Schaumburg, Streamwood and Wood Dale.
After the gathering elected new officers, President Dave Parulo spent much of his address crunching numbers.
Tourism, "first and foremost," creates jobs - more than 20,000 jobs are tied to the industry locally, Parulo said.
He also highlighted the visitors who spend on hotels within the Meet Chicago Northwest territory. In 2014, 2.2 million hotel rooms were occupied, said Parulo, citing tallies by Smith Travel Research.
Schaumburg will be home to 30 hotels by the end of the year, said Mayor Al Larson, one of the elected officials in the audience. Four hotels are being built, and a fifth was approved by trustees in February.
The hotel construction boom is triggering an interest among restaurateurs, said Larson. The village wants to focus that attention on west of Meacham Road, and create a "Restaurant Row," Larson said.
"We're building a downtown for the Northwest Suburbs," he said.
Luring meetings and conventions to hotels has been a primary focus for Meet Chicago Northwest. But tourists, "more and more," are deciding where to go based on the "experience," Parulo said. That means the bureau has to show them "something to do and see that's fun for me," he said.
So the bureau is touting amateur youth sport destinations and leisure activities for families. Visit Meet Chicago Northwest's new website, and you'll find much of the front-page content centers on group tours and sports.
"Sports has a great impact for us in the Chicago Northwest community," he told the crowd.
The bureau also never used to really pay attention to festivals, Parulo said.
"But I really started standing up and taking notice when I started looking at numbers," he said.
For instance, the Chicago International Dragon Boat Festival is expected to draw up to 10,000 people over three days at Lake Arlington in Arlington Heights in July.