Tourism industry starts to return in Minneapolis: 'We were devastated'

The American Specialty Toy Retailing Association held its annual meeting at the Minneapolis Convention Center this weekend, marking the first convention held in Minneapolis since spring 2020 and filling rooms in downtown hotels.

The coronavirus pandemic has been devastating to the leisure and travel industry, including the meeting industry. More than 400 downtown Minneapolis events — from trade shows to educational conferences and networking opportunities — were canceled as restrictions and overall anxiety enveloped 2020, said Melvin Tennant, CEO of the city's tourism agency, Meet Minneapolis.

The results in Minneapolis were empty hotels, 20,000 lost jobs and a 70% decrease in lodging taxes collected by the city, down from $8.6 million in 2019, according to Meet Minneapolis.

"Most prognosticators are saying a three- to five-year recovery process [for the meeting industry], but we're doing all we can to shorten that length of time," Tennant said. "We were devastated, but we are an industry that has persevered."

About 45 confirmed events will take place at the convention center this year. Some are local events, but it's still an encouraging sign, he said.

Tennant recently spoke with the Star Tribune about the city's tourism industry. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Would you say the city's tourism industry is rebounding?

A: It is. It's not just a meeting with a lot of people from across the country or around the world coming to our city. That's true. But what I also see is people in the hospitality industry can't go to work because there's nobody here to serve, either in hotels or restaurants or the transportation companies. It had a tremendous impact. But instead of dwelling on the past, looking forward to 2022, we, from the group meeting and convention side, will likely have as strong a year as we had in 2019. Things will have rebounded significantly and there are a number of major events coming in 2022. On Jan. 1 is the NHL Winter Classic (at Target Field) — which would have been Jan. 1, 2021, but was postponed because of the pandemic. We'll start off the year strong. In April, we'll have the NCAA Women's Final Four. It's also the 50th anniversary of Title IX, so we'll be celebrating that right here in Minneapolis. We have the Shriners international convention coming in July. It'll be about 9,000 people. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is having its youth gathering next July, so those are just some of the ones that come to mind.

Q: Do you think pent-up demand contributes to what's going to happen in 2022, in terms of visitors coming here?

A: People are anxious to come back. The leisure travel part, we believe, is very strong coming back. I talked about the group meetings and conventions. The piece that we are uncertain about right now is business travel. With all of our our corporations here, there's typically a lot of travel for people associated either as employees, or vendors or associated with some of the major corporations that we have here. Business travel has been a strong component for us forever, and right now many of those companies still have travel restrictions in place, so we assume that there's going to be a correlation between when companies allow their employees to go back to work and then also allow them to travel more freely to be able to do the work of their companies. Business travel is one that we are still watching very closely, but we know that it probably will be the last sector to come back as strong as it was.

Q: Did you see an impact of the riots following the murder of George Floyd on the city's tourism industry?

A: Immediately following the murder of George Floyd, we made a strong statement as an organization condemning what happened, and we shared that statement with our potential customers. From that point on, we made sure that if there were bits of information that would be pertinent to share, whether it was about unrest or whether it's about the debate of defunding the police, that we were very transparent and open with our customer base about sharing that information. We felt it was better coming from us because as a destination marketing organization, we want to be the trusted resource for people that are looking to bring events here. We shared information that wasn't necessarily always flattering, but we wanted to make sure that we maintain that credibility and that trust with our customer audience. By and large, our proactiveness and honesty and authenticity has been applauded by many of our customers, so we feel as though that was clearly the right thing to do and made people understand that we were a trusted resource to have information.

Q: Do you anticipate hybrid events will be here to stay? If so, how can event planners and conventions continuing to offer virtual options affect tourism for Minneapolis?

A: We have seen during 2020 and into this year, out of necessity, a lot of meeting and event planners had to provide the hybrid component, but my experience and in the conversations that I've had with meeting and event planners is that hybrid or virtual are not the ideal situation in which to bring people together. Hybrid technology is very expensive to be able to basically run two programs, a virtual program and a live program. It takes a significant amount of coordination, a lot of staffing, a lot of technical resources and a lot of companies and organizations just can't afford it. ... The industry has lost so much money not being able to meet in person, so my opinion is that most companies and organizations would prefer to have live in-person meetings and only virtual if there is absolutely no other choice.

Q: The organization in June launched a $200,000 marketing campaign called Top 8 Reasons Why Minneapolis to attract visitors. What's the importance behind the timing of this campaign?

A: We are in the time of the year where we would typically have our highest hotel occupancies. June, July and the end of August are busy times of the year in a normal year. We know that travelers are just beginning to come up for air and look for options, so we want to make sure that we have presented ourselves as a strong option for leisure travel.