Convention, Visitors Bureau Reports Record Year

None by Lara Jones

(KCPW News) With the completion of the Salt Palace expansion, the Salt Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau today reported a record year in 2006. Shawn Stinson, director of communications:

"We had just under 300,000 - about 295,000 - convention attendees or delegates that came to Salt Lake in the year 2006, which surpassed the previous-record year of 2002, the Olympic year."

The CVB holds the contract to promote conventions and tourism in the Beehive State, largely through conventions and tradeshows at the Salt Palace and the South Towne Expo Center. Stinson says another measure of the bureau's success is local hotel room rates and the transient room taxes they generate:

"I believe the hotels booked a total of $330 million, which is definitely a record for them. So they're doing well, it was actually a 16 percent increase over the year 2005."

Stinson says the CVB's annual report does not address the Legislature's deal to fund a soccer stadium in Sandy with money from the transient room tax and how that might affect the bureau's nearly $13.5 million budget.

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