Billings Chamber head pushes state Tourism plan in speech to the Missoula Convention and Visitors Bureau

John Brewer is a Montana native who has come home – or nearly home – to ply the tourism trade for the last nine months as president and CEO of the Billings Chamber of Commerce Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Brewer – who grew up in Miles City and has worked in advertising and tourism promotion in Billings and the last five years in Spokane – was in Missoula Tuesday to promote an idea to the local CVB that hopefully would help boost tourism promotion statewide.

His "exciting" proposal isn’t a new idea. It’s been used in other states such as Washington and California.

"(It) really elevates communities to a higher level based on marketing dollars that would be available," said Brewer. "We’ve done a lot of competitive analysis in Billings and back when I was in Spokane to look at how we stack up to other communities across the country for our tourism viability, our marketing dollars."

What the analysis showed in Spokane for example is that community was at about half the marketing budget of other communities its size and with which Spokane was competing.

Missoula Convention and Visitors Bureau http://www.missoulacvb.org/

By BILL SCHWANKE of Missoulian.com

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/articles/2005/12/13/news/local/news03.txt

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Promoting tourism out east – or anywhere

By BILL SCHWANKE of Missoulian.com

"If you build it they will come" might work for a baseball facility built in the middle of a cornfield in Iowa. But when it comes to luring tourists to Montana or any other destination, it’s more like "if you build it and promote it they will come."

John Brewer is the President and CEO of the Billings Chamber of Commerce Convention and Visitors Bureau. He was in Missoula Tuesday to visit with the Missoula CVB and the board of directors of the Glacier Country Regional Tourism Commission. Brewer has spent much of his career in Billings, first with advertising agencies focusing on tourism clients, then for the Billings CVB as tourism director. Following five years as president and CEO of the Spokane Regional Convention and Visitors Bureau he returned to Billings nine months ago in his current position.

Brewer said the first key to successful tourism promotion is "truly understanding your market potential, not necessarily who’s coming now but who could possibly come."
Brewer believes Billings has neglected the regional audience – folks in North Dakota, Wyoming and rural Montana that see Billings as a major community and shopping hub.

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/articles/2005/12/14/news/mtregional/news03.txt