Working with the CVB
The Greater Birmingham Convention and Visitors Bureau’s mission is to generate overnight hotel stays in Jefferson County. We are primarily funded by the Jefferson County lodging tax.
We are not a membership based organization but represent all lodging facilities in Jefferson County.
We are governed by a 12 member Board of Directors made up of representatives from the hospitality industry, city, county and state governments. There are also four at-large members.
Our marketing efforts are divided into main three areas:
Conventions
Sports
Tour/Travel/Reunions
If you need access to the Partner site or empowerMINT.com, please contact Cyndy Patterson, IT Manager, at 205-214-9215 or cpatterson@birminghamal.org.
Sales Leads
Sales Leads are distributed to all lodging properties unless otherwise specified by the customer. Sales Leads are also distributed to attractions, meeting facilities, and other suppliers. The guidelines are the same for all leads.
As a professional courtesy, we expect leads generated by our organization will not be shared with properties outside our marketing area or with regional/national sales teams. Leads are distributed by email to one representative at each property and are available on our Partner site at www.birminghamal.org/partners.
Hint: If you have lost your password, it will be automatically emailed to you when you try to logon with an incorrect one. If you need to change your password, select “Edit Account After Login” on the login screen.
Lead follow-up:
1) The Lead Coordinator at each property can login to the Partner site and assign each lead to the appropriate representative within their organization. The representative can login to the Partner site and manage the leads assigned to them.
2) Follow-up directly to the customer unless otherwise stated on the lead.
3) On the partner site, a representative should enter whether or not they responded to each lead. As a courtesy, please upload a copy of the proposal for our records.
4) Once the customer selects a property, the Booking will be posted on the Partner site.
empowerMINT.com Leads are also generated from our participation with empowerMINT, a service of the Destination Marketing Association International. It allows planners to contact multiple cities and lodging properties simultaneously. Each property is responsible for managing their information.
HOT DATES: EmpowerMINT includes the ability to publicize your hot dates. Each property is responsible for managing their hot date information.
Hint: The hot date results are displayed by most current data so the more frequently you update, the more likely you are to be at the top of the list.
Report A Booking
The servicing staff at the CVB exists to help make each meeting in Birmingham successful. The Bureau has a wealth of information on local suppliers as well as providing registration/information personnel, publicity, badges, and brochures. The Tourism department also offers special services for tour buses and reunions that overnight in our area. If you have a customer that could benefit from our services, please let us know about them.
Upcoming Marketing Activities
The Greater Birmingham Convention & Visitors Bureau represents our area at numerous meetings and tradeshows each year. At many of these, suppliers have the option of attending or sharing our booth space. The CVB also sponsors familiarization (FAM) tours, sales calls and other events where our partners can participate. To see a list of our planned activities for the year, click on this link on the Partner Site. This area of the Partner site also includes samples of our recent ads and a list of upcoming citywide events.
TAP Reports
Trends Analysis Projections LLC is a market research provider and consultant to over 60 convention bureaus and 50 hotels in North America. The 8 Year Pace Report Displays room night pace targets compared to definite room nights on the books for each month and year for the next 8 years, beginning with the current year, along with an annual summary of these years. TAP Peer Set Reports allows us to measure our performance against competing markets.
Book A Room Feature
We have contracted with JackRabbit Systems’s Book Direct to provide our online reservation information. Rate and availability information is pulled from your current online reservation service and is updated several times each day. Most reservation engines are supported and the cost of this service is not passed to the guest or lodging property. If your property does not currently have the availability to accept online bookings, a Free Reservation Engine is available that can be added to your current website.
Calendar of Events
Our Calendar of Events is powered by birmingham365.org, a program of the Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham. The site welcomes listings for all events, classes, camps, programs, and activities that open to the public with or without a fee. Submissions are made online.
To be considered for our printed Quarterly Calendar of Events, an event must be submitted by the following dates:
November 15 – January/February/March events
February 15 – April/May/June events
May 15 – July/August/September events
August 15 – October/November/December events
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