New Clermont County Visitors and Convention Bureau Executive Director Mark Calitri, right, and Marketing Specialist James Barger.

New Clermont County Visitors and Convention Bureau Executive Director Mark Calitri, right, and Marketing Specialist James Barger.

By Art Hunter
Editor

The Clermont Convention and Visitors Bureau is emerging from a period of transition with a more focused mission and a new executive director.

Chris Smith has served as interim executive director of the Convention and Visitors Bureau since September of 2012. He said that he was appointed to help redirect the bureau.

“The intent was to reposition, restructure, reorganize the Convention and Visitors Bureau,” Smith said.

Part of that process,  which began more than a year ago, involved the appointing of a new board of directors, assembling a sales team, and establishing good business practices, according to Smith.

Several weeks ago, a new executive director, Mark Calitri, took over at the bureau.

“The plan was to get a pipeline of events committed and booked through 2014 and then turn it over to somebody like Mark with industry expertise to run with it for the next three years,” Smith said.

The sole purpose of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, Smith said, is to bring more activities – and more guests – into the community. The county’s six percent lodging tax pays for the Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the sales taxes paid by visitors for everything else they purchase while they are in the community supports the county.

“The sales tax accounts for 43 percent of this year’s revenue stream for the county,” Smith said. “Visitors support our retail sector, and the sales taxes they pay provide support for our local government.”

Every new event brought to the county, he said, helps lessen the burden on local citizens.

To bring those visitors to Clermont County, Calitri said, the bureau is actively looking to community members for leads. Many people are involved with organizations that hold various types of events, and Calitri says those events can be held in Clermont County.

“We’re looking for leads all of the time from community stakeholders, whether it’s their professional organizations, or hobby organizations, tournaments, or reunions,” Calitri said. “We want to bring those events here.”

Some of the categories of events that the bureau has been having success with are sporting, military reunions, and history, but Calitri says that every possibility is going to be pursued.

“This type of community can’t just focus on one thing,” Calitri said. “Building just a little bit in each of these categories is what we’re tring to reach.”

Smith said that he has been working to make the bureau’s website a clearinghouse for activities in the community.

“We went to each township and village and asked to be their community bulletin board,” Smith said. “We want them to funnel information about their activities to us so that we can serve as an amplifier for those communities.”

More information about the Clermont Convention and Visitors Bureau, and about events in Clermont County, can be found at www.visitclermontohio.com.