SMI | Success Stories

Working Hard for the Crescent City

New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau Partners with Software Management, Inc. to Show Tourists that New Orleans is Open for Business

New Orleans has never had trouble getting attention. The home of Mardi Gras, Bourbon Street and jazz has long attracted visitors from all over the world seeking a good time. However, when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005, its tourism industry, the largest employer and the industry responsible for one-third of the city's budget, waited expectantly to see what would happen next.

Brian Walker of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau says the challenges they faced post-Katrina were monumental.

"It was a tough time for everyone in New Orleans. Never before in the history of the US had an important city come to a complete halt. And in the months following the storm, so many hospitality organizations were cutting back," he says. "But the bureau had to keep working to rebuild confidence in the city as a destination and to retain future business. We knew that now more than ever, we had to get ourselves back out there and encourage people to visit New Orleans."

As part of its strategy, the Bureau decided to implement a change that had been put on the back burner when the storm hit -- the use of Destination 3000™ Professional (D3000) to manage customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities.

"D3000 enables organizations to streamline their information acquisition and deployment with comprehensive sales and CRM tools," Jennifer Reichenbach, President of Software Management, explains. "As the key operation in driving hospitality in a major destination city, the New Orleans CVB has always had to handle a large volume of information. On a daily basis, the Bureau is working to promote the city to business and leisure travelers. And after Katrina hit and visitors became more tentative about their plans, the Bureau had to work even harder to let people know that New Orleans was still a great place to live, work and play."

Software Management provided the perfect tool in D3000 at a time when the Bureau needed it most, Walker says.

"We had been looking into D3000 prior to Katrina, but the storm derailed our plans," Walker says. "When we were ready to start bringing visitors back to the city, we realized just how much D3000 could do to help us come back stronger than ever and finally signed off on it in April 2006. Software Management came in and helped us at just the right time."

D3000 provides the tools needed to effectively and efficiently manage sales efforts as well as measure the economic impact of the work done to fulfill current leads and generate new ones. The fully integrated system includes solutions for convention sales and services, membership and partner management, travel industry marketing, media relations and visitor inquiry fulfillment.

Built around a central database that integrates all of an organization's business operations, D3000 can be delivered as traditional software or as a hosted solution, and can be licensed by user, module or as a complete package. Best of all, D3000 can be fully integrated with the Internet to quickly convert online visitor inquiries into new leads and can be effectively used as a powerful content management tool for site content relative to target audiences.

The Bureau also uses Informz for Destination 3000™ and SMI's Destination 3000™ Web Solutions , which allows it to leverage database information to create and deploy personalized email marketing campaigns and add new leads from their website directly into their D3000 database as well as update content on their website in real time.

"D3000 was a great investment," Walker says. "Our meeting and leisure visitor numbers have consistently been growing since we officially welcomed visitors to the city in early 2006. In 2007, we had more than 7 million visitors, which was almost double what we had in 2006. We're nearly back to pre-Katrina levels of convention business and our historic districts are thriving. Software Management and D3000 contributed a great deal to our success."

As proof positive of the city's comeback and the Bureau's efforts in helping to lead the recovery, the organization was recently recognized by Meetings and Conventions magazine as one of the top five CVBs in the world, receiving its Gold Service Elite Award for the sixth time since 2001.

"For us, that recognition simply solidifies how far we've come over the last three years," Walker said. "We've faced unprecedented challenges, but the New Orleans spirit is alive and well and it's great to see people again wanting to be a part of it."