As tourism grows, the more, the better

2018 will bring more conventions

It’s no accident Columbus will be welcoming conventions of several international and national groups to town for the first time this year.

Credit the dogged determination of Experience Columbus, the city’s visitors bureau, with purposefully pursuing groups beyond state boundaries as one of the reasons for the 17 percent growth in large conventions expected for 2018.

It helps that Experience Columbus has people working full time now in Chicago and Washington D.C., to go after events planned by national groups. And locally, thousands of everyday citizens make Columbus even more attractive by obtaining Certified Tourism Ambassador designations to be especially helpful to visitors.

The Greater Columbus Sports Commission has done its share, too.

It’s not just civic pride that drives this work. As with most things, there is a money trail that tells the impact story, and the happy ending of this story totals up to about $9.7 billion. As Experience Columbus calculates it, that translates into about 75,000 local jobs that support the tourism industry.

Part of the economic benefit is the bed taxes — extra fees added on to hotel bills — that raised a record $46 million in 2017. The taxes don’t just get funneled back into the hospitality industry; they also help provide emergency human services and arts-organization grants, so we all benefit.

With work that has been under way for a while, those selling Columbus as an event destination have some solid new and updated attractions to pitch.

The Greater Columbus Convention Center has undergone a $140 million expansion and facelift and reopened in 2017 with “As We Are,” the 14-foot-tall interactive 3-D selfie sculpture that projects visitors’ images from a photo booth to a giant head. Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens will open a new 2-acre Scott’s Miracle-Gro Foundation Children’s Garden in May, and just up the road on Broad Street, T. rex and friends await at COSI’s American Museum of Natural History Dinosaur Gallery.

Adding to the buzz, Architectural Digest recently named the National Veterans Memorial and Museum, being built across from COSI, to its list of most-anticipated buildings of 2018.

Plenty of work also has gone into increasing the number of Downtown hotel rooms to house our visitors, and more boutique hotels are in progress to add even more selections.

Other selling points: Columbus is a day’s drive from about half the country, it is considered a lower-cost value destination compared with some larger cities, and it has snagged some independent accolades, including being ranked the top Midwest visitor destination in 2016 by J.D. Power.

Columbus long has counted on perennial meeting mainstays, such as the American Quarter Horse Congress, ThirtyOne Gifts, the Arnold Sports Festival and other returning groups. But the NCAA Women’s Final Four this year and another biggie in 2019 promise to boost the city’s reputation even higher: The American Society of Association Executives next year will draw groups with large memberships of their own from across the country.

Want to join the fun? Become a tourism ambassador and pitch the city to visitors yourself.