Industry Barry L. Smith, President and CEO MetroToronto Convention Centre
The concept of first- and sec- ond-tier cities is “notional”—it’s what is a commonly held
view as opposed to a specific set of criteria. In the case of Toronto, it’s certainly a first-tier city in Canada, and meets all of the first-tier requirements for a Northeast first-tier city
IT’S ‘NOTIONAL’:
What constitues a first-tier city is in the eye of the beholder, according to Barry Smith.
in terms of the size of convention center, number of rooms, the infrastructure to support large meetings. But some U.S. planners might consider Toronto a second-tier city just because it is over the border.
Tom Noonan, President and CEO Visit Baltimore
Baltimore is a second-tier city in some ways, and we have some first-tier attributes. So we
always joke around that we’re “tier one-and-a-half.”To me, in a first-tier city, you have a major airport, you have a large convention center, you have the capacity to do 15,000 rooms on peak night, you have the big infrastructure. Second-tier cities are smaller by nature, they might have
a more condensed hotel package—[a group] might own the campus. I will tell you that if you look at Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., as first-tier cities, they don’t have as tight- knit a hotel package as we do. If you’re going to do a 5,000- room citywide, you’re going to walk to every room in Baltimore, which you can’t do in Philadelphia or D.C. So from that point of view, we’re tier one. From airport access, we’re tier one. From the size of our
building [convention center],weclearly aren’t. From the total number of hotel rooms in the city, we may not be. I think the benefit that second-tier cities generally offer
is a better rate situation, that you’ll own the campus, you’re generally going to find them a little bit hungrier, because they’re developing or growing tourism cities, and so they’re going to make sure that they take advantage of every situa- tion they get.
48 pcmaconvene February 2011 ‘TIER ONE-AND-A-HALF’:
Baltimore has some first-tier and some second-tier attributes, Tom Noonan said.
I think part of it is perception. What does the customer
consider first-tier? Some customers might think the only tier- one convention cities are Orlando, Chicago, LasVegas,New Orleans, Atlanta, and thatmay be it. Somemight throw Dal- las, San Francisco, and San Diego in there. There are prob- ably in the neighborhood of 20 tier-one destinations in America. Tier-one cities probably don’t have any hurdles: They have big buildings, are easy to get to, have a lot of hotel rooms, lots to see and do, and great dining.