When Kathy Hedlund graduated from college with a degree in elementary education, schools weren’t hiring. To bide her time, she found a job with Northwest Airlines. Her career took off (no pun intended), and without looking back she spent the next 15 years in various sales management positions. Following her tenure at NWA, Hedlund dabbled in sales and operations of meetings and events with a large meetings and incentive company, went off on her own and consulted for a few pharmaceutical companies, and then eight years ago took a job as a regional director at HelmsBriscoe—the country’s largest meeting and conference site selection company, which purchased nearly $600 million in lodging revenue last year.
Even with 900 HelmsBriscoe associates scattered around the world, and three or four other major players in the third-party marketplace alongside it, Hedlund says they’re only scratching the surface of the meetings and associations industry. “As the concept is continually embraced, it’s going to get bigger,” she says. “We take so much legwork away from the planner. They still make the decisions; we’re just doing the research and providing them with options.”
In this relationship business of meetings, Hedlund relies heavily on her connections, and vice versa. Hotel partners know any business she throws their way is reputable and solid. And for her clients, even after the contract is signed, she wants to be all resources. It’s a motto that’s embraced companywide. “If I’m looking for something in Orlando and I haven’t been there in awhile, we have associates in Orlando who will go and do a site inspection for me. That helps a lot, especially in an international marketplace, where you’re looking at a different culture and protocol. It’s priceless.”
Hedlund also involves herself in numerous professional organizations, understanding it not only helps her professionally, but also gives her company great exposure. “For that involvement alone, the return on investment is absolutely amazing,” she says. Definite words of wisdom. Once a teacher, always a teacher.
As a 7-year-old in Vietnam, Thom Pham woke at 5 a.m. everyday to help his grandmother with her catering company. Each day his grandmother labored, and her reward was to take her grandson to temple. Pham pays homage to his grandmother with his latest dining venture: Temple Restaurant & Bar. A French-Asian (his grandmother’s ethnicity) concept that debuted in Minneapolis last year, Temple is Pham’s fourth restaurant to open in the past 10 years. After moving to the Twin Cities when he was 14, Pham worked for many different restaurants, and then opened Thanh Do in St. Louis Park when he was just 24. Azia followed four years later, with Anemoni opening four years after that.
Because Pham was surrounded by food and business his entire childhood, it would’ve been strange had he not joined the industry. Plus, his spice-favoring taste buds told him the state needed him more than ever. While Minnesotans have since grown as a dining population, 10 years ago they weren’t ones to enjoy new flavors. So, Pham adapted. “I can come up with a very different dish that [Midwesterners] have never seen before, but if I use one or two familiar ingredients, then they’re willing to try it,” he says. “I came up with a dish called Jalapeno Basil Walleye. When people look at the jalapeno basil cream sauce and see it’s neon green, they think it’s weird. Until they hear it accompanies walleye. Then they’re OK.”
But no matter what he’s serving—whether it’s sushi at Anemoni or Grilled Norwegian Salmon (with a twist, of course) at Temple—his restaurants sit off the beaten path, at least when they first open, and his clientele remains very important. “Because the menus and the concepts are very different and interesting, I try to make it more of a destination spot,” he says. “People come to us because they want to, not because they’re walking down the street and happen to run into us.”
And, while Pham focuses on making a success of what’s his already, he always has ideas for new concepts to bring to the Twin Cities. But, he’s not talking yet. “It doesn’t matter where you’re at, or how good you think you can do, there’s always room to do better,” he says. “There’s plenty more I can learn, and I don’t mind that at all. I like to be able to bring more to the table.” So to speak.
Executive Director, Rochester Convention and Visitors Bureau
Brad Jones, executive director of the Rochester Convention & Visitors Bureau, has the ultimate “take lemons and make lemonade” personality.
Because of the prominent role the Mayo Clinic plays in regard to the city’s image, many people—outsiders and Rochester residents alike—refer to it as “Sick City,” says Jones. He, on the other hand, looks at everything that the world-renown facility offers and prefers to label Rochester “the Disneyland of medicine and research.”
It’s that sort of gung-ho spirit that has allowed Jones to reverse the fortunes of the Rochester CVB in only two-and-a-half years.
The CVB was spinning its wheels when Jones was offered, and initially turned down, the executive director post in early 2005. He was looking to leave a similar position in Mackinaw City, Mich., but Rochester wasn’t on his original list of options. The Rochester search committee was persistent, however, and Jones eventually decided that the job and the city were right for him and his young family.
He inherited a sales team that had become accustomed to high turnover and was not producing the amount of hotel nights and related tourism revenue that Minnesota’s third-largest city should. Jones says he also detected a lack of cooperation between hospitality providers, and immediately set to work on a fix. “For whatever reason, good people weren’t
getting along.”
His solution is embodied in the citywide Rah! Rah! Rochester campaign, a project that increased the CVB’s visibility in the community by creating “community cheerleaders” and encouraging all residents—even those not connected to the tourism industry—to sing the praises of the city.
“We have a world-class community here, but we weren’t getting that community to help get groups to visit,” he says. “We discovered people weren’t aware of all of the city’s positive attributes, and we set about to change that.”
Before the Rah! Rah! Campaign kicked off, a survey showed that only 26 percent of the community was aware that the CVB even existed. Eighteen months later, that figure stands at 72 percent.
But it’s about more than just getting the locals to know you’re around. The Rah! Rah! campaign has generated nine leads for group business, which could inject $15 million in new revenue into the local economy. Business has been locked up on two of those leads, representing $800,000 in revenue.
“We have folks who live here who serve on national boards and can influence business our direction,” Jones says. “One such guy said he never imagined that we had 5,000 hotel rooms in the city.”
While Jones emphasizes that there is more to Rochester than the Mayo Clinic, he’s never hesitant to lean on Mayo resources whenever it makes sense—and it oftentimes does. He likes to tell the story of a group of rocket hobbyists who recently selected Rochester for its multiple-day gathering because of an alluring and unique enticement. A Mayo doctor who also works for NASA kept the group enraptured with tales of what it takes to prepare the body for space travel.
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Kathy Hedlund
Thom Pham
Brad Jones
