(INTHELEAD) INTERVIEWED BY
MARNI GINTHER
Melvin Tennant, CAE
President and CEO
Meet Minneapolis
■ Having led convention and visitor bureaus in San Antonio, Texas,
Oakland, Calif., and Charlotte, N.C., Melvin Tennant brings more than
25 years of experience to his first year as president and CEO of Meet
Minneapolis. Since November 2007, when his predecessor, Greg Ortale,
left to head up the Greater Houston Convention & Visitors Bureau,
Tennant served as interim president and officially took the helm
this past April. As a transplant, Tennant says he brings more to the
position than industry experience. His fresh perspective allows him
to appreciate assets and spot opportunities in the Twin Cities that
locals may take for granted. Tennant spoke about these assets, the
state of the local hospitality industry, his goals for Meet Minneapolis
and the future of hospitality in the Twin Cities.
“I feel very strongly that, for meetings and conventions,
a destination has to have a great deal of appeal overall.
Because everybody has a convention center; everybody has an
airport; everybody has the basic infrastructure. But those areas
which distinguish Minneapolis from its competitors really center
around arts and culture. I’m also very impressed with the level of
professionalism of the [Twin Cities’] hospitality industry. There are
a lot of cities that have a hospitality industry that’s very transient but
that’s not the case here. There are a number of long-tenured staff
persons both at Meet Minneapolis and various hospitality industry
businesses—hotels, restaurants, what have you.
[At Meet Minneapolis] one of the areas we’re going to focus on
is a more robust research effort to make sure we’re targeting
our business toward those visitor markets that have the greatest
potential to impact the city. We also have found that hosting the
[Republican National Convention] has given us additional credibility in the marketplace. For example, after having hosted the RNC,
we can go to literally any group that’s out there and say, ‘if we can
handle the RNC, we can certainly handle your group.’
I believe we continue to have some perception problems amongst
many of our customer groups, but we’ve made some real great
strides toward correcting those. Again, I go back to arts and culture.
It’s just amazing to me that we have 75 theaters and more than
60 museums. To me, we’ve got all that going for us and we just
really need to continue to do a better job of convincing the world
that we are a very, very desirable destination.” m
20 MN-MEETINGS.COM FALL 2008
