About this time each year, our team gets together to review the last 12 months and also set plans in motion for the year ahead. This week’s Monday Huddle Up is a quick summary of all the things we liked in 2024, a list of our “favorites” if you will. Hope some of these can serve as useful takeaways for you and your organizations. Here we go, our favorite……
Event – SportsETA’s Chief Executive Summit is always at the top of our list. San Jose did a great job of hosting this past year and the content was excellent as usual. If this event isn’t on your list it should be. Fort Worth will be a superb host in 2025.
FAM – Our team was engaged by the State of New York and several of their sports tourism focused destinations to plan and execute a familiarization (FAM) tour on their behalf. The feedback we received on the program was excellent and our team enjoyed the process so much that we are planning more of these in 2025 and beyond.
Reception – The Southeast Tourism Society held their opening event at Auburn University’s Culinary Science Center. It was basically a dine around within one building with experts in various food and beverage categories leading the way.
Project – A group of tourism leaders in Iowa asked us to put together a study that defined the value of sports tourism for the entire state. While daunting in terms of data capture and the vastness of what we were tasked to do, the HUG team really leaned into this project and the results will arm them with data to advocate for more support in the future.
Hotel – Embassy Suites in downtown Rockford. Great views of the river and one of their sports facilities. Good food, helpful staff. And a golf simulator to boot.
Restaurant/Meal – Tuscan Cream Salmon at the Alimentari Bar in the Westin in Chattanooga, host of SportsETA’s 4S Summit. Kevin liked the dish so much he ate it on both of the open nights during the event.
Activation – While we like Sports Illinois’ traditional puppy petting zone at the SportsETA Symposium, we can’t ignore the llamas in Portland this past year.
Rooftops – There were several really solid rooftop events last year. Our favorites were held in Ft. Smith and Wichita.
Milestone – We completed our 100th sports tourism strategic plan in 2024. While we have worked on several hundred projects over the years, strategic plans are the bread and butter of what we do. Thanks to the team in Rockford for number one hundred and to all of those that came before them.
Hope the new year is full of more favorites for everyone.
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