How Visit Richmond is Using AI to Sell More Conventions

DMO CEOs want specific use cases for AI showing how they drive measurable business results. Here's a great example for capitalizing on AI to drive meetings and conventions volume from Lauran Peoples, director of sales marketing and business development at Visit Richmond in Virginia.

Peoples works in the organization's 13-person sales team and reports to the VP of sales. Her role has three core functions: She is the main liaison between the destination sales and marketing departments; she develops and leads campaign strategy for the sales department; and she works with her colleagues to optimize strategic partnerships.

Peoples' role is somewhat unique as a liaison between sales and marketing in that she lives on the sales side, versus marketing. She also stands out in our industry as an emerging voice in AI innovation. If you're going to U.S. Travel's ESTO conference this month in Phoenix, look for her and me working in the show's inaugural AI Playground educational activation.

Greg Oates: Can you explain your role at Visit Richmond, specifically in terms of how you bridge the sales and marketing teams?

Lauran Peoples: It's becoming more common in DMOs for sales teams to have a marketing liaison, but usually that person is based on the marketing team and is mostly assigned to sales to help with creative. The issue is when that marketing liaison is based on the marketing team, they don't have much exposure to the field and what's happening out of market with your salespeople.

Our sales team has 45 trade shows this upcoming fiscal year, so they're traveling almost every week. With my situation in Richmond, they're getting real-time data and downloads about what's happening in each destination, so that gives them more authentic conversations to engage planners. Not having someone assigned to a team like that creates a huge disconnect and leaves opportunity on the table.

GO: Tell us a little about your journey with AI.

LP: I've been working in hospitality for 20 years. Last year, I heard some younger people on the team talking about ChatGPT. So I was like, okay, I don't know anything about that. I went to PCMA Convening Leaders in January and the opening session was all about AI. I remember sitting there feeling like a dinosaur. Feeling very behind. I realized this is a lot more serious and widespread than I thought, so I left and tasked myself with using ChatGPT once a day.

Initially, I couldn't differentiate how it wasn't like Google. I was asking it how many tablespoons are in this or that, kind of thing. Since then, my understanding of AI has progressively increased around more complex and comprehensive capabilities. It has streamlined my productivity, but more importantly, AI has become a thought partner for me to bounce all these ideas and scenarios around that I didn't have before.

I think that a lot of people are adopting AI and using it as a communications assistant, or a writing assistant. But the part for me that's really exciting and valuable with AI is analyzing and aggregating data and getting it to show you things that you need help with, like sales.

GO: Can you share an example?

LP: Sure. I took five datasets: five years of lost business, five years of definite business, and three marketing reports from different campaigns we were running with outside agencies like Sojourn and Digital Edge. Those campaigns give us demographic insights because we were targeting certain areas. I also grabbed our sales deployment sheet, which tells you who has what market.

I uploaded all of those into ChatGPT and asked it to identify the top five locations for each of our managers based on their market segments. Some results weren't surprising, but there were a few that popped up like Orlando that we've never traditionally considered. When I asked ChatGPT why Orlando, it showed how the city has a large hobby market. It turns out there are a lot of hobby conventions that meet in Orlando.

After I compiled the top five locations for each manager, I asked ChatGPT to give me the top five accounts in each of those locations. Then I asked for unique selling propositions for each of those accounts as to why Richmond would be a perfect fit. Finally, I asked it to rank those five destinations based on probability of success.

GO: Have you seen any of this result in new business opportunities?

LP: Yes. One location that showed up was Philadelphia. Richmond is four hours from Philadelphia, but like Orlando it hasn't typically been on our radar. However, based on the data from ChatGPT, Philly came up as a recommendation. So we sent one of our sales managers to Philadelphia, and she ended up hosting 18 planners, including some who drove from over an hour away to see her. She got such a great response that I had to jump in and go with her because she couldn't host 18 clients by herself.

AI has now informed our sales strategy for Philly, and the region is now part of our dedicated sales strategy. We've allocated funds for that sales manager in Philly to join chapters of organizations like MPI and PCMA. So that's how we know there had to be some accuracy to our approach with AI.

GO: How do the sales managers feel about you doing this AI analysis?

LP: They appreciate it. It's a balance because most sales managers at DMOs aren't entry level; they've been in hospitality for a long time. This is a new process and a new tool for them. Some have destinations they like to go to over and over because they're successful there. But my role is to support business enablement and sales enablement to help them do what they do better and uncover new business. So how we're using AI provides them with additional actionable research.

GO: I think one of the most underrated strategies for AI is developing custom GPTs in ChatGPT to help sales teams develop more customized and effective proposals more quickly. Are you building those at all?

LP: Yes, definitely. About a month and a half ago, I programmed a GPT for the sales team called "Prospecting Partner." It's trained on our sales collateral and all our information, so it knows our convention packages and understands our jurisdiction and seven localities. The sales managers have been using it to prospect smarter.

I included suggested prompts to go beyond just, "Give me a prospecting email." We can get really specific, like, "Help me re-engage an association planner who just lost grant funding." It also provides strategies specifically related to that, and then you can ask how to execute those strategies.

So, for example, we know from reports that finance and insurance is an opportunity market for us. It's a small percentage of our current business but it has the highest average daily rate, which makes it very attractive to our hotel partners. So our salespeople are asking ChatGPT for ways we can develop business in the finance and insurance market, and really dig into that. Ultimately, AI is helping our sales team think bigger, smarter and more strategically.

I've asked the sales team if they found this helpful, and, you know, salespeople are not an easy crowd. They said yes across the board. With the ChatGPT Enterprise version, I can't see their exact prompts due to privacy, but I can see the number of conversations they're having with the tool, so I know they're actively using it.

GO: How are other people on your team using AI?

LP: My two direct reports are our CRM database administrator and our sales coordinator. My sales coordinator does support work for the entire team, so she's using ChatGPT a lot for ideation, like when a sales manager needs an itinerary to entertain clients in Chicago.

My CRM database administrator uses ChatGPT as a communication assistant because sometimes analytical personality types can benefit from exploring more communication nuances. She's also started incorporating it into data cleanup, using it to analyze reports and suggest what's missing or what would be beneficial. She uses it to help fill in gaps and identify what's not being asked or said.

GO: What are some of your future plans with AI?

LP: We're launching microsites for destination sales and sports, and I think it will set a model for the rest of the organization because we’re replacing our website from pre- to post-AI, like most DMO sites these days.

We're currently writing copy for the microsites, and I've been getting into structured data and semantic clarity. You don't search ChatGPT or prompt ChatGPT with the same language you search Google, so content has to be written differently.

Previously, you'd go to Google and say "restaurants near me." Now with ChatGPT, it's more of a conversation, so you'll say, "Hey, I'm in Scott's Addition historic district in Richmond with my kids, and we're looking for a vegan restaurant." That semantic clarity allows AI to respond with much more specific answers.

I think we need to anticipate AI searches, as opposed to Google searches, in how we write content. Everyone is subconsciously expecting a personally curated experience today. When I go on Amazon, I'm expecting it to make connections that I like this, so I might also like this, without me having to tell it certain things. That's where we have to move towards, or we get eclipsed or become obsolete, especially if we're just thinking of ourselves as brokers for a destination.