Minneapolis' convention bureau has found a buyer for the for-profit software company it developed with the help of $10 million in city loans.
Meet Minneapolis, the nonprofit group that handles the city's convention and tourism efforts, launched Internet Destination Sales System a decade ago. The goal was to turn a profit by offering its convention booking and management software to other tourism bureaus, but the business got off to a slow start. After the city lent it $2.5 million to launch the company, Meet Minneapolis came back for more help — eventually borrowing a total of $10 million between 2004 and 2006.
Since then, the organization has been steadily making payments on those loans — and looking for a buyer to take the company off its hands.
The city and Meet Minneapolis did not disclose the identity of the buyer, but officials said the tentative deal calls for Meet Minneapolis to continue making payments on the $3 million balance it will have at the end of 2014. Payments on the loans are scheduled to wrap up in 2017.
The City Council's Ways and Means Committee voted unanimously Tuesday to release the city's interest in IDSS, leaving the door open for Meet Minneapolis to complete the sale.
Council Vice President Elizabeth Glidden, one of a handful of council members who serve on the Meet Minneapolis board, said the sale is a good move for a company she believes was never a good fit for the organization. She praised Meet Minneapolis' work on attracting conventions and visitors to the city but said trying to run a separate, for-profit business as an offshoot was a "big mistake" that isn't likely to be repeated.
"I think we need to be very cautious of something like that, that seems out of the scope of what the organization was traditionally set up to be," she said.
Meet Minneapolis president and CEO Melvin Tennant also serves as the CEO of IDSS. The position with IDSS is unpaid.
