St. Louis and Baltimore Tourism CEOs on How Their Cities Responded to Riots
Photo Credit: Photo from the 2015 Ferguson Recovery Report. St. Louis Economic Development Partnership
Skift Take
The St. Louis and Baltimore tourism bureaus used digital content wisely to protect their visitor economies during social unrest. Now they're attempting to use those same advocacy skills to help rebuild and strengthen their local communities to varying degrees of success.
Outside of natural disasters, few things scare U.S. tourism bureau CEOs more than SWAT teams atop military trucks firing tear gas at large crowds in their cities.
That goes double for meeting planners with conventions scheduled in those cities.
The violent protests in the Ferguson suburb of St. Louis in August 2014 and Baltimore in April 2015 had negative short-term impacts on convention business in both destinations. As soon as the news broke of unrest in each city, meeting planners with pending events began calling their contracted hotels to find out more information, but the hotel executives themselves weren't always sure how to answer their clients.
Explore St. Louis and Visit Baltimore — the convention and visitors bureaus that promote their cities to the meetings industry — helped stabilize their communities by being trusted sources for accurate information amid all of the confusion. How they managed public outreach during and after the uprisings provides
