Super Bowl of conventions to hit Detroit

Get ready, Detroit – the Super Bowl is coming to town this August!

No, not the football game, but something even bigger in its potential for future conventions, hotel bookings and visitor traffic.

It's the 2015 national convention of ASAE (American Society of Association Executives) often called the Super Bowl of trade shows, and it will bring 6,000 of the nation's top meeting planners to Detroit from Aug. 8-11, for the first time in ASAE's 95-year history.

"I think now there's really a good buzz about Detroit, especially about the new renovation at Cobo Center … So it will be important for the city to show off, and I think it will show very well," said ASAE president John Graham IV, who is visiting Detroit this week to go over details for the upcoming convention.

Attendees will spend between $15 million and $20 million while in Detroit this August, "but that's not the impressive number," Graham told me in a telephone interview. "The impressive number is that over the next five years, 20% of the people who attend this convention will book a meeting in Detroit that will occur in the next 10 years – and that has an economic impact of about $500 million."

Back in 2013, just before ASAE's annual convention in Atlanta that August, attendees from Detroit were bracing for worrisome questions about how the 2015 show, which had already been awarded to Detroit, might be impacted by the city's Chapter 9 bankruptcy filing on July 18, 2013.

The Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau (DMCVB) debuted a new marketing campaign at the Atlanta convention, dubbed "Detroit, America's Great Comeback City."

At that time, Graham addressed Detroit's fiscal troubles in an ASAE publication, expressing "utmost confidence" in the DMCVB. "We also know the city is progressing through their restructuring," Graham wrote then, "and we are hopeful that this move will bring Detroit back as a city and community."

This week Graham said his confidence was well-placed, mentioning investments by J.P. Morgan Chase and Quicken Loans as indicators of both national and local support for the city. "I think we're seeing a city that is on the mend and on the comeback , and I think ASAE is delighted to be a part of that," he said.

Although Detroit has never hosted a national ASAE convention before, Graham said the city presents "a very attractive package" for attendees – affordable lodging and ease of access with very good airport access, plus plenty of entertainment and dining options.

While cities like San Diego or San Francisco, with greater tourist reputations, are attractive to some ASAE attendees, he said most big national associations are based near Washington D.C. or Chicago, making travel to Detroit much more convenient and less expensive.

Contact Tom Walsh: twalsh@freepress.com, also follow him on Twitter @TomWalsh_freep.