What makes your city a top meeting/convention destination? To start, location, location, location. More people - 23 million - live within 100 miles of Hartford than any other U.S city except New York. Hartford is at the center of a very high concentration of most organizations' members.

Hartford is also a cost/value alternative to other major cities in the Northeast and a low-cost alternative to Boston for the "New England" experience. Bradley International Airport is a convenient, hassle-free alternative to other Northeast airports, such as Boston and New York.

There's also our state-of-the-art Connecticut Convention Center, which along with the Hartford Civic Center and the Connecticut Expo Center brings our total meeting and convention space to 740,000 square feet.
Tell us about a meeting you're thrilled to have just booked, or a recent meeting you're very pleased with.
In June 2007, the United Church of Christ held its 50th Synod in Hartford. This three-day meeting drew 10,000 attendees, and the group used more than 52 hotels. Barack Obama spoke at the event, which created a great buzz.
What is your position on destination leadership?
Planning is key, and destination leadership means not destination sales, but destination sales management that takes planning into account. This is because you can do a great job in sales, but if word gets out that you're not ready to handle business, it's a problem.
What is your city's roadmap for the future?
We've put together a Hospitality Task Force whose members meet once each month to review what business is in and how we need to prepare to handle those groups.

We have several new developments on the horizon. The Connecticut Science Center is scheduled to open in 2008. It will be part of the 30-acre Adriaen's Landing site, which also includes the convention center and Downtown Marriott hotel. Work on another new component of Adriaen's Landing, The Front Street District, is also under way.
What green initiatives is your city/convention center undertaking?
The convention center recycles all paper, glass, aluminum, plastic, and cooking oil and has instituted energy-saving measures, including the use of motion detector-controlled lighting in restaurants, ballrooms, and meeting rooms; metal halide lighting in the exhibit hall; and online exhibitor services forms to decrease paper transactions.
How have destination marketing organizations (DMOs) evolved over the past 10 years, and how do you see the role of the bureau changing in the future?
Technology - from BlackBerries to e-marketing, has changed the way DMOs conduct business. We must live up to or exceed customers' expectation to communicate and disseminate information that way.

We have also become far more accountable than ever before and must drill down deep to demonstrate ROI from our initiatives to the public and private sectors. We must track how money is spent and be able to verify and quantify the benefits.

More and more, bureaus will partner with other bureaus for the common marketing good. We have just teamed up with CVBs in Madison, Wis., and Spokane, Wash., to form a partnership aimed at offering meeting planners a fresh regional rotation for their conventions. All three DMOs are working together to cater to groups that prefer the amenities, personalized service, and attention that mid-sized cities deliver.